Renaissance architecture. Renaissance architecture in Germany

Architecture is a tectonic art form.

Main architectural genres: Palazzo (palace), Villa, schools (schola), educational houses.

Tricento period (13th-14th centuries):

Appeal to antiquity: arch (viaducts, aquaducts) - a connection of antiquity. and Romanesque styles (semicircular arch), dome (Pantheon, architect Damansky), basilica - an elongated building with columns, dividing into rooms - rooms.

Quattracento period (15th century):

Interweaving of Gothic, Romanesque and ancient traditions.

Creating a new type of city house (palazzo): a square courtyard, a large number of rooms, creating a rustic style - in St. Petersburg - this is neo-Renaissance.

Application of linear perspective.

Santa Maria del Fiore (1436) and Palazzo Pitti, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.

High Renaissance (1490-1520):

The idea of ​​harmony.

The highest phase of the cult of antiquity. The scientific base is actively used (proportions, linear perspective). Ideas of humanistic anthropocentrism. The idea of ​​"beautiful completion". The principle of central axial symmetry. Extremely high appreciation of nature (macrocosm). The architecture is monumental, but human-oriented. Highest order ownership. The idea of ​​an architectural ensemble is born (when buildings are related according to the principle: main and secondary).

Tempietto in the courtyard of the church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, 1502, architect - Donato Bramante. The temple marks the place where Saint Peter was executed.

Late Renaissance (16th century):

2 main trends: 1).Cononization of antiquity. Academicism. (Andreo Paladio, order system). 2).Line of stylization, increased decorativeness (architect Vignola).

The character of the park architecture is finally being formed. Regular planning principles apply.

St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Several generations of great masters worked on its creation: Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini.

17. Fine art and architecture of the Renaissance in Germany and the Netherlands.

Northern Renaissance - Netherlands, Germany, France.

1st third 15th century - 16th century.

The features of the Middle Ages are preserved longer, especially in sculpture and architecture.

Predominantly Gothic features.

Lack of reliance on linear perspective.

The search for new artistic forms comes from the experience of observation.

Imperial interest in various optical effects.

The birth of oil painting (Jan Van Eyck).

(until the 15th century, painting was predominantly tempera - egg yolk was used to bind paints).

Advantages of oil painting: sacredness (more rich, bright), the ability to convey the texture of fur, silk, metal, etc.).

The birth of two new genres: genre painting (household), landscape genre.

The genre of portrait and self-portrait also remained.

Religious subjects.

Many artist names are unknown (as was the case in the Middle Ages).

High achievements in the field of graphics as a self-sufficient and independent art.

16th century in Dutch art - novelist artists (Romanism sought to combine Dutch traditions with the experience of the Italian (especially Roman) Renaissance, and then mannerism, i.e. they were influenced by Italian art).

Luke of Leiden, Jan Gossaert.

Great granularity, detail, lack of idealization, strongly expressed realism.

Closest to the Italian art of the Quattracento period. (early revival 15th century).

Panoramic vision, cosmism.

Lots of medieval stuff. symbolism(unlike the Italian Renaissance).

The Northern Renaissance movement was greatly influenced by the Reformation movement - the Protestants.

Netherlands:

The artists of the Dutch Renaissance (Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin, Petrus Saita, Rogier van der Weyden, Dirk Bouts, Geertgen tot Sint-Jans, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling) did not strive for rationalistic awareness general patterns existence, were far from scientific and theoretical interests and fascination with ancient culture. Progressive development of Dutch art at the beginning of the 16th century. caused by the development of the portrait, elements of the everyday genre, landscape, still life (Quinten Maceys, Luca Leiden, Joachim Patinier, Peter Aartsen), increased interest in folklore (Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel).

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Return from the hunt (Hunters in the Snow), Tower of Babel, Fall of Icarus, Edge of the Forest (Hermitage).

Jan Van Eyck (Quattrocento, early revival) - Madonna of Chancellor Rollin, Portrait of the Arnolfini couple.

Jeornim Bosch - triptychs The Wagon of Hay, The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Last Judgment, The Adoration of the Magi.

Hugo van der Goes - Adoration of the Magi.

Architecture in the Netherlands, as in other countries of the Northern Renaissance in the 15th century, preserved the traditional gothic look, however, in the 16th century. The borrowing of order principles from Italy led to the development of a local style, where the order played a predominantly decorative role (Christian Sixdeniers, Cornelis Floris). Town halls, workshops and guilds, and city houses with narrow facades and high gables were built in this spirit.

Germany:

A complex interweaving of old and new, national and Italian, secular and religious, ideas of the Reformation and humanism.

Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Matthias Grunewald, Albrecht Altdorfer.

Albrecht Durer : series of self-portraits, Adam and Eve, Four Apostles, engravings Melancholy, Knight, Death and the Devil, Four horsemen.

Hans Holbein the Younger - Dead Christ in the Tomb, Portrait of HenryVIII.

Matthias Grunewald (northern Gothic) - Desecration of Christ.

The sculpture was based on realistic folk features of German Gothic (Tilman Riemenschneider, Veit Stoss, Adam Kraft, Peter Fischer). A wave of vibrant searches also affected architecture, covering church, public, palace construction, private houses and urban planning. Impressiveness and rich decor are characteristic of stone, brick, half-timbered buildings.

The Renaissance style originated in Italy and had a tremendous impact on the development of European architecture from the beginning of the 15th to the beginning of the 17th century. This was reflected not only in the revival of the ancient order system and the rejection of Gothic forms.

During this period, many new things were created in the field of civil architecture. Multi-storey city buildings - town halls, houses of merchant guilds, universities - became more elegant, with exquisite decor and noble proportions. Tall multi-stage pediments with scrolls appeared, decorated with sculptures and coats of arms.

Monuments ancient architecture were everywhere in Italy, they recalled the great past, their forms inspired architects. The Renaissance style, in a sense, is a continuation of the line of development of classical architecture after a thousand-year pause.

But Renaissance architecture was not simply expressed in the borrowing of architectural forms of antiquity. Such borrowing occurred, but these forms were used in a new way, in a different interpretation and different compositions. At the same time, new details were created and space-planning techniques emerged. But this was not a revival of ancient architecture. This was the process of creating a new Renaissance style.

Architectural monuments in Italy early Renaissance are mainly located in Florence. The most significant among them is the elegant and yet technically simple dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Pitti Palace, created by Filippo Brunelleschi, which determined the vector of development of Renaissance architecture.

Brunelleschi understood the essence of classics and its fundamental difference from Gothic. The point is not only that Gothic forms were replaced by antique ones. The point is not only in the specific forms of the new style, but also in its spirit. Gothic expressed tension, overcoming, struggle. Ancient classics in the interpretation of the Renaissance - expressed clarity, precision, certainty, and tranquility. In Gothic, the interior space of the building is dynamic; in the Renaissance, it is clearly limited and static.

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence

Let's look at another fine example of early Renaissance architecture - the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Gothic elements are clearly visible here - lancet windows, arcade, etc. But the pediment of the building is Renaissance with characteristic curls. Gothic openwork rosettes are not made of stone, which is typical for Gothic, but painted; in general, the entire façade painting is made under the strong influence of Gothic. The church was built during the transitional period between styles from 1246 to 1360. But what an amazing building it turned out to be!

Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence

The most prominent architect of the Renaissance style was Donato Bramante (1444-1514). The Tempietto Chapel he built is one of the best works of architecture of this period. The secret of the attractiveness of this small building is the integrity of its composition, the sophistication of its proportions, the high level of detail drawing and the harmony of the entire structure.

Donato Bramante. Tempietto

The Little Temple or Tempietto is a small chapel built by Bramante for the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella on the Roman Janiculum hill in 1502. It was the first work of the Milanese architect in Rome, and it created a real sensation.

The Renaissance style influenced all European architecture of that period. Famous Italian architects invited to different countries and they created their masterpieces taking into account local color and traditions. One of the largest and beautiful squares Europe in the Renaissance style is located in the small Czech town of Telc

In each state, the Renaissance style had its own characteristics. In Germany, the architecture of the northern regions was influenced by Dutch architecture, while in the south there was a powerful influence coming from Italy. The heyday of the style dates back to the second half of the 16th century. The most prominent monument of the German Renaissance is Heidelberg Castle.

In Germany, the Renaissance style began to develop later than in European countries, and at the beginning of the 16th century it became popular not only in secular architecture. An excellent example of religious architecture is the Jesuit court church of St. Michael in Munich.

St. Michael's Church in Munich

The architecture of Augsburg developed under the strong influence of Italian architecture. There are many beautiful examples of Renaissance buildings preserved here. The Old Town Hall is one of the most beautiful secular buildings of the Renaissance. Architect Elias Hohl. Built in 1615 – 1620. The Town Hall is famous for its Golden Hall with wall paintings and highly artistic cassette ceilings. On the facade there is a double-headed black eagle - a symbol of the Free Imperial City, and on the pediment there is a pine cone (Italian pine) - reminiscent of Ancient Rome and the history of the city of Augsburg, which is 2000 years old. The pine cone is the official heraldic symbol of the Roman legion stationed here, and in the 15th century the pine cone was depicted on the city's coat of arms.

Augsburg Maximilianstrasse, houses in the Renaissance style

In German cities, old buildings were often rebuilt, creating Renaissance facades for a complex of buildings, most often this was done in the central city square. An excellent example is the Old Town Hall in the Bavarian city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. The facade of the building is richly decorated with sculptures and coats of arms.

Among the countries of Western Europe that had a developed feudal system of relations, in Germany the elimination of medieval foundations took the most tortuous, complicated path.

In economic and politically Germany developed in a contradictory and difficult manner; Its spiritual culture, and in particular its art, was no less contradictory.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the same processes took place in Germany as in other European countries: the role of cities increased, manufacturing production developed, the burghers and merchants became increasingly important, and the medieval guild system disintegrated. Similar shifts took place in culture and worldview: a person’s self-awareness awakened and increased, his interest in studying reality, his desire to possess scientific knowledge, the need to find one’s place in the world; There was a gradual secularization of science and art, their liberation from the age-old power of the church. The sprouts of humanism arose in the cities. The German people owned one of the greatest cultural achievements of the era - the largest contribution to the development of printing. However, spiritual changes took place in Germany more slowly and with greater deviations than in countries such as Italy and the Netherlands.

At the turn of the XIV and XV centuries. in the German lands not only was there no tendency towards centralization of the country, but, on the contrary, its fragmentation intensified, which contributed to the survivability of feudal foundations. The emergence and development of the sprouts of capitalist relations in individual industries did not lead to the unification of Germany. It consisted of many large and small principalities and independent imperial cities, which led an almost independent existence and tried by all means to maintain this state of affairs. The contradictions in the social development of Germany were reflected in German architecture of the 15th century. As in the Netherlands, there was not that decisive turn to new figurative content and a new language of architectural forms that characterizes the architecture of Italy. Although Gothic as a dominant architectural style was already on its way out, its traditions were still very strong; the vast majority of buildings of the 15th century. to one degree or another bears the imprint of its influence.

The share of monuments of religious architecture in Germany in the 15th century. was larger than in the Netherlands. The construction of grandiose Gothic cathedrals, begun in previous centuries (for example, the cathedral in Ulma), was still ongoing and completed. The new temple buildings, however, were no longer distinguished by such a scale. These were simpler churches, mostly of the hall type; naves of the same height in the absence of a transept (which is typical for this period) contributed to the merging of their internal space into a single visible whole. Particular attention was paid to the decorative design of the vaults: vaults with mesh and other complex patterns predominated. The extensions to the old ones are also characterized by a single hall space. The architectural forms themselves acquired greater complexity and whimsicality in the spirit of “flaming” Gothic. More important, however, is the increasingly significant place in German architecture of the 15th century. Monuments of secular architecture are beginning to take over, in which, on the one hand, a continuation of the valuable traditions of civil Gothic architecture of previous centuries is revealed, and on the other hand, new, progressive trends find favorable soil for their development. These are, first of all, urban communal buildings, in which less dependence on the forms of church architecture than before is already noticeable.

