BALDUNG GRIEN, Hans

Vigorous lines, clear and plastic forms and bold presentation are the characteristic features of the two companion-pieces Adam and Eve. The paintings represent the life-size figures of Adam and Eve from the scene of the Fall. They appear to have belonged to a series consisting of four nudes, and it is recorded that in 1641 four paintings by Hans Baldung, representing Adam, Eve, Judith and Venus, found their way from Strasbourg into the possession of a Basel merchant. The full-length Judith, now in the Germanisches Museum in Nuremberg, and the Venus in the Kroller-Muller Museum at Otterlo are panels of the same structure and dimensions as the pictures in Budapest and, since the former is dated 1524, it may be assumed that the whole series, including the two pictures in Budapest, was painted in that year.

The artist created a strong contrast between the figures Adam and Eve. The characteristic marked contours of Adam manisfest the drawing skills of the artist. The paintings show the influence of D�rer.

Hans Baldung Grien was probably the greatest and the most talented of D�rer’s pupils, his works being expressions of both an artistic and spiritual intensity. He exulted particularly in his interest for the female nude, a subject which he treated several times and portrayed in a dramatic confrontation death and therefore with the frailty of the body, thus offering up a macabre interpretation of the classical theme of vanitas.

The two figures are given solidity, and cultures, gracious expressions emerge from their faces, thus revealing the painter’s interest for Italian Renaissance art. Baldung Grien was in fact a man of high culture; born into an educated family, he became the most authoritative exponent of the humanistic circle in Strasbourg, belonged to the cultural aristocracy and throughout his life had contacts with intellectuals and thinkers.

Vigorous lines, clear and plastic forms and bold presentation are the characteristic features of the two companion-pieces Adam and Eve. The paintings represent the life-size figures of Adam and Eve from the scene of the Fall. They appear to have belonged to a series consisting of four nudes, and it is recorded that in 1641 four paintings by Hans Baldung, representing Adam, Eve, Judith and Venus, found their way from Strasbourg into the possession of a Basel merchant. The full-length Judith, now in the Germanisches Museum in Nuremberg, and the Venus in the Kroller-Muller Museum at Otterlo are panels of the same structure and dimensions as the pictures in Budapest and, since the former is dated 1524, it may be assumed that the whole series, including the two pictures in Budapest, was painted in that year.

The artist created a strong contrast between the figures Adam and Eve. The characteristic marked contours of Adam manisfest the drawing skills of the artist. The paintings show the influence of D�rer.

This brilliantly executed painting displays one of Baldung’s specialities - the treatment of the nude, particularly the female nude. The subject of this painting is original sin, which is conveyed not just through the use of the traditional symbols - the serpent and the apple - but also by Adam’s eloquent pose, holding Eve firmly and possessively with a look that leaves nothing to the imagination.

Hans Baldung was fascinated with the theme of the Fall of Man. The earliest of his works on this subject are drawings and prints dated between 1510 and 1519, followed by a group of paintings dated to the 1520s and early 1530s.

Hans Baldung was fascinated with the theme of the Fall of Man. The earliest of his works on this subject are drawings and prints dated between 1510 and 1519, followed by a group of paintings dated to the 1520s and early 1530s.

This picture symbolizes the power of the women by representing the phylosopher Aristotle as he brings on his back his lover, Phyllis. This story was often pictured by Renaissance artists.

Baldung’s larger religious works, such as the Coronation of the Virgin, have received criticism for their heavy-handed portrayal of holy personages and the pronounced effects they display. His smaller devotional panels were more successful.

In this impressive panel by Baldung even the wood of the crosses seems cruelly alive. The bad Thief’s body is still tied to his tree, one tormented foot visible just above the Magdalen’s head.

In this painting a voluptuous young maiden turns to receive the kiss of her lover, only to discover, to her horror, Death. The skeletal figure gently holds her head, a gesture that belies the finality of his impending bite. His patches of wispy hair and rotting skin mock her flowing tresses and supple flesh. The dark setting, unnoticed at first, is a cemetery as she stands on a gravestone, perhaps her own. This Vanitas picture (an image that alludes to the transience of life) typifies Baldung’s predilection for erotically charged twists to more conventional themes, such as the Dance of Death.

