Posts in Category: German
Lucas Cranach the Younger
Lucas Cranach the Younger, October 4, 1515 – January 25, 1586, was a German Renaissance painter born in Wittenberg. He trained in the workshop of his father, Lucas Cranach the Elder, alongside his elder brother Hans Cranach.
After Hans’s death in 1537, Cranach assumed greater responsibility in the family workshop and became its head when his father left Wittenberg in 1550. He produced portraits, altarpieces, biblical scenes, and mythological subjects, and continued the workshop’s close association with the Saxon court and the Protestant Reformation.
Cranach also served Wittenberg as a council member, chamberlain, and burgomaster. He died in Wittenberg, and his works are held by institutions including the Dresden State Art Collections, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the National Museum in Warsaw.
Tilman Riemenschneider
Tilman Riemenschneider, German woodcarver and sculptor, c. 1460 – July 7, 1531
Hans Holbein the Elder
Hans Holbein the Elder, c 1460 – 1524, was a German painter and draftsman active chiefly in Augsburg. He was probably born in Augsburg and became one of the leading painters of the late Gothic and early Renaissance period in southern Germany. His workshop produced altarpieces, devotional panels, portraits, and drawings for Augsburg patrons and religious institutions.
Holbein worked in a style shaped by late Gothic panel painting, Netherlandish realism, and early Renaissance design. His major works include the Grey Passion, the Saint Sebastian Altarpiece, portraits of Augsburg sitters, and drawings in silverpoint and other media. He was the father and teacher of Ambrosius Holbein and Hans Holbein the Younger.
His works are held by the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Alte Pinakothek, Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Städel Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, Condé Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Statens Museum for Kunst, and other European collections.
Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich, September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840, was a German Romantic landscape painter.
He studied at the Copenhagen Academy and later settled in Dresden, where he became associated with the central figures of German Romanticism. His paintings often combine carefully observed landscapes with solitary figures, ruins, crosses, graves, moonlight, fog and winter scenery.
Friedrich’s best-known works include Monk by the Sea, Abbey among Oak Trees, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Chalk Cliffs on Rügen and The Sea of Ice. His reputation declined late in his life but was substantially revived in the twentieth century.
