Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky

Prussian merchant, art dealer and diplomat

Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky was a Prussian merchant with a successful trade in trinkets, silk, taft, porcelain, grain and bills of exchange.

Moreover, he acted as a diplomat and important art dealer. His paintings formed the basis and the beginning of the collection in the Hermitage Museum.

Gotzkowsky died impoverished and having left behind an autobiography: Geschichte eines patriotischen Kaufmanns (1768), which was translated into French and reprinted three times in the 18th century.