In the later version of the theme by Baldung, the awaited lover of the maiden turns out to be a grimacing Death, who embraces her with its bony fingers pulling at her hair, a reminder that her beauty will soon vanish, as the ominous inscription above her head warns: “This is your end.”

The painting represents the life-size figure of Eve from the scene of the Fall. The companion-piece showing Adam is also in the same museum. The two panels belonged to a group of four panels containing nude figures, the other two being Venus and Cupid (Rijksmuseum Kr�ller-M�ller, Otterlo) and Judith (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg).

The artist created a strong contrast between the figures Adam and Eve. The paintings show the influence of D�rer.

The painting represents the life-size figure of Eve from the scene of the Fall. The companion-piece showing Adam is also in the same museum. The two panels belonged to a group of four panels containing nude figures, the other two being Venus and Cupid (Rijksmuseum Kr�ller-M�ller, Otterlo) and Judith (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg).

The artist created a strong contrast between the figures Adam and Eve. The paintings show the influence of D�rer.

Baldung’s portraits have an eccentric, loopy authority as seen in the portrait of Ludwig, Count von L�wenstein (1463-1524), which may have faced a lost pendant showing his wife. Later legitimised, Ludwig was the bastard warrior son of Duke Frederick I the Victorious and an Augsburg resident, Clara Tott. At the time of his murder in 1524, he had received titles from and was active as military councilor to Maximilian I.

This panel was identified as the central panel of a dismembered altarpiece. The left wing depicts St Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and St John the Baptist (National Gallery of Art, Washington), Cleveland), and the right wing represents St John on Patmos (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

Hans Baldung Grien represents an interesting and individual trend in the history of German painting in the sixteenth century. Although he began his career as a painter in Nuremberg very much under the influence of D�rer, during his activity in Strasbourg and Freiburg he developed his own ideas and revealed in his altar-pieces, historical compositions and portraits, as well as his prolific output of graphic work, an exceedingly rich imagination and a growing predilection for characterization.

Vigorous lines, clear and plastic forms and bold presentation are the characteristic features of his picture in Budapest, the Mater Dolorosa. Originally the panel was on the outer side of an altarwing. Its companion-piece was a Vir Dolorum (Man of Sorrows).

Mucius Scaevola (Livy 2:12-13) was a hero of Roman legend. When the Etruscan forces, led by Lars Porsena, king of Clusium, were besieging Rome, a young Roman nobleman, Caius Mucius, succeeded in penetrating the enemy lines in disguise, meaning to kill Porsena. By mistake he killed the king’s secretary who was sitting beside him. Mucius was seized but, to show how cheaply he held his life, thrust his right hand into the flames of an altar fire and let it burn. Porsena, amazed by his endurance, set him free. He was thereafter called Scaevola, meaning ‘left-handed’.

In painting, of the Renaissance and later, Mucius stands for the virtues of patience and constancy. His sacrifice was also held to be a prefiguration of Christ’s sacrifice.

There is a companion-piece of this allegorical nude, the Prudence, also in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Music, with the white cat, symbolizes the phlegmatic temperament, while Prudence, with a mirror and stag symbolizes melancholy.

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Orlande de Lassus: Serenade

An idyllic representation of the frequently painted subject from one of the most peculiar German Renaissance artists.

By electing to portray the main figures simply and quietly at the back of the stable, Baldung draws the eye first to the ruined architecture and the ox and ass seen in larger scale on the left. His construction of the interior embraces the opposite poles of precise foreshortening - as in the incisively drawn plynth in the foreground - and perspective uncertainty, something heightened by the differences in scale between animals and the figures. Viewer irritation and Mannerist alienation are quite clearly not the artist’s aims, however.

With the help of painted light, whose source seems to lie beyond the natural world, Baldung portrays the miracle of the Holy Night with what is for him an unusual depth of feeling. The infant Jesus, held in his swaddling bands by putti, seems to radiate light onto Joseph’s red coat and Mary’s hands and face. Through the brick archway in the cracked, plastered wall, we glimpse a second miraculous vision: an angel encircled by a radiant glory is appearing to a shepherd watching his flock. The fusion of light and shade and the soft modulation of the contours suggest that Baldung may have come into contact with the Danube School.

