Martin Schongauer
Le bel immortel
Martin Schongauer is one of the most important and popular German artists of the late Middle Ages. Born in Colmar around 1445 and died in Breisach in 1491, he established himself as a painter but owed his fame, even during his lifetime, to his work as an engraver. The son and brother of goldsmiths, he did not practice this trade himself but certainly learned the delicate handling of the burin in his father’s workshop, which he brought to a high degree of perfection.
The exhibition presents a wide selection of his engraved and drawn works and, for the first time, almost all of his easel paintings and altarpieces, including the Virgin of the Rose Bush of 1473, his only dated painted panel. Schongauer reveals himself as a keen observer of nature, an inventive and delicate storyteller, but also as a learned artist.
Martin Schongauer’s widely circulated engravings captivated several generations of artists. Drawing on all the arts, the works presented in the second part of the exhibition, originating from a large part of the European continent and created up to the very beginning of the 17th century, allow us to appreciate this broad artistic reception of the works of “Beautiful Martin”.