In the architecture of residential buildings of representatives of the urban patriciate in Germany, as well as in the Netherlands, the revolution that was marked by the appearance in the cities of Italy of monumental palazzos belonging to the richest families has not yet occurred, but in comparison with the Middle Ages, innovations are noticeable - a more complex and free layout , the use of richly decorated pediments and bay window lanterns on the facades, and covered galleries in the courtyards.

German fine art in the 15th century was even more closely connected with the church. The weakening of its dependence on the church was expressed only in the fact that works of painting and sculpture were, to a certain extent, freed from the architectonic subordination to the church building. The images separated from the walls and concentrated in one place inside the cathedral, in the monumental altar structure. Thus, painting and sculpture were given the opportunity to exist relatively independently.

One of the achievements of German art of the 15th century. there was a rise in painting, which had been poorly developed in Germany in previous times. But few easel paintings were created during this period. The leading place was occupied by the altar image. History of German painting of the 15th century. is primarily the history of individual large altars, which usually included a number of compositions related by a common thematic concept.

The artistic life of Germany was characterized by great fragmentation. The disunity of individual regions of the country led to the emergence of many local centers of art. However german art on the whole it still had a certain commonality. The most important thing was that the religious image lost its abstract spiritualistic character and approached life with all certainty. The main emphasis was shifted to the narrative beginning and to the expression of living human feelings in the religious plot. But all these innovations were not yet united by the unity of aesthetic views. Even within one work there was often no sense of integrity. The artists themselves did not have a specific criterion for assessing and perceiving the world.

The very few reliable works of artists that have reached us still make it possible to get an idea of ​​the creative individuality of each of them. This indicates, among other things, the new position of the artist, that the medieval system of creativity, which erased the artistic individuality of individual masters, is now a thing of the past. The artist took a more honorable place in society, no longer being an ordinary guild artisan, but the head of a workshop and a respected burgher.

For the first half of the 15th century. The central figure of German painting and a real innovator was Konrad Witz (1400/10–1445/47), who worked in Konstanz and Basel, for the first time realistic quests took on a conscious and, to a certain extent, consistent character. Witz was the first of the German painters to try to solve the problem of the relationship between human figures and their surroundings - landscape or interior, beginning to interpret the picture as a deep, three-dimensional construction. For that time, these landscapes were a great innovation. What was new was that nature comes to the forefront here, and figures are included in the landscape. The artist is trying to give a hint of spatial extent from the foreground inwards. Color becomes one of the connecting elements in Vitsa’s paintings. Despite the usual for the 15th century. dominance of local shades, the artist often introduces some dominant tone, for example grey colour walls in interiors, connecting all other colors with each other. He also knows the use of halftones, which usually appear in the shadows. All this does not prevent Vitsu, according to the custom of that time, in some cases from introducing areas of gold into the backgrounds or surrounding the heads of saints with golden halos.

The same stylistic line continues in the second half of the 15th century. South Tyrolean master Michael Pacher from Bruneck (c. 1435–1498) – painter and sculptor, woodcarver. Two altars of his work are widely known - the altar of St. Wolfgang (finished in 1481, in the church of the town of St. Wolfgang) and the altar of the church fathers (finished ca. 1483, Munich). The searches outlined in the works of Witz find their continuation in Pacher’s work, rising to a higher level and taking on clearer forms.

For the development of realistic trends in German painting in the second half of the 15th century. The connection between individual masters and Dutch art, which was more focused in its advanced conquests at this time, was of some significance. In the work of these artists there appears a tendency towards figurative integrity, compositional orderliness, and the subordination of individual details to the whole.

The largest of the masters of this family was the Upper Rhine painter and graphic artist Martin Schongauer (c. 1435–1491), known in the history of art primarily as an outstanding engraver. Schongauer's best work as a painter is “Madonna in the Pink Arbor” (1473). This painting is one of the most significant works of the early German Renaissance. The artist depicts here a symbolic motif beloved by late Gothic masters (the pink arbor was a symbol of paradise), but in his interpretation this motif does not contain anything naively idyllic, as, for example, in Lochner. The image lacks the harmony of Italian Madonnas; he seems restless and angular. Such inconsistency, contained within one work, is typical of the entire German Renaissance, constituting one of its main features.

Schongauer occupies an important place in the history of German Renaissance engraving. The flourishing of copper engraving began in the mid-15th century. Even earlier, wood engraving became widespread. Engraving was the most democratic form of art in Germany, performing a wide variety of functions, both religious and purely secular. It had the widest distribution and enjoyed great popularity among the people. Wood engraving from the 15th century. was still quite artisanal in nature. In the second half of the century, copper engraving reached significant artistic heights. The earliest outstanding master in this field of art was the anonymous Master of Playing Cards (40s of the 15th century). Several copies of his maps have been preserved in a number of manuscripts; In addition, there are several other engravings he made on religious themes, which are not devoid of a certain elegance and grace.

Schongauer is the first truly major master who played a decisive role in the further development of German engraving. More than a hundred of his engravings on copper have survived to this day. As in the painting described above, in engravings on religious themes, Schongauer managed to create a number significant images containing traits of severity and dignity. They increase greatly realistic elements, a variety of live impressions are used. We see in Schongauer a new, much more varied use of linear strokes, with which he achieves depth and transparency of shadows, using thin, delicate silvery shades. He created a number of excellent engravings on the themes of the life of Christ and Mary (“The Nativity of Christ”, “The Adoration of the Magi”, “Carrying the Cross”, etc.).

In the second half of the 15th century. The Nuremberg art school is developing. Dürer's teacher Michael Wolgemuth (1434–1519) headed a workshop that produced a huge number of custom-made altars. How creative individuality he is of little interest. Best works Wolgemut belong to the early period (Hofer Altarpiece, 1405).

Its completion and at the same time the transition to a new stage of German painting of the 15th century. finds in the work of the founder of the Augsburg art school - Hans Holbein the Elder (c. 1465–1524), an artist who with the same right can be included in the history of German art XVI centuries. The early works of Holbein the Elder are entirely similar in style to German painting of the 15th century. (altar of Augsburg Cathedral, 1493; altar of St. Paul, 1508, Augsburg). As new features, we can note elements of a certain calmness and clarity, which are extremely enhanced in the artist’s later works, created clearly in the orbit of new trends. In the early works of Holbein the Elder, warm and deep tones dominate; later the color becomes lighter and colder. His most famous work is the altar of St. Sebastian (1510; Munich), created during the heyday of Dürer’s work. Correctly constructed figures, calm, clear expressions on faces, spatial orderliness, soft plastic forms, classical motifs in the architectural environment and ornamentation transfer this work into new world art of the High Renaissance.

Significant place in German art of the 15th century. occupied by sculpture. Its general character, as well as the one it went through in the 15th century. development path, close to German painting of that time. But in the sculpture the Gothic traditions are felt even more strongly; the development of realistic elements here encounters even more stubborn resistance from old, medieval ideas. The abstract symbolism of religious images still dominates here, the system of conventional gestures and attributes, and the conventional, sharply emphasized expression of faces are preserved. These Gothic features continued to exist throughout the 15th century, often completely subjugating the work of individual artists, especially in the more backward regions of Germany.

However, despite the vitality of Gothic traditions, even in German sculpture of the 15th century. Those great and profound changes in human consciousness that the Renaissance brought with it are beginning to take their toll. These changes are primarily reflected in its two most important features. The first of them is that the old Gothic forms become deliberate and exaggerated, as if born of the desire to preserve the old piety and naive exalted faith at all costs. However, due to the fact that medieval views had already been largely undermined by this time, the once organic forms of medieval Gothic now acquire a mechanical, artificial connotation, often turning into purely external, sophisticated and meaningless decorative techniques.

The second and most important feature of the sculpture of Germany in the 15th century is that individual manifestations of direct human feeling, the artist’s attention to the surrounding reality and to the living image of man, appear in it (mainly towards the end of the century). Artistic meaning German sculpture of the 15th century. nevertheless, it is precisely in this beginning of the destruction of the old, medieval artistic system, in the invasion into the dead routine of church art of the first timid glimpses of sincere life affirmation, the first signs of the expression of human feelings and desires, bringing art from heaven to earth.

The first third of the 16th century was a heyday for Germany Renaissance culture which took place in an atmosphere of intense revolutionary struggle. In response to the increasing pressure of princes and nobles on the peasantry in the second half of the 15th century, the rural population of Germany rose up to defend their interests. Peasant unrest, which was joined by the urban lower classes, by the end of the first quarter of the 16th century. grew into a powerful revolutionary movement that captured vast areas of the southwestern German lands. In a number of uprisings, the oppositional sentiments of the knighthood and the burgher population of the cities found their outcome. The days came when the German people united in a rush of struggle against common enemies - the princely power and Roman Catholicism.

Under these conditions, Luther's famous theses against the feudal church, published in 1517, "had a flaming effect like a lightning strike on a barrel of gunpowder." The revolutionary upsurge brought forward a number of remarkable personalities. One of the brightest pages of German history is associated with the names of the heroic leader of the peasant revolution Thomas Münzer, the leaders of the knightly uprisings Franz von Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten, and the head of the German reformation Martin Luther.

The beginning of the 16th century in Germany was marked by the flourishing of humanism and secular science, directed against the remnants of feudal culture. Interest in antiquity and ancient languages ​​increased. All these phenomena took on unique forms in Germany. There was not that consistency of philosophical views that among Italian thinkers led to unconditional faith in the human mind. German art of the 16th century appears to us in the same way. And yet the fracture is felt in him with all its force. Some major creative individuals boldly pose and solve new artistic problems. Art in its best examples becomes an independent, independent area of ​​culture, one of the means of understanding the world, a manifestation of free activity human mind. As in other Western European countries, in Germany from the beginning of the 16th century. Secular architecture begins to play a leading role. A residential city mansion, a town hall or a trading house - these were the dominant types of buildings in this era. In the large German trading cities, which experienced their heyday at the beginning of the 16th century, a lot of construction was carried out.

Despite the variety of forms of German architecture of the Renaissance, associated with the fragmentation of the country and the presence of many more or less isolated regions, some general principles. The traditions of medieval Gothic architecture do not die in German architecture throughout the century, leaving their mark on the figurative structure of Renaissance buildings in Germany.

German Renaissance construction is based on two principles: utilitarian expediency in the organization of internal spaces and the greatest possible expressiveness and picturesqueness of external forms. The plan as an organizing principle in which the purposeful will of the architect is embodied is absent; it is formed as if spontaneously, depending on the needs of the owner and the purpose of the house. Wall projections, towers of various shapes and sizes, pediments, battlements, arches, stairs, cornices, dormer windows, richly ornamented portals, prominently projecting, sharply defined window frames, polychrome walls create a completely unique and extremely picturesque impression. Particular attention is paid to interior design, which in its spirit corresponds appearance building. Elegant ornamented fireplaces, richly designed stucco ceilings, lined with wood and often painted walls give the interiors of German houses that picturesqueness that already in this era foreshadows the Baroque interior that was widely developed in Germany at a later time.

During a critical period in German history, at the end of the 15th century, the greatest artist of Germany, Albrecht Dürer, began his career. Dürer was one of those brilliant people-creators who come during the years of great fermentation of ideas, marking the transition to a new historical stage, and with their creativity transform previously chaotically scattered and spontaneously arising individual progressive phenomena into an integral system of views and artistic forms, from all fully expressing the content of the era and opening a new stage national culture. Dürer was one of those universal people Renaissance. Without joining any political group in the revolutionary struggle, Dürer, with the entire focus of his art, became the head of that powerful cultural movement that fought for the freedom of the human person. All his work was a hymn to man, his body and spirit, the strength and depth of his intellect. In this sense, Dürer can be considered one of the greatest humanists of the Renaissance. However, the image of man he created is deeply different from the Italian ideal, the ideal of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. Dürer was a German artist, and his work is deeply national. He loved the people of his homeland, and the generalized ideal he created reproduced the appearance of the person he saw around him - stern, rebellious, full of inner strength and doubts, strong-willed energy and gloomy reflection, alien to calm and clear harmony.