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Michael Praetorius: Motet

Baldung was not only interested in witchcraft and the macabre, he also produced woodcut portraits of famous Protestant preachers, such as Martin Luther and Caspar Hedio. Although Hedio and Baldung lived and worked in Strasbourg, they may have known each other beforehand. In the present print of Caspar Hedio, Hedio is depicted as a dynamic preacher. He seems to be inside a confined space, ready to burst out. He looks off to the side in a passionate stare.

This portrait of Luther appeared on the title page of the book ‘Acta et res gestae D Martini Lutheri’ published in Strasbourg in 1521.

In 1517 Martin Luther, an Augustian monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, posted ninety theses or points for debate on the door of the local palace church, which also served the students. This act is often viewed as the start of the Protestant Reformation.

The printing press permitted Luther’s writings to reach audiences across Europe. Portrait prints made him a recognizable celebrity. Hans Baldung Grien represented him as a monk inspired by the Holy Spirit. His intensity seems divinely given as he holds the Bible, the foundation of his faith. The likeness of Luther has a commemorative quality about it since, when it was initially issued,, the reformer had been seized returning from the Diet of Worms (1521), a forum where he publicly committed himself to the cause of Church reform, and was feared dead.

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Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

The artist is one of the most original and creative figures of the German Renaissance. Born in the village of Schwäbisch-Gmund in south-west Germany, his family established close connections with Strasbourg. It was here that Baldung worked for most of his life, apart from four years in Nuremberg spent in D�rer’s workshop (1503-c. 1507) and five years in Freiburg-im-Bresgau (1512-17) where he painted his masterpiece, The Coronation of the Virgin, for the high altar of the M�nster. Baldung was a prolific artist and his oeuvre comprises numerous prints and designs for book illustrations and stained-glass, as well as paintings and drawings. He was the most individual of D�rer’s assistants and his style and treatment of colour are remarkably expressive. The range of subject matter in Baldung’s work matches his technical dexterity: religious and mythological themes, in addition to a fascination for witches, are vividly, almost shockingly, handled. In achieving this emphatic style, Baldung was influenced by Gr�newald, Cranach, and artists of the Danube school. It is clear that he was inspired by the spirit of the Reformation and this encouraged an element of dualism in his work, most evident during the 1520s. Strasbourg was sympathetic to Reformist ideas and the artist himself was buried in the Protestant cemetery.

Portrait of a Young Man with a Rosary is an early work; it is, in fact, the first dated portrait in Baldung’s oeuvre, painted on his return to Strasbourg two years after The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (Nuremburg, Germänisches Nationalmuseum). The style, combining linearity with a perfectly controlled understanding of the liquidity of paint, is clearly dependent upon D�rer, especially his portraits including that of Burkhard von Speyer in the Royal Collection, painted while D�rer was in Venice from 1506 to 1507. However, the liveliness of the almost quixotic characterisation is typical of Baldung. At the upper edge in the centre, as part of the signature, is an image of an owl attacking a bird on a branch, which perhaps symbolises the conflict between good and evil or day and night. This piece of symbolism should perhaps be seen in the context of the rosary held by the sitter.

The painting was part of the collection of Italian, German and early Netherlandish pictures formed by Prince Ludwig Kraft Ernst von Oettingen Wallerstein (1791-1870), which Prince Albert accepted as surety for a financial loan in 1847. The collection was put on display in Kensington Palace in 1848 in order to encourage a buyer, but this ploy failed and so the pictures came into the possession of Prince Albert. In 1863 Queen Victoria presented twenty-five of the best paintings to the National Gallery, London, in memory of the Prince Consort and in accordance with his wishes. Like several other paintings in the Oettingen Wallerstein collection, Portrait of a Young Man with a Rosary previously belonged to Count Joseph von Rechberg (1769-1833).

There is a companion-piece of this allegorical nude, the Music, also in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Music, with the white cat, symbolizes the phlegmatic temperament, while Prudence, with a mirror and stag symbolizes melancholy.

