Brandenburg and Prussia Part 2
Artwork
On a day trip to Berlin’s Gemaldegallerie (Picture gallery) you will find a rich, collection of European artworks, spanning the 13th to 18th century, covering Dutch, German, Italian, French and English masterpieces, having been collected by the German Kaisers and previously stored in the old 19th century Bodemuseum of West Berlin.
I went there on a day trip from Potsdam to Berlin Hauptbanhof (the central station), on a trip through the beautiful, expanses of the Tiergarten, through Potsdamer Platz and unto the Kulturforum, where there are various museums representing a rich treasure trove of art works, crafts, prints, tapestries and old imperial artefacts can be found in both the Gemaldegallerie, the museum of prints and drawings and the Artisan museum (containing old crafts and pottery spanning the history of the Holy Roman Empire).
It was the German art of Hans Holbein and Albrecht Durer that caught my attention and indeed were for me hallmarks of a holiday, for their artwork represented to me a transition in the revolution of painting. Such work contains photogenic portraits of rich Hanseatic Businessmen, politicians and Burgmasters, of the German kingdoms and duchies that made up the Holy Roman Empire of the 15th century. I particularly loved Holbein’s portrait of Georg Gisze and portrait of Anthony the Good, Duke of Lorraine. Gizse was a wealthy merchant in the Hanseatic League (a trade confederation that stretched from such cities as London, Copenhagen, Lubeck, Hamburg, Riga and Novgorod and helped to smuggle Bibles and reformation tracts abroad) and in this wonderful painting you can see Gisze in the finest clothes of the day, showing wealth and prosperity, this painting proclaimed the status of the trading elite of Germany. The intricacies of human detail are displayed, the silk robes almost shine on the canvass while contrasted with the wooden alcove, the table cloth and flowers, all adding to a very human, photogenic and revolutionary appeal to future patrons and public interest alike.
I find Holbein’s oeuvre chronicles the powerful and the rich of the 15th century, capturing the transitional changes that were consolidating in both Northern Germany and Northern Europe, as the reformation spread, as the interest in secular (non-religious) commissions increased, a very new and powerful realism of art was created, with portrait art taken to a new level in such a realistic appeal. Holbein chronicled the multi-faceted history of Germany, the reformation and infamously painted the court of Henry Tudor, as a collection showcasing the turmoil of the reformation, the chaos of a divided people and court, which comes out from the veneer of the apparently benign portraits.
I was rather taken by Albrecht Durer’s portraits of Hieronymus Holzschuher (A local politican of Nuremberg) and Jakob Muffel (Mayor of Nuremburg) which were both painted in 1526, a year before the greatest German artist and engraver died at age 57. I was drawn to the detail of these men, their faces, fixed gazes, and confidence. Durer was a very successful painter who had previously painted Maximilian I the Holy Roman Emperor, and had a reputation for quality, and for being in great demand to the wealthy and powerful of the time.
His work has a uncanny resemblance to that of his contemporary Leonardo Da Vinci, with his prints showing his versatility, great interest in all aspects of the natural world, the human body and the work of the Bible (with his fantastic series of prints on the Apocalypse of St. John). It has been said from Durer’s letters that he had started to become influenced and interested in the works of Martin Luther just prior to his death and that too had altered Durer’s craftsmanship and artistry in the way he viewed art, from the world around him and indeed in the metaphysical revolution that swept Northern Europe.
In the Gemaldegallerie I found there were a few paintings of Lucas Cranach the Elder, painter and supporter of Martin Luther. Cranach was another chronicler of the German Reformation, as Luther’s personal friend and painter, he was also the court painter to the Electors (rulers) and nobles of Saxony and Brandenburg, his works range from Biblical tales to portraits of royal hunts, with fine landscapes and castles to be seen in the background. In the gallery you can see Cranach’s copy of Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgment (one of my favourite painters, a mysterious genius who I believe has captured humanity in satirical pathos and comedy) here we have a triptych, three oak panels with Heaven on the left and hell on the right, with all sorts of scenarios taking place and with the God-man Jesus Christ descending from the luminous heights of heaven, as the veil of time melts away and the corrupt earth is shaken. The second coming is taken place as all people are assigned to the eternal fate based upon what they did, how they lived and what they believed while in corporeal form.
However I just cannot help laughing sometimes at Bosch’s work, (and I absolutely love the original last Judgment Triptych that can be found in Bruges at the Groenigemuseum) as a sort of powerful allegory of creation and where’s Wally satire piece, with all strange goings on, with all mankind’s quirks and mad ways on display. Flemish painter Pieter Breughel the Elder (the master of Where’s Wally painting) would take the allegory further with a more developed and biting satire, as a Flemish contemporary of the Dutch and German painters, he too captured the life, the people and the times of the reformation in his largely secular painting. At the Gemaldegallerie you can see one of his magnificent and hilarious, fabled paintings, titled Netherlandish Proverbs. This depiction of an apparently chaotic village, filled with a wide variety of eccentric characters, and assemblage of odd balls contains over 40 Dutch and Flemish proverbs and idioms that allude to the nature of the people and the times.
I have to admit from trips to both Germany and Belgium that my love for the Northern Renaissance outweighs that of the Italian one, greatly, I just love the power of Northern Art and what it represents to me as a northern European. I find Bosch, Breughel and Holbein speak to me as painters and chroniclers of the deep mystery and power of God and the passage of time through events! Having been raised a Protestant I also find myself feeling biased and respectful of the Protestant art or heritage of the period that developed the form and style of both portrait painting and landscape, to focus on the human form, with a new realism, capturing humanity and yet not devoid of the divine and the metaphysical in their oeuvre.
