This title records the first major survey of Cranach to be held in Britain. It is illustrated with over 100 works which represent the range and quality of the work of this important artist.

Cranach

Brinkmann, Bodo

Reference

Royal Academy Publications

The book deals with the similarities and differences between the two collections (Kunstmuseum Basel and Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) in five centuries of collecting and museum history.

Hola Prado!: Two Collections in Dialogue

Arts & Photography

Dette, Gabriel

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Michael Imhof Verlag

Perhaps the greatest painter of water there has ever been, the German Renaissance artist Konrad Witz (circa 1400 - 1446), was a contemporary of Jan Van Eyck and Uccello, and shared their fervor for perspective, bringing similarly magical dimensionality to his treatment of surface without aspiring to their extremes of realism. In his two famous paintings, "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes" (1444), and the earlier "Saint Christopher" (circa 1435), Witz is able to make water both serene and eerie, tangible and evanescent, all depth and surface simultaneously; "The Draught of Fishes," which uses Lake Geneva as a backdrop for a scene of Peter fishing, is also notable for being the first topographically accurate landscape in the history of German painting. Witz introduced Netherlandish influences into Germany and Switzerland (where he relocated in 1443), and while his own style shows its influence, echoes of a spookier and more enigmatic medievalism abound, distinguishing him from all of his contemporaries. As the U.K. Guardian's Jonathan Jones wrote in 2009, "Witz is one of the great discoveries awaiting anyone who steps away from the high road of western art history, from the famous names of the Italian Renaissance and Flemish tradition, to discover what painters in central Europe were up to at the end of the middle ages." Reproducing all of the artist's extant works across 120 color plates, this monograph is the first thorough examination of Witz's magnificent oeuvre.

Konrad Witz

Hatje Cantz

The notion of the Alps as a magnificent natural spectacle is surprisingly recent. It was not until the eighteenth century that its craggy mountain ridges began to be seen as sublime and beautiful. Swiss landscape painter Caspar Wolf (1735-83) was one of the first to discover the then largely-unexplored Alps as a subject for art. Trained in Germany and Paris, Wolf was commissioned to produce a comprehensive series on the Swiss Alps, which he completed between 1773 and 1779. Working in his studio the artist created some 180 paintings from nature studies he had done outdoors. This publication demonstrates how he conveyed his observations according to his artistic concerns. In his dramatic compositions, paths are blocked by immense boulders, roaring streams of water and glaciers, or the view opens up to reveal giant panoramas observed by tiny, awestruck human figures.

Caspar Wolf and the Aesthetic Conquest of Nature

History & Criticism

Hans Baldung Grien (1484-1545) created many drawings and etchings depicting the fantastic behaviour of witches, but only one painting, the world famous "Two Witches" (1523). With his unique artworks, the painter used the gruesome appearance of the supernatural to give casual viewers a nice "safe" scare. His depictions also made the well-educated think about the erotic charisma of women, love and its possible consequences, and female beauty and its mysteries. Using his art, Grien not only ironically comments on medieval attitudes towards witches, but also on the artistic theories of his master, Albrecht Durer.

Witches' Lust and the Fall of Man: The Strange Fantasies of Hans Baldung Grien