This painting depicts the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as Ovid tells in Metamorphoses (4:55-166). The lovers, forbidden by their parents to marry, planned to meet in secret one night beside a spring. Thisbe arrived first but as she waited a lioness, fresh from a kill, came to quench its thirst, its jaws dripping blood. Thisbe fled, in her haste dropping her cloak which the beast proceeded to tear to shreds. When Pyramus arrived and discovered the bloody garment he believed the worst. Blaming himself for his lover’s supposed death he plunged his sword into his side. Thisbe returned to find her lover dying and so, taking his sword, threw herself upon it. This story became widely popular in post-Renaissance painting.

Three panels in different museums were identified as parts of an altarpiece commissioned for the Order of Saint John in Jerusalem at Gr�nen W�rth, in Strasbourg. The left wing depicts St Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and St John the Baptist (National Gallery of Art, Washington), the central panel shows the Mass of St Gregory (Museum of Art, Cleveland), and the right wing represents St John on Patmos (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

The two Johns in the altarpiece are positioned at the extreme left and right edges of the panels, each witnessing a vision, of the Anna Selbdritt (Virgin and Child with St Anne) on the left wing, and of the Virgin of the Apocalypse on the right.

Baldung is noted for representations of the Virgin Mary, in which he combined landscapes, figures, light, and colour with an almost magical serenity. In this painting the artist transformed the religious subject into a springtime excursion to the country.

This painting is wholly in the tradition of the Danube school pictures of Cranach and Altdorfer while faintly echoing the types in Schongauer’s engravings.

This woodcut displays strongly delineated forms and prominent hatching juxtaposed with broad, unmodeled areas.

This panel was identified as the left panel of a dismembered altarpiece. The centre panel depicting the Mass of St Gregory is now in the Museum of Art, Cleveland, while the right panel representing St John on Patmos is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Baldung-Grien’s paintings are equalled in importance by his extensive body of drawings, engravings, and woodcuts of an intense vitality.

This panel was identified as the right panel of a dismembered altarpiece. The centre panel depicting the Mass of St Gregory is now in the Museum of Art, Cleveland, while the left panel representing St Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and St John the Baptist is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The Vision of the Apocalypse was a favourite subject of northern European painters (Memling, D�rer, Burgkmair), they painted many versions of it. The present painting shows the youthful St John the Evangelist wearing a bright red-orange robe and cloak as he writes the book of Revelation in the codex on his knees. The Virgin, in a vivid turquoise gown, surrounded by a mandorla of clouds, appears to him in a vision.

The altarpiece came from the Collegiate Church at Halle.

This woodcut is from: Ulrich Pinder, Speculum passionis domini nostri Ihesu christi, Nuremberg 1507, print 54 r.

Hans Baldung seems to have been particularly proud of this woodcut, for he signed it with the vine leaf below right. Tintoretto used this impressive print as the model for the erection of the cross of the Good Thief in The Crucifixion of Christ (Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice).

Hans Baldung was a powerful designer of woodcuts, second only to D�rer in his ability to create an atmosphere in which the familiar becomes strange and eerie. He, like some of his Flemish contemporaries, favoured weird tales of demons and witches, so that many of his scenes deal with diablerie and magic. One of his masterpieces of this genre represents malevolent witches tiding goats in an atmosphere as ominous as that described by Goethe in Faust.

We display here the startling representation of a bewitched groom, not only because it is typical of Baldung’s favourite subject matter, but because it is so original and inventive. One senses in this artist the same desire to probe the laws and principles of perspective that we find in the earlier Italian masters Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca. The fallen groom, daringly foreshortened, with feet extended almost out of the picture and head reaching to the entrance of a second room, recalls a similar experiment of Andrea Mantegna’s, the dead Christ in his painting of The Lamentation.

The unlucky groom had been caring for his horse when the evil creature appeared at the window on the right and leveled her curse at him. He lies prostrate in a trance. The horse turns his head, obviously sensing something strange.

The viewer realizes at once that the artist was as much concerned with his design of picture as with its literary content. On his flat sheet of paper he has succeeded in suggesting deep space: a view that extends from one room into another, and continues through an opening in the back to the open air outside. This print is fairly large and was probably intended as a decoration. The engraved lines are set wide apart except in the back stall, where they are worked into a screenlike effect to suggest a darker area. This is a memorable print, and, for the period, a veritable tour de force.