Dürer's main teacher in his quest was nature. He also learned a lot from studying classical images of antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. His persistent sketches from nature speak of the artist’s love and attention to nature - human face and the body, animals, plants, landscapes, as well as his theoretical studies on the study of the human figure, to which he devoted whole line years. It is unlikely that he could have learned anything significant, except for painting techniques, from his teacher Wolgemut, who was devoid of any sublimity and depth.

Albrecht Dürer was born in 1471 in Nuremberg into the family of an artisan - a goldsmith. Dürer's father was from Hungary. Initial art training Dürer received it from his father; in 1486 he entered Wolgemut's workshop. By 1490–1494 His journey through southern Germany and Switzerland dates back to 1494–1495. he visited Venice. The first works that have come down to us are drawings, engravings and several painted portraits. The earliest of them is the drawing “Self-Portrait” (1484) made in silver pencil. A deep sense of nature pervades Dürer's watercolor landscapes, apparently dating back to the early 1490s, during walks around Nuremberg, during a trip to southern Germany and Switzerland, and on the road to Venice. They are extremely new both in their free manner of watercolor painting, based on thoughtful color integrity, and in their diversity compositional structures. These are “View of Innsbruck” (1494–1495; Vienna), “Sunset” (c. 1495; London), “View of Trient” (Bremen), “Landscape in Franconia” (Berlin).

Upon his return from Venice, Dürer completed a number of engravings on copper and on wood (on copper - “Love for Sale,” 1495–1496, “The Holy Family with a Grasshopper,” ca. 1494–1496, “Three Peasants,” ca. 1497 "The Prodigal Son", ca. 1498; woodcuts - "Hercules", "Men's Bath"), in which the quest of the young master was clearly defined. These engravings, even in cases where they contain religious, mythological or allegorical subjects, primarily represent genre scenes with a pronounced local character. In all of them there is a living person contemporary to Durer, often of the peasant type, with a characteristic, expressive face, dressed in the costume of that time and surrounded by a precisely conveyed setting or landscape of a certain area. Great place devoted to household details.

These engravings reveal a brilliant galaxy of graphic works by Durer, one of the greatest masters of engraving in world art. The artist is now fluent in his use of the chisel, using a sharp, angular and nervous stroke, with the help of which sinuous, tense contours are created, the form is sculpted plastically, light and shadows are conveyed, and space is built. The texture of these engravings with their subtle transitions of silvery tones is distinguished by amazing beauty and variety.

First major work Dürer had a series of large format woodcuts of fifteen sheets on the theme of the Apocalypse (printed in two editions with German and Latin text in 1498). This work contains a complex interweaving of medieval views with experiences caused by the turbulent social events of those days. From the Middle Ages they retain allegory, symbolism of images, the intricacy of complex theological concepts, mystical fantasy; from modernity - a general feeling of tension and struggle, a clash of spiritual and material forces. The allegorical scenes include images of representatives of different classes of German society, living real people, filled with passionate and anxious emotions and active action. Particularly notable is the famous sheet depicting four apocalyptic horsemen with a bow, sword, scales and pitchfork, who prostrated the people who fled from them - a peasant, a city dweller and an emperor. There is no doubt that the four horsemen symbolize in the artist’s view destructive forces- war, disease, divine justice and death, sparing neither ordinary people nor the emperor. These sheets, covered with a bizarre winding pattern of lines, permeated with a hot temperament, captivate with vivid imagery and the power of imagination. They are also extremely significant for their skill. Engraving is raised here to the level of great, monumental art.

In the 1490s. Dürer accomplished a number of significant paintings, of which portraits are of particular interest: two portraits of the father (1490; Uffizi and 1497; London); “Self-portraits” (1493; Louvre and 1498; Prado), “Portrait of Osvadt Krell” (1499; Munich). These portraits affirm a completely new attitude towards man, hitherto unknown to German art. The artist is interested in a person in himself, outside of any side ideas of a religious nature, and, first of all, as a specific personality. Dürer's portraits are invariably sharply individual. Dürer captures in them that unique, particular, characteristic that is contained in every human personality. Moments of general assessment are visible only in their special tension, nervousness, and a certain internal restlessness - that is, qualities that reflect the state of a thinking person in Germany at that difficult time, full of tragedy and unsettled quests.

Around 1496, Dürer's first significant painting on a religious subject was created - the so-called Dresden Altarpiece, the middle part of which is occupied by a scene of Mary's adoration of the infant Christ, and on the side doors there are figures of Saints Anthony and Sebastian. Here we can note all the same features: some remnants of the style of the 15th century, expressed in incorrect perspectives, sharp, pointed contours, the deliberate ugliness of a baby, and at the same time - increased attention to the image of a living, thinking person with a characteristic individual face.

These first paintings by Dürer are distinguished by a certain rigidity of painting style. They are dominated by a graphic, fractional pattern, clear, cold local tones, clearly separated from one another, and a somewhat dry manner of careful, smooth writing.

The year 1500 turns out to be a turning point in Dürer's work. Passionately seeking truth from the first creative steps in art, he now comes to the realization of the need to find those laws according to which impressions from nature should be transformed into artistic images. The external reason for the research he began was a meeting that took place around this time and made an irresistible impression on him with the Italian artist Jacopo de Barbari, who showed him a scientifically constructed image of the human body. Dürer greedily seizes on the information given to him. From that moment on, the mystery of the classical ideal of the human figure haunts him. He devoted many years to working on mastering it, subsequently summing up the results in the famous three “Books on Proportions”, on the compilation of which he worked for more than ten years starting in 1515.

The first figurative embodiment of these quests is the famous self-portrait of 1500 (Munich, Pinakothek), one of the artist’s most significant works, marking his complete creative maturity All elements of naive narrative disappear from this portrait; it does not contain any attributes, details of the situation, nothing secondary that distracts the viewer’s attention from the image of a person. Dürer's greatest creative honesty and his never-failing sincerity force him to introduce a tinge of concern and anxiety into this image. A slight fold between the eyebrows, concentration and emphasized seriousness of expression give the face a touch of subtle sadness. The full dynamics of the fractionally curly strands of hair framing the face are restless; thin expressive fingers seem to move nervously, fingering the fur of the collar.

Dürer's quest takes the form of experimental studies. Between 1500 and 1504 he completed a number of drawings of a naked human figure, the prototype for which was ancient monuments. The purpose of these drawings is to find the ideal proportions of the male and female body. The artistic embodiment of the results of Dürer's research is the copper engraving of 1504 “Adam and Eve”, into which the figures from the studio drawings are directly transferred. They are just placed in a fairytale forest and surrounded by animals. By this time, Dürer was becoming widely famous. He became close to the circle of German humanist scientists - W. Pirkheimer and others. His scientific studies are in full swing. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer was interested in a wide variety of scientific issues. From a young age and throughout his life, he turned to the study of plants and animals (a number of his wonderful drawings with images of various herbs, flowers and animals have been preserved); he also studied construction and fortification.

Around 1500 Dürer completed several monumental commissioned works. The Paumgartner altarpiece, the Lamentation of Christ (both in the Munich Pinakothek), and the Adoration of the Magi (1504; Florence, Uffizi) are the first religious compositions of a purely Renaissance nature in German art. As in all of Durer’s works, these paintings strongly reflect the artist’s interest in a living person, in his state of mind. Landscape backgrounds are full of life. During these same years, Dürer began work on three large series of woodcuts (the so-called “Small” and “Great” passions of Christ and a series of scenes from the life of Mary), which he completed much later. All three series were published in the form of books with printed text in 1511.

By 1506–1507 refers to Dürer's second trip to Venice. Having gone through a significant path of creative quest, the mature artist could now more consciously perceive the impressions of the art of the Italian Renaissance. The works created by Dürer immediately after this trip are the only works of the master that are close in their visual techniques to classical Italian examples. These are two paintings filled with peace and harmony on religious themes - “Feast of the Rosary” (1506; Prague) and “Madonna and Siskin” (1506; Berlin), “Portrait of a Venetian” (1506; Berlin) and “Adam and Eve” (1507; Prado). Of the later works, the same features are retained by “Madonna and Child” (1512; Vienna). All these paintings are characterized by figurative tranquility, balance of compositional structures, smoothness of rounded contours, smoothness of plastic processing of forms, essentially alien to Durer. The Madrid “Adam and Eve” is especially characteristic in this sense. All the angularity and nervousness of the usual Dürer figures disappeared from these images. There is nothing individual or unique about them. These are ideal images of beautiful human creatures, built according to the principles of the classical canon, speaking of the highest human beauty, based on the harmony of bodily and spiritual origin. Their gestures are distinguished by restraint and grace, their facial expressions are dreamy.

This style does not become dominant in Dürer's subsequent work. The artist soon returns to sharpened, brightly individualized images, imbued with drama and internal tension. However, now the properties are receiving a new quality. After all the theoretical research carried out by Dürer, after his impressions from the monuments of the Italian Renaissance were deeply experienced and reworked in his own work, his realism rises to a new, higher level. Durer's mature and late paintings and engravings acquire features of great generality and monumentality. In them, the connection with late Gothic art is significantly weakened and the truly humanistic principle, which has received a deeply philosophical interpretation, is strengthened.

In 1513–1514 Dürer created a number of works that mark the pinnacle of his creativity. These are primarily three copper engravings, the famous “Horseman, Death and the Devil” (1513), “St. Jerome" (1514) and "Melancholy" (1514). A small sheet of easel engraving is interpreted in these works as a large monumental work of art. Plot-wise, these three engravings are not related to each other, but they form a single figurative chain, since their theme is the same; they all embody the image of the human mind, each in a slightly different way.

The first sheet - “Horseman, Death and the Devil” - emphasizes the strong-willed principle in a person. Dressed in chain mail and a helmet, armed with a sword and a spear, a strong and calm rider rides on a powerful horse, not paying attention to the ugly devil who is trying to hold his horse, to the terrible death showing him the symbol of time - hourglass, to the fact that a human skull lies on the ground under the horse’s feet. The horse's gait is uncontrollable and confident, the man's face is full of will and inner concentration.

"St. Jerome" embodies the image of clear human thought. In a room carefully reproducing the furnishings of a 16th-century German house, an old man with his head surrounded by a light halo sits at his desk. It's pouring from the window Sun rays, filling the room with silvery light. An imperturbable silence reigns. A tamed lion and a dog are dozing on the floor.

The most impressive image is created in the third engraving - the famous “Melancholy”.

In this sheet, the symbolic principle is most prominent, giving rise to a wide variety of interpretations by scientists of many generations. At present, it is difficult to say exactly what meaning Durer put into all the objects and attributes presented here. medieval science and alchemy, which signify the polyhedron and the sphere, the scales and the bell, the plane and the jagged sword, the hourglass, the sleeping dog, the numbers on the board, Cupid writing with a stylus; how the artist interpreted the traditional image of the planet Saturn for the allegory of Melancholy. But the image of a powerful woman - a winged genius, immersed in deep, concentrated thought - is so significant, so permeated with a feeling of the boundless power of the human spirit, that all these details are relegated to the background, and the humanistic principle comes to the fore. It is characteristic that the external calm of this image does not hide the inner peace behind it. Melancholia's concentrated gaze, expressing a state of heavy thought, the restless rhythm of the folds of her clothes, the world of fantastic attributes that surrounds her on all sides - all this is extremely typical of the aesthetics of the German Renaissance.

These generalizing philosophical images were the result of many years of reflection by the artist, testifying to his deepest knowledge of man and life. Dürer's activities in these mature years continued to be very diverse. He performs many portraits in painting, engraving and drawing, and constantly sketches folk types. What remains from him is a whole series of images of peasants, most of which date specifically to these years (copper engravings - “Dancing Peasants”, 1514; “The Piper”, 1514; “At the Market”, 1519). At the same time he is studying decorative arts And book graphics, depicting in an engraving commissioned by Emperor Maximilian a grandiose triumphal arch (1515) and decorating his prayer book with drawings in the margins (1513).

