hard-edge painting
Bernhard Strigel was a German painter of the Swabian school, one of the most important masters of the transitional period between the Gothic and the Renaissance.
Bernhard came from a family of artists from Memmingen. He painted works on religious and historical subjects, but became more famous as a portrait painter. The artist painted many portraits of noble citizens of his time in the spirit of the early Northern Renaissance.
Strigel enjoyed the patronage of Emperor Maximilian I and in 1515 became his court painter in Vienna. Here in the same year he created one of the earliest group portraits in Germany, a depiction of Maximilian I and his family. In the last years of his life he gave up religious work and devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture.
Carl Spitzweg was a German romanticist painter, especially of genre subjects. He is considered to be one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier era.
Johann Liss was a German painter of the first third of the 17th century. He is known as a painter, draughtsman and printmaker, who worked in Italy for much of his life, and as the son and namesake of Johann Liss, a painter at the court of the Dukes of Holstein.
Johann Liss worked primarily in the mythological genre. He is considered one of the key artists of the German Baroque and a prominent representative of the Venetian school. Early in his career, the artist traveled to the Netherlands, where he was influenced by a number of Dutch and Flemish masters. Italy inspired him to synthesize Dutch genre painting, Venetian style and Roman realism.
His paintings are in numerous European collections as well as in Russia and the United States.
Anton Graff was an eminent Swiss portrait artist. Among his famous subjects were Friedrich Schiller, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Heinrich von Kleist, Frederick the Great, Friederike Sophie Seyler, Johann Gottfried Herder, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn and Christian Felix Weiße. His pupils included Emma Körner, Philipp Otto Runge and Karl Ludwig Kaaz.
Jan Lievens was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and engraver of the Golden Age and a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp.
It is known that while still very young, at the age of twelve, Lievens already created skillful paintings that amazed art lovers of Leiden. He was later friendly with Rembrandt, shared a studio with him, and painted in a similar style. Lievens was also a court painter in England and elsewhere.
Jan Leavens created genre scenes, landscapes, ceremonial portraits and sketches on various themes, as well as religious and allegorical images, which were already highly valued during his lifetime.
