Venus and Cupid (1525) by Lucas Cranach the Elder was bought for pounds 2,100,00 and Maria Lactans: The Virgin and Child Crowned by Angels in a Window Embrasure by
Martin Schongauer was purchased for pounds 900,000.
One was the traditional German Gothic style of
Martin Schongauer and Matthias Grunewald and the other, newer, style of the Italian Renaissance, as found in the work of Giovanni Belini, Andrea Mantegna and Raphael.
He then travelled all over Germany, reaching the Upper Rhine to seek the leading painter and engraver of the day,
Martin Schongauer.
These artists include the sculptors Veit Stoss, who seems to have been both colleague and competitor, and Niclaus Gerhaert von Leiden, the older artist from whom Riemenschneider seems to have learned the most, and the engraver
Martin Schongauer, a crucial figure both for his own compositions, which served Riemenschneider as models, and for his role as a disseminator of Rogier van der Weyden's images, which influenced the sculptor profoundly.
With the approach of the end of the fifteenth century, artists such as
Martin Schongauer (1450--1491) and Hans Holbein the Elder (1465?--1524) emerged, embodying the new rise in individuality not only in personal artistic styles but also in the new prominence of portraiture and the emphasis on distinct personalities.
In chapter one, late fifteenth-century tradition is represented by a group of only three prints consisting of woodcuts designed by Albrecht Durer's teacher, Michael Wolgemut, and his business partner Wilhelm Pleydenwufff, along with
Martin Schongauer's Death of the Virgin, which was viewed as the most famous engraving of its day (even if it was made at least a decade before 1490).
There is a fascinating exhibition in the East Section of the National Gallery (through August 6) titled "Imitation and Invention: Old Master Prints and their Sources" in which one can perceive Durer and Rembrandt appropriating to their own ends features from the prints of van Leyden or
Martin Schongauer. Engravings were repositories of transmissible visual resolutions: An ornamental building in a print of Durer's all at once will appear in prints made by Italian artists, even if the building has no architectural counterpart in Italy.
It also includes drawings and prints by contemporaries, including
Martin Schongauer's etching A Foolish Virgin in half-length, c.
Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder was bought for pounds 2.1 million and Maria Lactans: TheVirgin and Child Crowned by Angels in a Window Embrasure by
Martin Schongauer for pounds 900,000 at the most recent Sotheby's sale of old master paintings.
Karl Moseneder explores the reasons why the young Michelangelo copied
Martin Schongauer's Temptation of St.