APT, Ulrich the Elder

(b. ~1460 Augsburg, d. 1522 Augsburg)

German painter, together with his son active in Augsburg, which alongside Nuremberg was one of the leading centres of artistic production in 16th-century Germany. (From Augsburg came important artistic families such as the Holbeins.)

Ulrich Apt the Elder painted many portraits, mostly in the style of Hans Holbein the Elder, and several have been confused with Holbein the Younger’s. There are pictures by him in Augsburg, Florence (Uffizi), Munich and Vienna, and there are two replicas of A Man and his Wife, 1512, in the Royal Collection, Windsor, and New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Adoration of the Magi

This painting shows a certain old-fashioned awkwardness in how the figures relate to their space. The landscape is tipped up and the horizon high, while the massive figures seem uncomfortably crowded into a small area.

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Portrait of a Man and His Wife

This double portrait represents a man and his wife placed before an off-centre window open to a view of a bucolic landscape. Between them the ages of the couple, 52 and 35, and the date of the painting, 1512, are indicated by trompe-l’oeil inscriptions. They are identified as Lorenz Kraffter, a prominent Augsburg merchant and his wife Honesta Merz.

Two other nearly identical versions of the painting exist, one in the Royal Collection, Windsor and another in an English private collection. The three paintings are supposedly executed by different hands. The version in the Metropolitan is the one most clearly by Apt himself.

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The Lamentation

This panel shows the influence of Italian art on German painting. While this influence had been minimal in the 15th century, the 16th century saw the Italian style spread throughout the whole of northern Europe. Ulrich Apt’s work shows a synthesis of the two models.

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