A.D. 1400 - 1600
(3 displayed of 125 in collection)
The Adoration of the Shepherds (shortly after 1450; Andrea Mantegna) Painted when the artist was probably in his early twenties, the picture is notable for its exquisite detail. It may have been commissioned by Borso d'Este, the duke of Ferrara, and its style seems to be a response to the vogue there for Netherlandish painting. Although transferred from wood to canvas, the painting is in excellent condition.
Fish Market (1568; Joachim Beuckelaer) Signed and dated 1568, this masterfully composed view of a daily fish market represents the new genre of still-life painting, initiated by Joachim Beuckelaer and his teacher, Pieter Aertsen, who lived and worked in Antwerp. It was painted during the tumultuous times of the Iconoclasm (1566), which disrupted the art market and motivated a change from purely religious to more secular themes. Here the flourishing fish industry is celebrated through the display of the great bounty from the sea. Such pictures also increasingly embraced a moralizing subtext, warning against the excesses of food and sexual pleasures.
Saint John on Patmos (ca. 1511; Hans Baldung) A painter and printmaker of great originality, Baldung was trained in Dürer’s Nuremberg studio before he established his own workshop in Strasbourg in 1509. This painting shows Saint John in exile on the island of Patmos, experiencing a vision of the Virgin as he writes his Book of Revelation. The panel originally joined two others—Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and the Mass of Saint Gregory (Cleveland Museum of Art)—to form a triptych, commissioned by the Order of Sankt Johann in Jerusalem at Grünenwörth in Strasbourg.