In 1520–1521 Dürer traveled through the Netherlands. Judging by the artist’s meaningful diary that was preserved from this trip, he met with Dutch painters and looked closely at Dutch art with great interest. However, Dürer's work in subsequent years does not reflect the influence of Dutch art. At this time his own style reached the pinnacle of its development, and as an artist he continued to follow his own original path.

In a series of remarkable portraits made during 1510–1520, Dürer seemed to sum up the results of many years of study of the human personality. After all the searches for classical beauty and attempts to create ideal norms, he continues to be attracted to people as they were at that time in Germany, primarily a representative of the German intelligentsia - restless, anxious, internally contradictory, full of willful energy and spiritual strength. He writes about his teacher Wolgemut - a weak old man with a hooked nose and a face covered with parchment skin (1516; Nuremberg), the imperious and proud Emperor Maximilian (1519; Vienna), the young intellectual of that time Bernhard von Resten (1521; Dresden); masterfully outlines the character of Holzgauer (1526; Berlin).

The clearly defined individual resemblance in all these portraits is invariably combined with a high idea of ​​​​a person, expressed in a special moral significance and the stamp of deep thought lying on each face. There is not the slightest shade of piety in them, characteristic of portrait images of the 15th century. These are purely secular Renaissance portraits, in which the unique individuality of a person occupies the first place, and reason acts as a unifying universal principle. In all the techniques in which the aforementioned portraits were made, Dürer now works with equal perfection. In painting he achieves great softness and harmony of colorful combinations, in engraving - amazing subtlety and tenderness of texture, in drawing - laconicism and strict precision of line.

All of Dürer’s many years of searching find their conclusion in the wonderful “Four Apostles” (1526; Munich, Pinakothek). The artist found here a synthesis between the general philosophical principle in the assessment of humanity and the particular properties of the individual personality. When creating The Apostles, Dürer was inspired by the images of the best people of his era, who represented the type of human fighter in those revolutionary years. It is enough to look at the tired, concentrated face of an old man with the forehead of Socrates - the Apostle Peter, or at the gaze of the Apostle Paul, burning with a rebellious inner fire, in order to feel in these majestic sages the bright individualities of living people. And at the same time, all four images are imbued with one high ethical principle, the most important for Durer - the power of the human mind.

Dürer's work had no direct successors, but his influence on German art was enormous and decisive. Dürer did not have a large workshop with many students. His reliable students are unknown. Presumably, primarily three Nuremberg artists are associated with him - the brothers Hans Sebald (1500-1550) and Bartel (1502-1540) Weham and Georg Lenz (c. 1500-1550), known mainly as masters of small format engravings (the so-called Kleinmeisters ; they also worked as painters). Their copper engravings, of high skill, are completely secular in nature and indicate the strong influence of Italian engraving.

The complexity of the era, which gave rise to contrasts and extremes in the field of culture and art, is perhaps most strongly reflected in the work of Dürer’s contemporary, Matthias Grunewald (died in 1528), a remarkable master, one of the largest painters in Germany. At first glance, it may seem that Grunewald’s art, in its ideological content, as well as in its artistic qualities, lies outside the main path of development of the European Renaissance.

However, in reality this is not the case. This impression is due to the fact that Grunewald’s creative method is sharply different from the style of contemporary Italian art and from the classical tendencies felt in a number of Dürer’s works. But at the same time, the works created by Grunewald should be assessed as the most characteristic and, perhaps, the most nationally original phenomenon of the German Renaissance.

With no less strength than Dürer, Grunewald strives to solve the main problems of his time, and above all, to exalt the power of man and nature through art. But he goes a different route. The defining property of his art is the inextricable, blood connection with the spiritual past of the German people and with the psychology of the contemporary man from the lower classes. That is why Grunewald seeks answers to pressing questions exclusively in the sphere of traditional religious images that are familiar and understandable to the people, which he interprets not in terms of orthodox churchism (old Catholic or new Protestant), but in the spirit of mystical heresies that emerged from the depths of the popular opposition.

Grunewald's paintings based on the scenes of the gospel legend contain ideas and feelings that are deeply in tune with those that lived in those turbulent days of ordinary people in Germany. Not a single German artist was able to express with such stunning power the contradictory states of anxiety, tension, horror, jubilation and joy, as Grunewald did in his works.

Art history knew nothing about Grunewald for a long time. His very name still remains conventional. Recently, scientists have found a number of documents that mention a certain Master Matthias, who apparently bore the double surname Gotthardt-Neithardt (it is possible that the name Gotthardt was the artist’s pseudonym, and Neithardt was his real surname). If we agree that all these scanty archival references refer to one artist, then we will have to recognize him as a master who worked in Aschaffenburg, Seligenstadt (on the Main), Frankfurt am Main and died in Halle, who was the court artist of Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz. The most interesting indication relates to the fact that Grunewald had some connection with the peasant uprisings and was dismissed from service in 1526 for his sympathies for the revolutionary movement.

The range of the artist’s works is outlined much more clearly. His creative individuality is so uniquely original and his painting style is so bright that the works belonging to his brush are relatively easy to identify. Grunewald's main work is the famous Isenheim Altarpiece (finished c. 1516), currently located in Colmar. This is a huge structure consisting of nine paintings and colored wooden sculptures (made in 1505 by the Strasbourg sculptor Nikolaus Hagenauer).

The central part of the Isenheim altar is the scene of Golgotha. The artist put all the strength of his temperament into this image, trying to influence the viewer with utmost activity and shake his imagination. The face of the crucified Christ is distorted by death throes. The fingers and toes are cramped, the whole body is covered with bleeding wounds. The figures of the Mother of God, the Apostle John and Mary Magdalene express frenzied mental suffering, manifested in their painfully exalted movements. The main means of realizing a thematic concept for the artist is his inherent powerful pictorial power. Behind the scene of the crucifixion, a gloomy, deserted landscape opens up at night. Against its background, figures emerge convexly, as if sticking out from the picture. A flow of blood passes through the body of Christ from top to bottom, a peculiar echo of which is the numerous shades of red in the clothes of the standing figures. An unreal mysterious light spreads from the crucified body throughout the image.

The design of the Isenheim Altar is distinguished by its exceptional depth. The very image of human suffering is elevated to the level of generalized philosophical ideas. It sounds like an expression of the sorrow of all humanity, as a symbol of nationwide suffering. The impressive power of this work by Grunewald is increased by the fact that, along with the power of human feelings, it embodies the elemental force of nature, which bursts into each of the scenes presented by the artist.

The idea of ​​the victory of light over darkness and the feeling of joyful rejoicing are expressed with no less force in the scenes of the Isenheim Altar. This is especially clear in the composition where the apotheosis of the Mother of God is presented. A cascade of golden rays falls from the sky onto the figure of Mary and the baby. They are praised with a joyful song by those who sing and play the musical instruments angels. Rainbow colors shimmer on the intricately patterned columns and carvings of the elegant chapel building, in front of which the Mother of God sits. A bright fairy-tale landscape opens to the right.

The “Resurrection of Christ” scene is picturesquely striking. The bright beginning also triumphs in it. Here Grunewald achieves a special picturesque effect. The body of Christ seems to dematerialize, dissolving in rays of light emanating from itself; the flowery halo surrounding the figure, composed of yellow, red and greenish tones, piercingly breaks the dark blue of the night, as if triumphing over it.

Grunewald’s most calm and balanced work, dating back to the late period of his work, is “The Meeting of St. Erasmus and Mauritius" (1521–1523; Munich). Allowing for some traditional conventions, such as golden halos around the heads of saints or the attribute of martyrdom in the hands of Erasmus, Grunewald at the same time depicts in this picture a life scene of a meeting between two luxuriously dressed people with individual, expressive faces. In the image of a majestic bishop, dressed in a sparkling gold brocade robe, he embodies the appearance of his patron, Archbishop Albrecht; The black man’s face was also copied from life.

Among Grunewald's other works, the most notable ones, dated 1503, are “The Flagellation of Christ” (Munich), “The Crucifixion” (Basel), “St. Cyriacus and St. Lawrence" (Frankfurt am Main), "Madonna" (1517/19, church in Stuppach). A number of his drawings, first-class in their skill, have been preserved, representing mainly preparatory material for paintings, as well as sketches of individual heads and figures.

A special movement of the German Renaissance, distinguished by a pronounced national identity, forms the work of the masters of the so-called Danube school, led by Altdorfer. The art of these artists also shows the imprint of the instability of German art. culture XVI century, largely living with the remnants of the past, combining new, realistically reasonable views of the world with confused irrational ideas.

Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480–1538) worked in Regensburg. No works have survived from the earliest years of his artistic life. In his mature period, he emerged as a master with a bright and original creative style. The naive simplicity of unvarnished human feelings and relationships, tinged with burgher sobriety, coexists in his works with a touch of original romance and the poetry of a folk tale. Altdorfer's best images are those that devote the most space to landscape.

In a number of paintings, the artist unfolds against the backdrop of a fabulous nature scenes of mythological or biblical content, likened to small short stories, filling them with hundreds of everyday or fantastic details. He builds complex spatial compositions,

in which he masterfully applies lighting effects. Altdorfer's works are easily recognized by their special pictorial style. The master works with a thin brush, applying nervous, sharp strokes; the texture of his painting, somewhat dry and motley, sparkles with greenish, red, yellow and blue dots.

The main features of Altdorfer’s work are fully revealed in one of his early works that have come down to us - “Rest on the Flight to Egypt” (1510; Berlin). A simple genre motif is woven into the bizarre setting of a folk tale. The night scene of Altdorfer’s painting “The Nativity of Christ” (1512; Berlin) gives the feeling of romantic poetry. Night lighting is masterfully conveyed. The ruins of a brick building, overgrown with flowers and herbs, where Mary and the baby and Joseph found shelter, are illuminated by yellowish reflections moonlight. Bright hosts of angels hover in the dark sky. In Susanna's Bathing (1526; Munich), Altdorfer erects a motley multi-story fantastic building-palace, from which steps descend to terraces surrounded by balustrades, dotted with dozens of small figures. In the foreground, under the shade of a magnificent tree, are the heroes of the biblical legend. Another variation on the Christmas theme is given by “Holy Night” (Berlin) (ill. 343).

A kind of unique work of German art of the 16th century. Altdorfer’s painting “The Battle of Alexander the Great with Darius” (1529; Munich), which in its design represents something like a cosmic landscape, can be considered. The entire foreground of the picture is occupied by crowds of fighting troops, full of movement, horsemen with banners and spears. Behind them opens a vast landscape, in which the artist seems to strive to embody the image of the entire universe. A high horizon allows you to see vast distances with seas and rivers, mountains, forests and buildings. The sky is pierced by rays of light that illuminate the bizarre outlines of the clouds and cast bright spots on the ground, sharply highlighting individual details of the landscape and human figures.

Fully innovative character bear Altdorfer's forest landscapes. These small paintings, made in an almost miniature technique, have a special charm. In the film “St. George in the Forest" (1510; Munich) the artist depicts a fabulous dense forest with gigantic trees covering the entire space of the sky. Small figurine of St. Georgia on horseback is completely absorbed by the centuries-old forest advancing on her. The dark blue distance is visible through the narrow gap between the trunks. The forest thicket shimmers with greenish, blue and red hues. Each leaf is carefully and skillfully outlined.

Altdorfer worked extensively and productively in the field of engraving, producing woodcuts and copper engravings. Interesting are his multicolor woodcuts, printed from several boards (for example, “Madonna”). In his later years he successfully resorted to the technique of etching; His etching landscapes stand out, distinguished by their lightness and delicate texture.

In some aspects of his work, and primarily in his keen interest in nature, the largest painter of Saxony, Lucas Cranach, approaches Altdorfer. Cranach (1472–1553) was born in the town of Cronach in Franconia. We only know about the early years of the artist’s life that in 1500–1504. he was in Vienna; in 1504 Cranach was invited to Wittenberg to the court of the Saxon elector Frederick the Wise, and then until the end of his life he worked at the court of his successors. In Wittenberg, Cranach occupied the position of a prominent wealthy burgher, repeatedly served as burgomaster of the city, and stood at the head of an extensive workshop that produced a huge number of works, as a result of which it is not always possible to identify authentic paintings by the artist himself.

