Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Plates bright and vivid. name in front. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> Among the expressive German artists of the sixteenth century Gr?newald (c. 1470- 1528) created the most personal vision of traditional Christian themes. J.-K. Huys- mans called him with good reason “the most daring of realists and the most daring of idealists”. Of his few surviving paintings the best known and the most powerful is the Isenheim altar-piece in the Museum at Colmar. Gr?newald’s thirty-seven surviving draw- ings are masterpieces of the draughtsman’s art; some are rapid or detailed sketches from models others are finished drawings in their own right or compositional sketches for lost or extant paintings. All of them reveal the hand of a master towering above his contemporaries and transcending the artistic traditions of his time. The present book opens with a penetrating essay which analyses in detail the style and technique of the drawings. The author shows how Gr?newald remains in con- trast to his great contemporary Albrecht D?rer an artist whose most conscious and deliberate creative efforts are dominated by the imponderables of a subjective and spontaneous working method. A very full critical catalogue deals at length with each drawing and shows whether it can be related to surviving paintings or used to reconstruct important altar-pieces which are now lost. An impor- tant appendix deals with some doubtful drawings including the six problematic ones found near Marburg in 1949. All the drawings and some details are reproduced on 42 plates nearly half of them in the original sizes and related paintings are also illustrated in the text. (SP)