He was born Hans Baldung at
Schwäbisch Gmünd
in
Swabia,
Germany,
the son of a lawyer, who moved to
Strassburg
in 1492. He was the only male member of his family not to
attend university; this background was unusual for an artist
at the time. His uncle became a doctor to the Emperor. He
spent the greater part of his life at Strassburg and
Freiburg im Breisgau.
He joined Dürer's
Nuremberg
workshop in 1503, probably after some initial training in
Strassburg, and stayed until 1507. He seems to have been
left in charge of the workshop during Dürer's second trip to
Italy. It is presumed that he acquired his nickname of
"Grien" (meaning "green") in
Nuremberg; the workshop seems to have had three Hanses in it
at one point. He later included it in his monogram; it has
also been suggested that it came from "grienhals", a German
word for witch. In his later trip to the Netherlands in 1521
Dürer's diary shows that he took with him and sold prints by
Baldung. On Dürer's death Baldung was sent a lock of his
hair, which suggests a close friendship.
In 1509 Baldung purchased a
citizenship of the city of Strassburg (then a German city,
now in France), and lived there till 1513. He then moved to
Freiburg im Breisgau
after being contacted to paint a large altarpiece for the
Freiburg Münster,
which he finished in 1516 (still in situ). He returned to
Strassburg
in 1517, and died as a member of the town council in 1545.
He had married Margarethe Herlin, from a prominent family in
the city, and owned a number of properties. Baldung died
before the year of 1700.
Work The earliest pictures assigned to him
by some are altar-pieces with the monogram H. B.
interlaced, and the date of 1496, in the monastery chapel of
Lichtenthal near
Baden-Baden.
Another early work is a portrait of the
emperor Maximilian,
drawn in 1501 on a leaf of a sketch-book now in the
print-room at
Karlsruhe.
"The Martyrdom of St Sebastian and the Epiphany" (Berlin
Museum), fruits of his labour in 1507, were painted for the
market-church of
Halle
in Saxony.
Baldung's
prints,
though Düreresque, are very individual in style, and often
in subject. They show little direct Italian influence. His
paintings are less important than his prints. He worked
mainly in
woodcut,
although he made six
engravings,
one very fine. He joined in the fashion for
chiaroscuro woodcuts,
adding a tone block to a woodcut of 1510.[1]
Most of his hundreds of
woodcuts
were commissioned for books, as was usual at the time; his
"single-leaf" woodcuts (ie prints not for book illustration)
are fewer than 100, though no two catalogues agree as to the
exact number.
He was extremely interested in witches
and made many images of them in different media, including
several very beautiful
drawings
finished with
bodycolour,
which are more erotic than his treatments in other
techniques.
Without absolute correctness as a
draughtsman, his conception of human form is often very
unpleasant, whilst a questionable taste is shown in ornament
equally profuse and baroque. Nothing is more remarkable in
his pictures than the pug-like shape of the faces, unless we
except the coarseness of the extremities. No trace is
apparent of any feeling for atmosphere or light and shade.
Though Grün has been commonly called the
Correggio
of the north, his compositions are a curious medley of
glaring and heterogeneous colours, in which pure black is
contrasted with pale yellow, dirty grey, impure red and
glowing green. Flesh is a mere glaze under which the
features are indicated by lines.
His works are mainly interesting
because of the wild and fantastic strength which some of
them display. We may pass lightly over the "Epiphany" of
1507, the "Crucifixion" of 1512, or the "Stoning of Stephen"
of 1522, in the Berlin Museum. There is some force in the
"Dance of Death" of 1517, in the museum of Basel, or the
Madonna of 1530, in the Liechtenstein Gallery at Vienna.
Grün's best effort is the altarpiece of Freiburg, where the
Coronation of the Virgin, and the Twelve Apostles, the
Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity and Flight into Egypt,
and the Crucifixion, with portraits of donors, are executed
with some of that fanciful power which
Martin Schongauer
bequeathed to the
Swabian school.
As a portrait painter he is well
known. He drew the likeness of
Charles V,
as well as that of Maximilian; and his bust of Margrave
Philip in the Munich Gallery tells us that he was connected
with the reigning family of Baden, as early as 1514. At a
later period he had sittings from Margrave Christopher of
Baden, Ottilia his wife, and all their children, and the
picture containing these portraits is still in the
grand-ducal gallery at Karlsruhe. Like Dürer and
Cranach,
Grün became a hearty supporter of the Reformation. He was
present at the
diet of Augsburg
in 1518, and one of his
woodcuts
represents
Luther
under the protection of the Holy Ghost, which hovers over
him in the shape of a dove.