Cranach was on friendly terms with Luther and illustrated several of his works. The artist’s youthful works have not survived. In the earliest works that have come down to us, primarily in engravings, one can note signs of Cranach’s connection with the late Gothic traditions (woodcuts of 1502–1509 - “The Crucifixion”; “St. Jerome”, “The Temptation of St. Anthony” ), They do not yet have a correct perspective structure, they are overloaded with details, the images contain elements of fantasy; the drawing itself seems to be made up of intricate curly lines.

However, already in these works the artistic individuality of Cranach is outlined as one of characteristic representatives German Renaissance of Durer's era. His work, despite the abundance of religious and fairy-tale subjects, is imbued with a sense of modernity. Throughout creative path the artist shows a keen interest in the people of his era: he is especially attracted to the portrait genre, is interested in the way of life of various classes, and he pays special attention to costume and everyday details. We find in Cranach themes and plots generated by the ideas of contemporary humanists.

Attention to nature is characteristic of the master, starting from the earliest works that have reached us. The landscape plays a decisive role in his famous Berlin painting “Rest on the Flight to Egypt,” 1504. Here we encounter the most vivid image of Cranach’s native nature. The northern forest is faithfully depicted, closely surrounding Mary and the Child and Joseph, who are located in a flowering clearing. Like Altdorfer, Cranach lovingly conveys all the details of the landscape - trees, flowers, grass. He introduces elements of a genre narrative into the interpretation of the gospel legend, relegating the religious content to the background. From traditional techniques of artistic interpretation church plot he also retreats in the “Crucifixion” of 1503 (Munich).

The woodcuts created by Cranach are extremely interesting, reproducing scenes from the life of the court society of Wittenberg (a number of sheets from 1506–1509 depicting knightly tournaments, deer hunting, horsemen, etc.). The motifs observed by the artist at the court of the Wittenberg electors were also constantly introduced by him into paintings and graphic compositions on religious and mythological subjects.

One of important features Cranach is that he belongs to those German artists of the 16th century who showed interest in the achievements of contemporary classical art in Italy. In a number of his works, Cranach turns to classical techniques of conveying space and interpreting the human figure. He creates images of the Madonna, similar in type to Italian models (“Mary and Child”, Wroclaw), introduces elements of Renaissance architecture into figurative compositions (“Altar

St. Anna”, Frankfurt), tries to embody the ideal proportions of the naked body (“Venus”, 1509; Leningrad). However, Cranach's attitude to the examples of classical art he used is not as creative as Dürer's. In films of this kind, he usually does not go beyond a somewhat naive repetition of ready-made recipes. But Cranach's best works are characterized by a peculiar sophistication. The calm rhythm of soft rounded contours sometimes caresses the eye with its smooth movement; The exquisite detailing attracts the viewer's attention. The artist reveals a subtle sense of color. Avoiding harsh color contrasts, Cranach knows how to create exquisite combinations of tones. An example is the Moscow “Madonna and Child,” where the dark, heavy greenery of the bushes forms a beautiful colorful chord with a light green stripe of the background landscape and a blue distance.-

Of great interest are the portraits of Cranach, made by the master in the early and middle periods of his creativity. They most clearly reveal the realistic properties of his art. Among the best of them is “Portrait of Father Luther” (1530; Wartburg). Here is a vivid image of a man with a characteristic expressive face. The highest achievement of Cranach's portrait art is the profile image of Luther (1520–1521, copper engraving). It was made during the period of greatest closeness between Cranach and the head of the Reformation. The artist creates in it such a simple, serious image of a person that is no longer found in his art.

But already from the second decade of the 16th century. Other trends are growing in the master’s work.

In a number of his paintings on religious themes from 1515–1530, as well as in portraits, one can note his desire to follow the well-known template of the human figure - graceful, cutesy and conventional. In the years of growing reaction, which coincide with the last twenty years of Cranach's life, this line takes precedence in his work. Decorative techniques of depiction come to the fore, painting becomes petty and dry.

Associated with Augsburg in the initial period of its creative activity one of the great masters of the German Renaissance - Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543).

Holbein is an artist of a completely different type and temperament than Durer. As a man of the next generation, the son and student of a painter who had largely adopted the path of the High Renaissance, Holbein is much less connected with medieval traditions than Dürer. From a young age he was imbued with new, secular ideas; An ironic attitude towards the old church, interest in antiquity, love for knowledge, for books characterize his very first creative steps. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Holbein, together with his brother Ambrosius, an artist who died early, left his hometown and moved to Basel. Here he immediately found himself in the immediate circle of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was then in Basel. Basel was at that time a university city and a significant cultural center. The direction of Holbein's art was determined here very quickly. He immediately proved himself to be a major portrait painter, an outstanding book master and an excellent decorator. He turned to religious themes much less often than other artists, while surpassing them in a purely secular interpretation of plots.

Holbein's creative path is distinguished by clarity and certainty. Already in his early youthful works, for example in the portraits of the Basel burgomaster Meyer and his wife in 1516 (Basel), his characteristic attitude towards man is fully expressed. The traits of internal and external harmony, balance and tranquility, which Dürer so painfully sought, easily and naturally become the basis of Holbein’s images.

The best properties of Holbein's art are already evident in the early, Basel period of his work. An excellent example in this sense is the famous portrait of the young humanist Boniface Amerbach (1519; Basel) - one of the best portrait images of Holbein, showing all the attractiveness of his balanced, strong realism. This work creates the image of a representative of the new European intelligentsia, who emerged from the power of the church, comprehensively developed, physically beautiful and spiritually intact, surrounded by an aura of special nobility. The portrait is very well composed: the tree trunk and oak branch behind Amerbach’s shoulder against the sky give it a special airiness.

Holbein was one of the greatest graphic artists of his era. His drawings are full of unfading freshness. Especially good are the numerous portrait sketches that he works on throughout his life. The early years include the brilliant drawings “Portrait of Paracelsus” (1526) and “Portrait of an Unknown Man” (c. 1523), executed in black pencil and colored crayons. By their deep vitality and at the same time by their grace, precision and freedom, they can be called truly innovative.

The advanced character of Holbein's art with great strength. In 1516–1529. Holbein also worked hard on book ornamentation, creating many titles, vignettes, frames, and initials for humanistic and later reformist literature. In them, he acts as a first-class decorator, perfectly aware of classical ornament, and at the same time as a draftsman, fluent in the art of depicting the naked body. Holbein's art as a decorator attracted the attention of his contemporaries. The artist's earliest commissioned work of this kind (1515) was a painting of a table top (kept in a ruined state in the Zurich Museum), on the surface of which a number of amusing everyday scenes and allegorical images are presented. Between 1521 and 1530 Holbein completed several monumental wall paintings commissioned by the city authorities of Basel and individual residents of Basel and Lucerne.

Holbein also left many first-class pen and watercolor drawings for window painting, made plastically, freely and easily, characterized by complete liberation from the stiffness and angularity of the Middle Ages.

During these same Basel years there were a number of Holbein’s paintings with religious content. "Madonna of Mayor Meyer" is perhaps the most Italianizing of all religious compositions in the art of the German Renaissance. This is evidenced by its clear, somewhat dispassionate harmony, symmetrical construction with a highlighted main figure in the middle and an equal number of figures on the sides, ideal types of the Mother of God and the Child, calmly falling straight folds of clothing, thoughtful consistency of colorful combinations.

In 1526 Holbein made his first trip to England. Like all German artists of that time, he traveled a lot. He was apparently in Italy twice - in 1518–1519 and, possibly, in 1530–1531; he visited France and the Netherlands. This time he stayed in England for two years. Having become close to Thomas More, he was thereby introduced into the circle of the highest English intelligentsia. Between 1526 and 1528 he completed several works in London. From 1527, a preparatory pen drawing for the unrealized painting has been preserved, depicting the large family of Thomas More (Basel). In the same year, Holbein painted Thomas More himself (New York, Frick Museum), and in 1528 he painted a portrait of the German astronomer Kratzer (Paris).

In 1528 Holbein returned to Basel. However, he was not destined to stay here for long. In 1528–1529 Events unfolded in the city that greatly changed the way of life and working conditions for the artist. Religious strife led to the overthrow of Catholicism; Basel became a Protestant city. A wave of iconoclasm swept through, works of painting and sculpture were removed and destroyed from churches. Holbein remained in Basel until 1532. During this time, he completed the painting of the large hall of the Basel town hall, painted a portrait of his wife and children (1528–1529; Basel) and completed a large series of illustrations for the Bible (91 woodcuts, published in 1538). ).

In 1532, Holbein finally moved to England. The last eleven years of his life he devoted almost entirely to portraiture. Finding himself first in the circle of Germans living in London, he painted a number of portraits of German merchants. In 1536, Holbein became the court artist of the English king Henry VIII. From this time on, traits of decline began to appear to some extent in his art. Surrounded by a halo of European glory, he is too carried away by his high position, too amenable in his creativity to the demands, and sometimes to the whims of the English nobility. Widely known portraits by Holbein of the last five years of his life: Henry VIII (1539–1540; Rome), Queen Jane Seymour (1536; Vienna), Christina of Denmark (1538; London), Edward Prince of Wales (1538–1539; New York) although and executed with great attention and virtuosity, at the same time they are distinguished by some dryness, monotony of characteristics and pettiness in the finishing of details. The most valuable thing that was created in the last years of Holbein’s life were his portrait drawings, even more perfect than those he performed in his own time. early years. The richest collection of these drawings, kept at the Palace of Windsor, shows Holbein as one of the best draftsmen in world art.

The significance of Holbein's work already during the artist's lifetime goes far beyond the borders of his homeland. His art played a particularly important role in the formation of English portraiture.

German sculpture in the 16th century. didn't achieve this high level development, such as painting and graphics. Among the sculptors of this century there were no artists equal to Dürer or Holbein. True, in sculpture the development of Renaissance elements encounters incomparably greater resistance from church Gothic traditions than in painting (especially since sculpture at this time was associated mainly with church orders). The religious struggle of the 16th century greatly complicated the development of plastic arts; One of the indirect consequences of the Reformation was attempts to strengthen traditional Catholic church sculpture. This led, in particular, to an extreme exaggeration of Gothic forms, often reaching the point of view in the works of church sculptors of the 16th century. to the point of monstrous ugliness.

Most interesting works, German sculpture of the 16th century. associated with those who, in one way or another, tried to develop the principles of Renaissance realism in their works. The centers of Renaissance movements in German sculpture of the 16th century. were the same advanced southern German cities in which the work of the greatest painters of the German Renaissance - Dürer and Holbein - developed. It was in Nuremberg and Augsburg that the largest German sculptors worked. Most Interest Among all these masters is Peter Fischer the Elder (c. 1460–1529), who was born in Nuremberg and lived there all his life. In the bronze foundry inherited from his father, Peter Fischer, according to the ancient guild custom, worked together with his sons; he looks like such a modest artisan in his sculptural self-portrait, which is placed at the bottom of his main creation - the shrine of St. Sebald in the church of this saint in Nuremberg (1507–1519).

The sons of Peter Fischer the Elder continued and developed the clear and simple realistic principles of their father's art, although none of them could compare with him in the scale of talent. Their inclinations are still different; The most committed to the realistic quest of the Renaissance were the above-mentioned Peter Fischer the Younger, who worked a lot on the image of the naked human body (for example, in a bronze plaque depicting Orpheus and Eurydice; c. 1515), as well as Fischer’s third son, Hans (c. 1488–1550), author of a bronze figurine of a youth, extraordinary for the German Renaissance (c. 1530; Vienna), clearly dating back to Italian models. Fischer's fifth son, Paul (died 1531), owns one of the most famous statues of the German Renaissance - the so-called Nuremberg Madonna (wood, ca. 1525-1530), graceful and lyrical, retaining some traditional Gothic features.

