Gerard David was an Early Netherlandish painter and manuscript illuminator known for his brilliant use of color. Only a bare outline of his life survives, although some facts are known. He may have been the Meester gheraet van brugghe who became a master of the Antwerp guild in 1515. He was very successful in his lifetime and probably ran two workshops, in Antwerp and Bruges. Like many painters of his period, his reputation diminished in the 17th century until he was rediscovered in the 19th century.
Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. Cranach also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. He continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from mythology and religion.
Petrus Christus was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges from 1444, where, along with Hans Memling, he became the leading painter after the death of Jan van Eyck. He was influenced by van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden and is noted for his innovations with linear perspective and a meticulous technique which seems derived from miniatures and manuscript illumination. Today, some 30 works are confidently attributed to him. The best known include the Portrait of a Carthusian (1446) and Portrait of a Young Girl ; both are highly innovative in the presentation of the figure against detailed, rather than flat, backgrounds.
Maximilian armour is a modern term applied to the style of early 16th-century German plate armour associated with, and possibly first made for the Emperor Maximilian I. The armour is still white armour, made in plain steel, but it is decorated with many flutings that may also have played a role in deflecting the points and blades of assailants and increasing the structural strength of the plates. It is a transitional stage in the decoration of armour, after the plain steel surfaces of 15th-century armour and before the elaborate decoration and colouring with etching and other techniques of Renaissance armour. The armour is characterized by armets and close helmets with bellows visors; small fan-shaped narrow and parallel fluting—often covering most of the harness ; etching; work taken from woodcuts; sharply waisted cuirasses, and squared sabatons.
Portrait of a Carthusian is a painting in oils on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus in 1446. The work is part of the Jules Bache Collection housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Lamentation (Pietà) is an oil painting on panel of the common subject of the Lamentation of Christ that is now regarded as by an artist in the "circle" of the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus, rather than by Christus himself. It was painted in c. 1444, and is now in the Louvre in Paris.
Triptych of the Sedano family is an oil-on-panel triptych altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Gerard David, usually dated between 1490 and 1498, probably c. 1495. It is noted for its innovative framing and for its rendering of the decorative oriental carpet seen at Mary's feet.
The "Power of Women" is a medieval and Renaissance artistic and literary topos, showing "heroic or wise men dominated by women", presenting "an admonitory and often humorous inversion of the male-dominated sexual hierarchy". It was defined by Susan L. Smith as "the representational practice of bringing together at least two, but usually more, well-known figures from the Bible, ancient history, or romance to exemplify a cluster of interrelated themes that include the wiles of women, the power of love, and the trials of marriage". Smith argues that the topos is not simply a "straightforward manifestation of medieval antifeminism"; rather, it is "a site of contest through which conflicting ideas about gender roles could be expressed".
Maryan Ainsworth, who often publishes as Maryan Wynn Ainsworth, is an American art historian, author and curator specializing in 14th, 15th and 16th century Northern European painting, particularly in Early Netherlandish painting.
Portrait of Maria Portinari is a small c. 1470–72 painting by Hans Memling in tempera and oil on oak panel. It portrays Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, about whom very little is known. She is about 14 years old, and depicted shortly before her wedding to the Italian banker, Tommaso Portinari. Maria is dressed in the height of late fifteenth-century fashion, with a long black hennin with a transparent veil and an elaborate jewel-studded necklace. Her headdress is similar and a necklace identical to those in her depiction in Hugo van der Goes's later Portinari Altarpiece, a painting that may have been partly based on Memling's portrait.
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt is a subject in Christian art showing Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus resting during their flight into Egypt. The Holy Family is normally shown in a landscape.
The Burg Weiler Altar Triptych (Altarpiece with the Virgin and Child and Saints) or Master of the Burg Weiler Altar is a 1470 religious painting. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The altarpiece is Middle Rhenish, made in North Württemberg (now Baden-Württemberg). It was originally in the chapel of the castle of Burg Weiler near Heilbronn.
Cupid complaining to Venus is an oil painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Nearly 20 similar works by Cranach and his workshop are known, from the earliest dated version in Güstrow Palace of 1527 to one in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, dated to 1545, with the figures in a variety of poses and differing in other details. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that the number of extant versions suggests that this was one of Cranach's most successful compositions.
Melancholia is an oil-on-panel painting by the German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder, created in 1532. It is held in the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen.
The Martyrdom of Saint Barbara is an early 16th century painting by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
Law and Grace is considered one of the most important paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder. This work, in the collection of the National Gallery in Prague, is one of the two oldest known versions of this theme and was executed in 1529. It is also called the Prague type and provided the model for a series of other paintings including an early-16th-century copy that is also kept in the Prague National Gallery's collection of Old European art. It is the best-known and most influential allegory depicting the fundamental tenets of Luther's reform of the church.
Caritas is an oil on panel painting by German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. The painting is kept in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.
Landscape with Grotto and a Rider is an oil-on-panel painting by Flemish painter Joos de Momper. It was completed in the 1610s, possibly in 1616. It is currently housed at the art gallery of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
The painting Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder is part of the collections of old European art of the National Gallery Prague. It comes from the Cistercian monastery in Osek near Duchcov, from where it was acquired in 1949.
Venus and Cupid with a Honeycomb is an oil painting by the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, one of the masters of the German Renaissance. It was probably executed in 1531 after Cranach met Georg Sabinus, a German poet, diplomat and academic at the University of Wittenberg. It is displayed in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. There are twenty-four paintings on this subject, replicated many times by the painter, including Venus and Cupid with a Honeycomb which belongs to the very first series that began in 1509. Another well known versions is Cupid Complaining to Venus, dated c. 1526–27 and preserved at the National Gallery in London.
