Witz, Konrad

(born c. 1400, Rottweil, Baden-Württemberg—died c. 1445, Basel or Geneva, Swiss Confederation) German-born Swiss painter. In 1434 he entered the painters' guild in Basel, where he worked most of his life. Little else is known of his life. His masterpiece, The Miraculous Draft of Fishes (1444), from an altarpiece for the cathedral of Geneva, exemplifies such precise realism that the light reflected off the water's surface is carefully distinguished from the light reflected off the stones beneath the shallow water. He was one of the first German painters to show the influence of early Netherlandish art and one of the first European artists to incorporate realistic landscapes into religious paintings.

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