The most striking German sculptor of the 15th century after Fischer the Elder. There was Adolf Daucher (c. 1460/65 – 1523/24), born in Ulm and from 1491 settled in Augsburg. He made vividly realistic busts on the benches for the choir of the Fugger Chapel in the Church of St. Anna in Augsburg (1512–1518; then in Berlin Museum); His “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” is especially interesting for its vitality and plastic power. Realistic Renaissance principles, expressed without particular individual brightness, but quite consistently and clearly, are also characteristic of his large group"Lamentation of Christ" in the altar of the same chapel.

The Nuremberg master Adam Kraft (1455/60–1509) owns a series of reliefs depicting the “Way of the Cross” (1505–1508), in which genre realistic elements are extremely strong. The types and costumes are taken from the life surrounding the artist; the connection between the figures is based on real dramatic action, expressed naturally and simply, without Gothic exaggeration and convention. Kraft uses a purely secular everyday motif in the relief decorating the building of the city scales in Nuremberg (1497).

By the second half of the century, realistic trends in Nuremberg sculpture were fading away. Ancient and Renaissance images become the property of learned experts or courtiers flaunting their education. By the middle of the 16th century. in connection with those deep social and economic shocks, which Germany happened to experience at this time, the entire German culture in general and German art in particular came into a state of deep decline. In the second half of the 16th century, after the last masters of the German Renaissance left the stage, German art froze for many years in its progressive development.

The most prominent representative of the art of the German Renaissance was Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) - an outstanding painter, engraver, and scientist.

The Renaissance in Germany was very short in time - from about the middle of the 15th century. until the 1520s

Development of art The Renaissance in Germany was influenced by ideas Reformation(religious and socio-political movement in Western and Central Europe XVI-early XVII centuries, aimed at reforming Catholic Christianity in accordance with the Bible). This historical period also marks Peasants' War (1524-1526). All this: the brutal suppression of peasant unrest, religious schism and the departure of several lands from Catholicism - interrupted the development of the Renaissance in Germany.
The main masters of the German Renaissance:

Master E. S. (c. 1420-after 1468)
Matthias Grunewald (c. 1470-1528)
Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553)
Hans von Kulmbach (bl.1480-1522)
Hans Baldung (c. 1484-1545)
Hans Holbein (the Younger) (1497-1543)
Urs Graf (c. 1490-c. 1529)
Albrecht Altdorfer (bl.1480-1538)
Faith Stoss (1447-1533)
Bernt Notke (c. 1435-1509)
Hans Burgkmair (1473-1531)
Vilm Dedek
Daniel Hopfer (c. 1470-1536), engraver

Let us turn to the works of the most outstanding masters.

Matthias Grunewald (1470/1475-1528)

Few of his works have survived, only about 10. The work of Grunewald (real name Matthias Gotthart Niedhardt) was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century. by the German Expressionists, who considered him their direct predecessor. His work also influenced the surrealists. Matthias Grünewald is considered the last great Northern Gothic artist.
Grunewald is considered a man of broad erudition and multifaceted talent, a typical representative of the intelligentsia of the Renaissance. He was concerned with problems of religion, philosophy and social order, as well as science. His art is permeated with humanism, compassion for the human suffering that he saw all around. Before his eyes, the Reformation took place - the first revolution in Europe, which shook the consciousness of people; he witnessed bloody reprisals against the rebel people. Endowed with a receptive soul, Grunewald, like Bosch, depicted in his art the true tragedy of the life of a noble and honest soul of a man who was persecuted and insulted in a cruel world that had lost its human face.
Grunewald's main work and a masterpiece of German painting is the Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-1516)

Museum exposition

Unterlinden Museum (Colmar, France). First layout of the altar

Until 1793, the altar was located in the Isenheim church. During times French Revolution the paintings and sculptures were transported to the regional city of Colmar for storage. The carved wooden parts remained in Isenheim and have been lost since 1860. Three altarpieces are currently on display separately in Colmar.
The first (external) scan depicts the scene of the crucifixion of Christ. The crucifix is ​​often found on Gothic altarpieces. But never before Matthias Grunewald has it been depicted so painfully. At Golgotha, Grunewald depicted his mother Mary, the Apostle John, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist next to Jesus. The entire scene with the tortured figure of Christ, with the shocked, fainting Mother of God and other characters evokes a state of deep shock.
During the liturgical year, the altar doors were opened on certain dates, revealing paintings corresponding to the religious event. The Isenheim Altar has three layout options.

The second layout of the Isenheim altar depicts the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ (“Angel Concert”) and the Ascension.

The third development of the Isenheim Altar with wooden sculptures of Saints Anthony, Augustine and Jerome, which are believed to have been made by the woodcarver Nicholas Hagenauer.

M. Grunewald “The Desecration of Christ” (1503). Alte Pinakothek (Munich)

The artist depicted a previously rarely seen iconographic plot of the Gospel. The guards brought Christ to the house of the high priest Caiaphas and mocked him. They put a blindfold over his eyes and, hitting him in the face, demanded to know who was beating him. Grunewald portrays Christ as a man of exceptional meekness and patience. The horror of cynical abuse and inhumanity is conveyed by Grunewald sharply through color - cold tones and their dissonances.
The painting also depicts the figure of Joseph from Arimathea, who would later remove the lifeless body of Christ from the Cross. And now Joseph is trying to persuade the guard to take pity on Christ. It’s as if you can hear the sharp sounds of a flute and drum beats made by a person standing in the depths to the left.

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553)

L. Cranach. Self-portrait (1550). Uffizi Gallery (Florence)

German painter and graphic artist of the Renaissance, master of portraiture, genre and biblical compositions. In his work he combined the traditions of Gothic and the principles of the Renaissance.
According to his convictions, he was a supporter of the ideas of the Reformation, a friend of Luther.

Lucas Cranach the Elder "Portrait of Martin Luther"

The artists Hans Cranach and Lucas Cranach the Younger are his sons.
Cranach initially studied fine art from his father. From his early youth he traveled in search of a vocation throughout Germany, Palestine, Austria, and the Netherlands.
Later, he created an art workshop, staffed by assistants, published books, and then sold them.
The artist's early works are distinguished by their innovation. In them he depicted the contradictions of his era. Having become a court artist, he achieved great skill in the portrait genre, capturing many of his famous contemporaries. Cranach's portraits were made with sympathy for the models, but without idealizing them and without any particular desire to penetrate into their inner world.

Lucas Cranach the Elder "Melancholy" (1532). Board, oil. 51x97 cm. State Museum Arts (Copenhagen)

The painting depicts three naked babies using sticks to try to roll a large ball through a hoop. The winged woman is whittling a rod, perhaps planning to make another hoop. This is melancholy. She looks thoughtfully past the playing children. According to the ideas of the Renaissance, the whole world is based on analogies. Melancholy at that time was associated with Saturn, the dog, and carpentry. The witches' jump in the black cloud refers to these analogies.

Lucas Cranach the Elder "Madonna and Child (Madonna of the Vineyard)" (circa 1520). State Museum of Fine Arts named after. A.S. Pushkin (Moscow)

Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543)

One of the greatest German artists. Most famous representative this surname. He studied painting with his father, Hans Holbein the Elder.

Hans Holbein the Younger. Self-Portrait (1542). Uffizi Gallery (Florence)

With his brother Ambrosius Holbein, he worked for two years in Basel (Switzerland) in the workshop of H. Herbster, where he met many humanists and scientists of this period, including Erasmus of Rotterdam, and illustrated his work “In Praise of Stupidity.”

Hans Holbein the Younger "Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam"

Holbein also illustrated other books and participated in the creation German translation Martin Luther Bible. Like his father, he created stained glass windows and painted portraits.
The most important works of Holbein's Basel period are the portrait of the lawyer Boniface Amerbach; ten paintings of the passion of the Lord; frescoes in the new town hall, organ doors in the local cathedral, altar doors for the Freiburg Cathedral, images of the Nativity of Christ and the Adoration of the Magi; Madonna and saints for the city of Solothurn; the famous “Madonna of the Meyer family”, portraits of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Dorothea Offenburg, as well as drawings for the Old Testament (91 sheets) and the “Dance of Death” (58 sheets), engraved on wood by Lutzelburger.

Hans Holbein the Younger "Madonna of Darmstadt" ("Madonna of the Meyer Family") (1526)

The painting was painted by Holbein under the influence of Italian religious painting of the Renaissance and the portrait art of the old Dutch masters. In the center of the painting is the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus, surrounded by Mayer, his first deceased and second wives and daughter. It is not known for certain who the other two characters depicted on the left are. The Darmstadt Madonna is a demonstration of Burgomaster Mayer's commitment to the Catholic faith. The unusual framing of the painting is explained by its purpose for the personal chapel of the Meyer family in the palace in Gundeldingen.
In 1526-1528. the artist stayed in England, where he met Thomas More. On his first visit to England, as well as on his second (1532-1543), he painted mainly portraits and was even the court painter of King Henry VIII.

Hans Holbein the Younger "Portrait of Henry VIII"

Holbein's paintings are distinguished by expressiveness of design, plasticity, thoughtful modeling, transparency of chiaroscuro, brightness and width of the brush. His drawings are full of observation, sometimes not without caustic sarcasm, and amaze with the beauty of their form and decoration. He brought the heyday of the Italian Renaissance to Germany, but did not lose his national character.

Hans Holbein the Younger "Portrait of Christina of Denmark" (1538). London National Gallery

Artists of the Danube School of Painting

“Danube School of Painting” – direction of German fine art I half XVI V. (1500-1530)
A new genre appeared in the works of the artists of the Danube School - landscape.
There is no unity on the question of the origin of the school: according to most authors, its creators were the young Lucas Cranach the Elder, Jörg Brey the Elder, as well as a native of the Danube River region, Roelant Fruauf the Younger.
Others believe that the school arose on local soil, and that the visiting Cranach and Bray, traveling along the Danube, came under its influence.

Wolf Gruber "Landscape of the Danube near Krems" (1529). Cabinet of Prints (Berlin)

The painting of the “Danube School” was distinguished by artistic imagination, vivid emotionality, a fabulous perception of nature, interest in forest and river landscapes, space and light, a dynamic style of painting, expressiveness of drawing and color intensity.

Lucas Cranach the Elder "The Deer Hunt of Elector Frederick III the Wise" (1529)

1 - German Renaissance

From the beginning of the century until the end of the Thirty Years' War, the architecture of German cities was dominated by the German Renaissance style, with frequent Gothic elements and strong Italian influence. The most outstanding German architects of this era are considered to be Paul Franke, Heinrich Schickhardt and Elias Goll

Among the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, the economic, spiritual and artistic life of the German Empire fell. The change in trade routes, which now, after the great discoveries on the other side of the ocean, bypassed their former hubs, the art-rich Upper German cities, and directed to the coastal cities of northwestern Europe, contributed to the economic and artistic impoverishment of the German states. In the middle of the 17th century, Germany in all areas of higher culture was likened to a desert, in the sands of which only isolated springs, fed from afar, made their way. The few skilled artists whom Germany produced at this time became foreigners in the foreign lands whither their earnings attracted them. But even before the end of the Thirty Years' War, crowds of foreigners were summoned to Germany by spiritual and secular princes, who only partially took the interests of art to heart; in the Catholic south it was mainly Italians, in the Protestant north the Dutch, and in the end both there and here mainly French. With the help of these foreign masters, their artists again rose to creative power and independent results only in the transition to the 18th century. If German art of the first decades of the 17th century still belongs to the German Renaissance, clinging to its shoots, then the history of German art of the end of the 17th century cannot be separated from its history in the 18th, since both constitute one historical whole. To trace the artistic successes of our fatherland throughout the seventeenth century is not so gratifying as it is instructive, although there will still be no shortage of comforting old memories or hope for the future.

