The Renaissance in

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The Renaissance in

• Germany and Britain

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Albrecht Dürer Self-portrait at 26
1498Museo del Prado, Madrid
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Self-portrait at 26

• The artist's clothing is flamboyant, according
  to Venetian fashion. Depicting a distant
  landscape, viewed through a window, was a device
  borrowed from Netherlandish portraiture.
• The Germans still tended to consider the artist
  as a craftsman, as had been the conventional view
  during the Middle Ages. This was bitterly
  unacceptable to Dürer. His stylish and expensive
  costume indicates, like the dramatic mountain
  view through the window (implying wider
  horizons), that he considers himself no mere
  limited provincial. What Dürer insists on above
  all else is his dignity, and this was a quality
  that he allowed to others too.
• This picture was acquired by Charles I of
  England and later bought by Philip IV of Spain.

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Matthias Grünewald Concert of Angels and
Nativity c.1515Musée dUnterlinden, Colmar,
France
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Concert of Angels and Nativity

• Matthias Grünewalds works on religious themes
  achieve a visionary expressiveness through
  intense colour and agitated line. The wings of
  the altarpiece of the Antonite monastery at
  Isenheim, in southern Alsace (dated 1515), are
  considered to be his masterpiece.
• The altarpiece's figures are given uniquely
  determined gestures their limbs are distended
  for expressive effect, and their draperiies (a
  trademark of Grünewald's that expand and contract
  in accordion pleats) mirror the passions of the
  soul. The colours used are simultaneously biting
  and brooding. The Isenheim Altarpiece expresses
  deep spiritual mysteries. The Concert of Angels
  depicts an exotic angel choir housed within an
  elaborate baldachin. At one opening of the
  baldachin a small, glowing female form, the
  eternal and immaculate Virgin, kneels in
  adoration of her own earthly manifestation at the
  right. And at the far left a feathered creature,
  probably the evil archangel Lucifer, adds his
  demonic notes to the serenade. Grünewald never
  misses the telling picturesque detail a
  botanical specimen, a string of prayer beads, or
  a crystal carafe. Grünewald's art is now
  recognized as an often painful and confused but
  always highly personal and inspired response to
  the turmoil of his times.
• This altarpiece inspired Paul Hindemith, one of
  the most significant German composers of the 20th
  century, to create his opera and symphony
  entitled "Mathis the Painter".

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Nicolas Hilliard Portrait of Elizabeth I,
Queen of England 1575-76National Portrait
Gallery, London
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Portrait of Elizabeth I, Queen of England

• The Virgin Queen, as she fashioned herself,
  controlled her never aging image. Elizabeth is an
  icon here. She bears the red Tudor rose in her
  right hand. She also sports a jewelled Tudor rose
  on her chest just above a phoenix. This mythical
  desert-bird was a symbol of immortality and
  regeneration, since it would renew itself by
  building a funeral pyre and then rise again from
  its ashes. Here the phoenix functions as a symbol
  for her reign.

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Nicolas Hilliard A Youth Leaning Against a
Tree Among Roses c.1580Victoria and Albert
Museum, London
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A Youth Leaning Against a Tree Among Roses

• Hilliard developed in the miniature an intimacy
  and subtlety peculiar to that art. He combined
  his unerring use of line with a jeweller's
  exquisiteness in detail, an engraver's elegance
  in calligraphy, and a unique realization of the
  individuality of each sitter. His miniatures are
  often freighted with enigmatic inscription and
  intrusive allegory (e.g. a hand reaching from a
  cloud) yet this literary burden usually manages
  to heighten the vividness with which the sitter's
  face is impressed. Apart from the Queen herself,
  many others of the great Elizabethans sat for
  him, including Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter
  Raleigh, and Sir Philip Sidney.

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Isaac Oliver Frances Howard, Countess of
Somerset and Essex c. 1595 Victoria and
Albert Museum, London
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Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset and Essex

• Oliver was made Limmer to the Queen Anne of
  Denmark in 1604, and was patronized by Henry,
  Prince of Wales, and his circle. His style was
  more naturalistic than that of Hilliard, using
  light and shade to obtain modelling and generally
  dispensing with the emblematic trappings so
  beloved of the Elizabethan age.