JOACHIM VON, a painter and artistic biographer, was born of an ancient and noble family at Franckfurt-on-the-Main in 1606. He devoted himself early to the arts, and received his first lessons from Théodore de Bry. At the age of fifteen he set out for Prague to learn the art of engraving from Sadeler; but that artist advising him to apply himself to painting, he went to Utrecht, where he entered the school of Gerhard Honthorst. Here he made rapid progress, and was soon able to assist his master in his more important paintings. Descamps and Pilkington both say that Sandrart accompanied his master to England, but Bryan can find no evidence of this. At all events, he proceeded to Italy in 1627, and spent some time at Venice, copying the paintings of Titian and Paul Veronese. He afterwards visited Bologna, Florence, and Rome, studying as he went the works of the great Italian masters. Cardinal Barberini was commissioned by the king of Spain to procure for him twelve paintings by the best masters then living; when Sandrart had the honour to be chosen, together with Guido, Guercino, Dominichino, N. Poussin, &c., to execute those pictures for the Escorial. After visiting Naples, Sicily, and Malta, Sandrart returned to Germany, whither his fame had preceded him. The plague which then raged in that country drove him to seek an asylum elsewhere, and he accordingly settled in Amsterdam, where he executed many of his largest paintings, and among others the entry of Mary de Medicis into that town. Sandrart had held by heritage a piece of landed property at Stockau, near Ingolstadt, which had been much devastated by the late wars. This circumstance led him to part with his land, and settle at Augsburg. He established himself at Nürnberg in 1672, where he was held in great esteem by the emperor and many of the minor princes of Germany. He was engaged on his picture of the "Last Judgment" when he died at Nürnberg in 1688. Here he published five works in all, of which the best known and most esteemed is his Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683. His paintings are not now much sought after; but his Lives of the Painters, ancient and modern, is still admired.