In all areas of church and secular architecture at the beginning of the 17th century, only a few buildings appeared that represented the brilliant successes of the “German Renaissance”. They constantly mix Gothic experiences with individual motifs of the Italian Renaissance, even Italian Baroque, independently reworked in northern taste. Nordic scrollwork and wrought iron still occupy a significant place in the decoration of the building, if they are not outweighed by the Italian sense of form. In the second decade, these forms of jewelry, based on the shapes of volutes in the form of the auricle, used in different positions, begin to turn into fleshy, as if muscular, somewhat shapeless formations, called “cartilage.” They are most clearly shown in the book of samples by Rutger Kassmann (1659). Posterity reacted, perhaps, too negatively to the aesthetic dignity of these “cartilages”, which took over the frames and narrow fields of the walls and turned inclined forms into outgrowths in the grotesque style. Yet they reigned as a German form of decoration for about a generation, only to disappear again after the Thirty Years' War.

Rice. 181 - Cartilaginous ornament from the "Book of Designs" by Rutger Kassmann

The works of three skilled German architects, who stood at the height of their creative power around 1600, best introduce us to the German late Renaissance. The oldest of them, Paul Franke (circa 1538-1615), a gifted architect for Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, still essentially belongs to the 16th century; Even in this century, his university building (Uleum) in Helmstedt (1592-1597) arose - a tall building, decorated in both main floors only on the portals and windows, the three-story roof pediment of which is all the more richly decorated with pilasters, niches and statues on the narrow and long sides His second main building is the Mary Church in Wolfenbüttel (from 1608), built in XVII century and is also, in essence, a three-nave Gothic hall church, some of whose forms are borrowed from the Renaissance and Baroque. How unique are the capitals of the octagonal pillars! How free and luxurious the openwork of the windows is! How tense are the “cartilages” of the frames of the longitudinal sides of the pediment, completed, however, after the death of the master.

Rice. 182 - Paul Franke. Mary's Church in Wolfenbüttel

The second famous architect of this era, Heinrich Schickhardt (1558-1634), architect to Duke Frederick of Württemberg, with whom he visited in 1599-1600. Italy, in his diaries and projects stored in the Stuttgart library, is more vital than in the surviving buildings; but we know that he, a disciple of Georg Behr, built many useful and artistic buildings, churches, castles and simple houses in the Swabian land. Upon his return from Italy, he developed to artistic independence. Unfortunately, his main work - "New Building" ("Neue Bau"; 1600-1609) of the Stuttgart castle - has survived only in images. The high basement floor of this building carried three more floors under a steep roof. Only the four corner towers and the middle risalit (ledge) with a high pediment were decorated with pilasters. But all the windows and doors are topped with baroque flat pediments with volutes. In general, it gives almost the same impression as a modern city house with apartments.

Schickgardt's other major work was the foundation of the "City of Friendship" ("Freudenstadt") at the height of the Black Forest, intended to shelter Protestant fugitives from Austria. The houses of the large market square (1602), facing the street with a pediment, rest on Doric colonnades. Four corner buildings cut off at right angles - the town hall, Gostiny Dvor, hospital and church - rest on arcades with Ionic columns. Opposite the narrow side of both wings of this peculiar church is a bell tower with a raised dome and a narrowed lantern. Emporas rest on arcades visible from the outside; the mesh vault and the openwork decorations of the balustrades also give a Gothic impression.

Rice. 183 - Elias Goll. Zeichhaus in Augsburg.

Only the third of these architects, Elias Goll of Augsburg (1573-1646), completely abandoned the Gothic language of forms. His autobiography, published by Christian Meier, already ensured his fame in posterity. His art was critically illuminated by Julius Baum. Gaul returned from Italy to Augsburg in 1601, a year later than Schickhardt, and built here in the austere style of the semi-Baroque Italian late Renaissance, without abandoning his basic Germanic mood. In the art of dismembering and reviving the general masses, he surpassed all his German contemporaries. Gaulle's buildings gave Augsburg a new imprint, which it still retains to this day. His "Beckenhaus" (1602) carries, like a corner building, above classical facades with pilasters, and on both the narrow and long sides, Germanic high pediments. The magnificent armory (1602-1607) rises to the flat arch of its broken crowning pediment in five richly dissected floors. The Doric, columned, rustic-finished portal makes a strong impression. Fantastic are the broken pediment frames, in a Baroque style, connecting the round windows on the first upper floor with the square ones placed below them. The butcher shop building (Fleischhaus; 1609), which is only vertically dissected, looks massive and solid, a strong building characteristic of Gaulle’s style, which rejects any borrowing from foreign models. The elongated living room at the wine market (1611) even refuses any added pediments and, dissected only by windows like dormer windows, is concentrated, complete and complete in itself. But Elias Gaul unleashed his full strength in the town hall (1614-1620). The completed project has the advantage over the earlier, abundant Upper Italian colonnades that it is a true work of the Germanized late Renaissance. With a width of fourteen windows, it has seven rows of windows one above the other in the middle risalit, topped with a half-barred triangular pediment. Pilasters adorn only the two octagonal towers on either side of this pedimented superstructure. Apart from the latter, the massive building is divided in powerful proportions into three parts, both vertically and horizontally.

2 - Italian architecture Germany

In the first half of the 17th century, Italian architectural structures, mostly built by visiting Italians, were widespread in German cities. These are, first of all, numerous Jesuit churches; as well as some secular buildings, including burgher houses

If we take a look at the rest of the church and castle buildings that arose in Germany before the Thirty Years' War, then everywhere we will be struck by a sharp division between the still semi-Gothic, which grew out of the German Renaissance, and more or less purely Italianizing buildings, which were erected for the most part by Italians . Mary's Church in Wolfenbüttel is related to the Jesuit Church in Cologne (1618-1622), which was not, as was thought, rebuilt from a Gothic church. The Gothic basic forms are also decorated here with individual Baroque motifs belonging to the first manifestations of the above-mentioned “cartilage style” (Knorpelstil). The interior of the church of pilgrims in Dettelbach am Main (1608-1613) still gives a Gothic impression, despite its Doric pilasters. But its front side, with its repeatedly folded and broken outlines of the pediment, belongs to the most luxurious phenomena of the German late Renaissance. On the contrary, the magnificent city church in Bückeburg, in the subtle, lively early Baroque style, was probably built by the Dutchman Adrien de Vries.

At the head of the purely Italian buildings of Germany in the early Baroque style is the cathedral in Salzburg (1614-1634), the design of which was drawn up by the famous Scamozzi, and executed in a slightly modified form by his student Santino Solari. The rounded branches of the cross adjoin the three sides of the middle cross. The fourth opens into a longitudinal body decorated with Corinthian pilasters, the elegant side chapels of which successfully harmonize with its powerful box vault. The facade is equipped with two towers in the style developed by the northern Jesuit churches. The Jesuit churches are also proportionate and pure in certain forms: in Innsbruck (1614) and Neuburg on the Danube (1606-1617), the university church in Vienna (1617-1631), and the Church of St. Andrew in Düsseldorf (finished in 1629). Since the Jesuits introduced this style in Germany, it is understandable that it is called “Jesuit,” although such a thing, in fact, does not exist. The Jesuits followed only the direction of the art of their time.

The development of the basic plans of German castles and residential buildings of this era was described by Schmerber. At the head of the northern Renaissance castles in Germany in the 17th century is the magnificent, French-inspired Castle Aschaffenburg (1605-1614), described by Schulze-Kolbitz, a powerful work by the master Georg Riedinger of Strasbourg. Four wings with domed corner towers border the courtyard, at the corners of which there are also old-fashioned towered porches. The most abundantly decorated in the forms of the Renaissance, turning to Baroque, are the portals and pediments. A native of Strasbourg was also Johann Schoch, the builder of the luxurious Friedrich building (1601-1607) at Heidelberg Castle, the facade of which is dissected, if not more abundantly, then more complex and lively than the facade of the building of Elector Otto Heinrich. The pilasters of the four orders widen at the top and bottom; the cornices protrude restlessly; but the general dismemberment was carried out on a grand scale. The German Renaissance becomes the German Baroque. On the contrary, the so-called “English building” with which Frederick V completed Heidelberg Castle in 1615 is directed, as an exception, along the strictly limited paths of Palladio.

Rice. 184 - Friedrich's building at Heidelberg Castle, built by Johann Schoch

The style of Heidelberg Castle is then joined by Mainz Castle, which is more sober in terms of luxury of pilasters, the construction of which began in 1627.

On Italian soil stand the magnificent buildings with which Maximilian I of Bavaria surrounded it between 1611-1619. the imperial residence of the Munich Royal Castle. The project and artistic direction of the construction are attributed to the already mentioned Italianized Dutchman Peter Candido, a student of Vasari; as such, only slightly touched by the Baroque style, it showed itself in the classical splendor of the “imperial staircase” and the halls and galleries adjoining the main floor.

Some Prague castle buildings of this era are completely Italian, and above all Wallenstein Castle and its grandiose garden hall (1629), with which the names of various Italian architects are associated, opening with three semicircular arches on double Tuscan columns.

On the contrary, the construction of town halls before the Thirty Years' War naturally adhered to northern models and craftsmen. Even the Augsburg town hall of Gaulle as a whole gives a northern impression. An example of the rich German early Baroque is the broad side of the Bremen Town Hall (1611-1614) by Lüder von Bentheim (d. 1653). The middle risalit with a high pediment protrudes strongly; The Tuscan colonnade of the lower floor with eleven round arches protrudes just as far, crowned on both sides of the middle ledge with through, in the Baroque spirit, stone railings of long balcony galleries. The richly decorated middle gable is matched by low roof gables. As Pauli showed, the facade does not reveal complete unity of design. Some motifs are borrowed from modern books about art. But the whole appears both harmonious and luxurious.

The Nuremberg Town Hall (1613-1619) by Jacob Wolf the Younger has a more false-classical character with two-story Tuscan semi-circular arcades on three sides of the picturesque courtyard, despite the Baroque portals, oval windows, and an elongated front side topped with balustrades.

The character of a northern pediment house, despite the semicircular colonnades under powerfully projecting side wings with lower pediments, has the stately town hall in Paderborn (1612-1616), marked by the noble grace of its division.

Goll's half-Italianizing Agsburg workshop stands in contrast to the purely Dutch brick-and-stone building with lush towered porches, Baroque portals and pediments with volutes, the magnificent Danzig workshop, executed by Hans Strakowski. The curls and binding have not yet turned into “cartilage”.

Among the burgher houses of the German late Renaissance, only a few can be noted. The Peller House in Nuremberg (1605) is another example of the High German Renaissance. The stone railings over the arcades of the magnificent courtyard are still decorated with Gothic openwork carvings. The pediment façade with its shell-shaped finish is abundantly dissected by pilasters of all three orders. The Pied Piper's House in Hamelin (1602), whose façade, richly decorated with pilasters, is intersected horizontally by rustic belts so that it appears to be covered with a network of beams, is no less typical of a northern residential building. At the "House of Clerks" in Bremen (1619-1621), the cartilaginous style already triumphs. But Leibniz's house in Hanover (1652), with its graceful division into semi-columns, continues the old style that existed after the end of the Thirty Years' War.

After the end of the war, there was a sharp division of German lands into Catholic and Protestant. Accordingly, architecture developed differently. In southern German cities, Catholic churches and civil buildings were most often built in the classical or Italian baroque style without any national German characteristics. In the northern German lands, classicism is less common, the influence of French and Dutch architecture is stronger, French and Dutch architects work

After the Peace of Westphalia, Germany was like a desert strewn with rubble. Half a century passed before the townspeople began to think about more or less large artistic enterprises. Nevertheless, in the second half of the 17th century, numerous magnificent buildings grew from the blood-fertilized soil of the state. Catholic Church, which raised its head higher than ever in southern Germany, did not know any restraint in the construction of magnificent churches and monasteries. There was no shortage of new Protestant churches, but the builders of the latter lacked the means and the inclination for artistic splendor. The aesthetic question of the expedient structure of the Protestant preaching church was only conditionally raised. In the field of palace architecture, both Protestant and Catholic princes, encouraged by the new strengthening of their power, developed extremely extensive activity. The wealthy part of the main cities joined the architecture of the princely palaces, and thus the further architectural development of this period was carried out mainly in churches and palaces.