The landscape in this painting is close to those of the Danube School reflecting the romantic character of the alpine foothills. Although it resembles to depictions of the rest during the flight to Egypt, no motifs characteristic for this subject are included in the scene.

Kneeling beneath the crosses of Calvary, the Virgin mourns her Son whose body lies before her. John supports the dead Christ’s head, while Mary Magdalene, her long hair flowing, lifts one of His hands to her cheek. Behind John stands Joseph of Arimathaea with an anointing-vessel, and behind the Virgin rises the upright of the bare cross, stained with the blood of the crucified Saviour; on the tree next to it can be seen the bound foot of one of the thieves. Beyond is a rocky landscape with a castle on the edge of a lake.

Apart from the Berlin panel, the theme of the Lamentation occurs in only one other painting by Baldung. The picture in the Landesmuseum at Innsbruck, which bears the date 1513 and is clearly an earlier work, is much more constricted, more angular and restless in its composition. In the Berlin painting the dramatic outburst of grief on the part of John and Mary Magdalene has given way to silent resignation. This simplification of the forms and softening of the outline is also apparent in two drawings on the same theme, a sketch in Basel for the Innsbruck painting, which bears the date 1513, and a drawing in a private collection, which is dated 1515. By studying as well two woodcuts on the same subject, the consistent development of Baldung’s style from early apprenticeship to the full maturity of the Berlin Lamentation shows up in a telling manner.

The artist, whose family came from Swabia, was born at Weyersheim near Strasbourg. At the age of 18 he began his apprenticeship in D�rer’s workshop in Nuremberg. It may have been the patricians of the imperial city who later obtained for him the commission for two altarpieces which he completed around 1507 for Halle Cathedral. One, representing the Adoration of the Magi, eventually found its way to the Berlin Gallery. While in Strasbourg, of which town he had become a burgher in 1509, he received the important commission for the high altar in Freiburg Cathedral, whereupon he moved to Freiburg and spent several years there, roughly between 1512 and 1517. It was only towards the end of the second decade, when he had completed this major work, that Baldung seems to have painted the Lamentation, in which one can detect traces of the imposing Freiburg style, a distinct departure from the late-Gothic resonances of the Innsbruck panel.

Hardly anything is known about the origins of this picture. At one time it belonged to a private collector in southern France. Wilhelm Bode bought it and presented it to the Berlin Gallery in 1907.

The composition is dominated by the body of Christ, covered in wounds, who lies on a shroud at the foot of the cross. Behind him sits the grieving Mother of God. Mary Magdalene has, in a gentle gesture, taken hold of the left hand of Christ and brought it to her face. The background shows a peaceful landscape with a castle towering above a steep precipice at the bottom of which is a lake.

Picturing the different ages of men and women was a favourite subject of the Renaissance artists, as the symbol of evanescence. (See e.g. the painting of Titian.)

Hand Baldung Grien, D�rer’s friend and pupil, gave graphic expression to the profound notion, with roots in medieval Germany, that associates feminine youth and beauty with death.

Baldung’s experiments with the macabre were initiated early in Strasbourg, 1508-12, before his sojourn in Freiburg. One of these is the Three Ages of the Woman and the Death. in which the portrayals of age have a sinister character and a mannered virtuosity.

The picture shows the exterior view of the altarpiece. The wings represent Sts Catherine of Alexandria and Agnes.

The picture shows the interior view of the altarpiece. In the centre The Adoration of the Magi with the donor, Ernst von Wettin, Archbishop of Magdeburg, brother of Emperor Frederic the Wise, is represented. The side panels depict St George and St Maurice, the latter being the patron saint of the Magdeburg archbishopry.

The altarpiece was painted for the cathedral of Halle shortly after Baldung left D�rer’s studio.

Hans Baldung Grien explored the darker sides of human nature in this woodcut, with its terrifying vision of the diabolic power of six witches. Their sabbath occurs at night amid a desolate forest. The dead, moss-covered tree-trunk on the right is emblematic of their destructive perversity. Interestingly, witches were only rarely depicted in art before the end of the fifteenth century. The pictures of witches concocted by Baldung and his German peers fixed the public’s conception for the next several hundred years.