Most Catholic churches are, in their basic motifs, variants of the Salzburg Cathedral. The oblong and central buildings are connected into one building by means of a dome over the middle cross. The side naves turned into chapels with emporiums in the form of boxes. The front side is furnished with two slender towers. The Italian Baroque style dominates with its transformed antique basic forms, often maintaining independence in individual motifs outside and inside the building. Protestant churches are usually simple rectangles with emporia inorganically fitted inside. The challenge is to position the altar and pulpit in relation to each other and to the congregation. The consciousness that the central structure best suits the needs of Protestant worship appears in the writings of the learned North German architect Leonard Christoph Sturm (1669-1729), but finds its independent classical expression only in the Dresden Church of Our Lady of Georg Behr, which we must leave for the 18th century. Palace architecture completely abandons the old arrangement with four corner towers around the courtyard. There is a desire to expand the building on level ground, adjoining French models, like Marly. Protruding wings and pavilions, connected to the main building only by galleries, become favorites. The castle towers are disappearing. The shapes of jewelry are gradually becoming lighter. The classical French school influences the ornament. The acanthus returns. The "cartilage" goes back into the climbing stem and forms the natural shapes of the leaves. The narrow piers are filled with “foliage and ribbons,” and these latter, in the “curvature style” described by Jessen, wrap around the wavy trunks of the Rococo.

At the conclusion of peace, the first generation of architects in Germany was represented by the most famous foreigners, mainly Italians. Their works do not belong to the own history of German art, but to Italian art, representing shoots of the Italian Baroque. Italian architects, however, often half-consciously adapted to German taste, erecting double-towered church facades in the rough and individual taste of their customers, and although for a closer acquaintance with them we must refer the reader to Gurlitt’s books, we cannot completely bypass them here.

In Munich, at the head of this Italian “invasion” were the Zuccalis. The main works of Enrico Zuccali (1643-1724) are the widely divided and luxuriously decorated Theatine church (1663-1675) in Munich and the small Lustheim castle (1684) near Schleisheim, which was later joined (1700-1704) by the long and wide-spread main Schleisheim palace. But the most baroque of the Munich Italians was Giovanni Antonio Viscardi, who became the Bavarian court architect in 1686. His church of St. Trinity in Munich (1711-1714) is imbued with the spirit of Borromini. The Luragos reigned in Prague. Carlo Lurago (1638-1679), whose main work is the beautiful cathedral in Passau, restored inside after a fire in 1680 by Carl Antonio Carlone (d. 1708), built the Church of St. Francis Seraphic in the central plan with an oval dome (1671-1688); Martin Lurago erected the magnificent Corinthian-style building of the Galla Monastery (1671) in Altstadt. The truly magnificent facade of Prague is that of the Czernin Palace (now a barracks) with a rustic basement and four upper floors connected by powerful half-columns of the composite order, the construction of which is attributed to various Italians. In Vienna, whose church architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries was described by Dernyak, they gave the tone of Carnevali. The Lobkowica Palace (1685-1690), built by Carl Antonio Carnevali in the High Baroque style, makes a particularly powerful impression. One of the Carnevalis also built the magnificent “Parish Church of the Court” (1662), striking with the grandeur of the pilasters of the Doric order (1662) and the peculiar Baroque Church of the Servites (1651-1678). Antonio Petrini (d. 1701) worked in Franconia, whose best buildings are the crude church of the Gauge institution in Würzburg (1670-1691) with its three-story façade rich in niches, then the church of St. Stephen (1677-1680) in Bamberg, even more powerful in design, and, in the vicinity of the latter, the Seehof Palace (1688). It was Petrini who imparted a somewhat Germanic mood to his Italian Baroque buildings; the same thing, but to an even greater extent, can be said about Andrea dal Pozzo, who owns the interior of the university church in Vienna (1704), and in Bamberg the magnificent, richly structured church of St. Martin (1686-1720). He fertilized, as Gurlitt put it, the baroque style of the Italians with the ideas of German small masters, like Ditterlin.

And in northern Germany, even at the beginning of the last quarter of the century, Italian architects predominated in many cases. Even the reconstruction of the Berlin palace was carried out first by such masters as Giovanni Maria and Francesco Baratta (d. 1687 and 1700 in Berlin). General management passed to Andreas Schlüter only in 1698.

Only after the abolition of the Oedipus of Nantes did French architects begin to move to Germany, which was predominantly Protestant. Carl Philipp Dieussard, who worked at various German courts, had more influence with his important essay on architecture, based on Vitruvius and published three times in Germany between 1682 and 1696, than with its buildings. Paul Dury, who served in Kassel from 1684, founded here a new, regular-shaped city part, intended for French fugitives, with a simple French church (since 1694). Finally, Jean Baptiste Breubes, a student of Daniel Marot the elder, built between 1686 - 1695. the former Bremen stock exchange with a Tuscan lower floor and an Ionic upper floor, but gained fame as a professor at the Berlin Academy of Arts, mainly for his architectural engravings. According to Gurlitt, François Blondel, the famous Parisian architect, was in Berlin and completed the design of the beautiful Zeichhaus building here. The external and internal reasons given by Gurlitt in favor of this opinion have often been disputed, but, in our opinion, have not yet been completely refuted.

In addition, Dutch architects also worked in Berlin in the third quarter of the century. Around 1650, Johann Gregor Memhardt (d. 1687), builder of Oranienburg Castle and the city castle in Potsdam, became the court architect of the Elector in Berlin. He was followed by Michael Matthias Smids from Rotterdam (1626-1696), builder of the Elector's stables in the Renaissance style (1665-1670), and Rüdger von Langerfeld (1635-1695), who built a three-wing palace in Köpenick in 1681 in the semi-Dutch style of the era. There is no need to particularly praise these masters and their buildings.

4 - The formation of national German architecture

The emergence of national German trends in architecture began in the northern Protestant territories, where local architects developed their own styles based on Italian architecture. Church architecture here develops on a par with palace architecture. In the Catholic German lands, the development of architecture follows the path of Italian Baroque, using elements of classicism; national features also gradually appear

With these foreigners succeeding on German soil, things were hard for German architects. Some Thuringian architects almost independently, but soberly and very carefully, reworked at first, i.e. after the great war, Italian forms. Friedenstein Castle in Gotha, built between 1643-1654. Andreas Rudolphi, has a courtyard surrounded by three rather than four wings, then has a wide main building, perhaps for the first time in Germany without ancient attached pediments. Further, Moritz Richter and his sons play a well-known role in palace buildings in Weimar, Weissenfels, Coburg, Eisenberg, etc., and the chapels of these castles are considered stages in the development of Protestant church architecture.

Catherine Melchior Nesler's Church in Frankfurt am Main (1678-1680) is still a hall church with cross vaults, with Gothic tracery carvings on semi-circular windows, with wooden emporiums built inside and magnificent doors in the Renaissance style. The garrison church of Hermann Korb in Wolfenbüttel (1705) forms an oval in a rectangle of eight Corinthian columns, with two floors of emporia and a pulpit above the altar.

This Hermann Korb (1658-1735), a Brunswick court architect, took part in the further development of German palace construction. Duke Anton Ulrich sent him to France to take a photograph with Marly, and the fruit of his studies was the unfortunately destroyed Salzdalum Palace (1688-1697), reflecting changes in the understanding of the main objectives of the style of palace architecture.

Rice. 185 - Pleasure castle in the Great Garden in Dresden, built by Johann Georg Starcke

The most beautiful of the palaces built by the Germans and preserved from this period - the pleasure castle in the Great Garden in Dresden - was executed in a peculiar German Baroque style between 1679-1680, probably by Johann Georg Starke (according to others, by I. F. Karcher or V. K. von Klengel). The large rectangular middle room is adjoined on both narrow sides by side wings that protrude forward and inward, each consisting of three compartments. The exterior, free Ionic architecture of the pilasters is enlivened in a new way and with great taste by foliage and flower garlands, stretched curtains, niches and round frames. The wings project further forward than the middle projection, surmounted by a flat arch on which the pilasters are replaced by columns. Related to this building in some respects is the old stock exchange in Leipzig. But the most remarkable of the surviving secular buildings in Germany of this century is the above-mentioned Zeichhaus in Berlin, completed in 1706. Its builder is usually considered to be Johann Arnold Nehring (d. 1695), and if the project was drawn up by Blondel, as Gurlitt suggested, then everything but, leaving aside later additions, Nehring completed it according to his own understanding: above the lower floor, lined with hewn stone and windows with semicircular arches, lies a classical upper floor with Doric order pilasters and rectangular windows with semicircular and triangular flat pediments with balustrades; above it lies a classic on columns, a prominent middle gable and an upper roof balustrade. The decorations everywhere are only plastic, which we will return to later. Overall, this is a full of inner life, expressive French-Palladian building, inspired and powerful, thanks to the grandeur of the overall plan and the nobility of proportions.

All our information about the rest of the activities of Nehring, who was considered in Berlin to be a student of M. M. Smids, characterizes him as a skillful and active, but by no means a brilliant architect. From 1691 he was in charge of the Elector's buildings. We find him involved in the construction of castles in Berlin, Oranienbaum and Potsdam. His old town hall in Berlin, most reminiscent of the Zeichhaus, was demolished in 1899, and the country “Princely House” of 1685 was destroyed in 1886. In the further development of Protestant church architecture, Nehring participated in the design of the Berlin Parish Church (1695-1703), executed by Martin Grünberg (1655-1707). The basic plan is a square with polygonal apses on all sides. The altar is placed in front of the pulpit. The buttresses and tracery carvings show how deeply the remnants of Gothic were rooted in the blood of German architects.

In Catholic southern and western Germany, German architects are also now following in the footsteps of their Italian predecessors. A valuable building of the German Baroque style is considered here, firstly, the Cathedral of Johann Serro in Kempten (1652), which uniquely, but not particularly organically, connected the longitudinal body with the central building. The eight-sided room, above which a dome rises on four pillars, is built as a separate building in the Doric style between the choir and the longitudinal body, animated by Corinthian pillars. The interior is rich in picturesque openings. An even more unique impression is made by the chapel of St. Trinity of Georg Dientzenhofer (1643-1689) in the Waldsassen monastery (1685-1689), in Fichtelgebirge. Its three-sided corbelled main plan is meant to symbolize the Trinity. Slender round towers rise at the corners of the three-lobed plan. The whole acts by its successful combination.

Rice. 186 - Berlin Workshop, built by François Blondel and Johann Arnold Nehring

The Dientzenhofers, to whom Weigmann dedicated the book, were representatives of the Bamberg family of architects; From the followers of the above-mentioned Italian Petrini, under whose leadership some of them worked in Seeghof, they developed into independent masters. Georg Dientzenhofer's younger brother Johann Leonhard (d. 1707) was an experienced craftsman who moved from one South German princely court to another. His name is inextricably linked with the history of the new construction of the Ebrach monastery (1687-1698) and the episcopal residence in Bamberg (from 1693). This somewhat shapeless city castle is piled on three floors with pilasters up to the fourth, in the usual sequence of orders. It lacks proper proportions at the bottom and proper completion at the top. More significant was the third of the brothers, Christoph Dientzenhofer (1655-1722), who brought the new Franconian Baroque style to Prague. His main work here was the Church of St. Nicholas on the Small Side (from 1673), which was completed by his son Kilian Ignaz (1689-1751). Flat niches with arches adjoin three sides of the domed center cross. The Corinthian pilasters of the side chapels are set obliquely, in a completely Baroque manner. Along with Christoph, the most significant was the fourth of the brothers, Johann Dientzenhofer, who died in 1726. His best works are magnificent, calculated in their mass division on the rhythmic action of light waves, which arose from memories of the Roman Cathedral of St. Peter's, subordinated to a huge domed room, the Fulda Cathedral (1704-1712) and the vast Pommersfelden Castle (1711-1718), remarkable for its staircase and high dining room, belong already to the 18th century.

For now we must be content with tracing the conditions of development of the last, most brilliant period of the German Baroque, the duration of which is usually determined from 1680-1780, right up to the beginning of the current century.

1 - German Renaissance

2 - Italian architecture in Germany

3 - Architecture of Germany after the end of the Thirty Years' War

4 - The formation of national German architecture