While "The Renaissance Nude" presents works by Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach, and
Martin Schongauer in the north and Donatello, Raphael, and Giorgione in the south; it also introduces names that deserve to be known better.
These were contextualized within Florentine art production and patronage, as the room included drawings from the Ghirlandaio workshop in which Michelangelo trained, works by Verrocchio and the Pollaiuolo brothers, drawings by Michelangelo after the eminent masters of an earlier generation (Giotto, Masaccio, and Donatello); and work by
Martin Schongauer, one of many Northern European artists favored in Florence in the late fifteenth century.
The young artist copied an engraving--made just prior to or the year of Michelangelo's birth--by German artist
Martin Schongauer. Again, the young artist channeled a more mature posture.
A small oil-and-tempera painting called The Torment of Saint Anthony, based on a print by
Martin Schongauer, may also predate his Ghirlandaio stint.
Intriguingly, their hitherto unrecognised common source is an engraving by
Martin Schongauer of a Peasant Family on the Way to Market, which was also copied by Herri met de Bles in his Landscape with a Smelter in the National Gallery, Prague.
(A riposte to Jeff Koons's Kiepenkerl, 1987?) These women evoke Durer's brooding Melancholia, 1514, or the witches of
Martin Schongauer rather than a placid Athena as the incarnation of wisdom, for whom the owl is avian insignia.
Rather, the works emanating from his series of performance-based pieces called Drawing Restraint, of which there are 18 numbers, or episodes (thus far), are presented in tandem with a selection of Northern Renaissance prints and paintings, most with explicit Christian iconography, from various collections in the surrounding region by the artists Hans Baldung Grien, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Durer, Hendrick Goltzius, Urs Graf,
Martin Schongauer, and a few others.
1487-88), which was hung alongside a facsimile of
Martin Schongauer's Temptation of Saint Anthony engraving (original ca.
Detail from the
Martin Schongauer painting, The Agony in the Garden, part of the Walker Art Gallery's Roscoe Collection Code: eb160908aroscoe-3; Greenhill Nursery gardeners Peter Morland, left, and Gerrard Weaver, two of Jyll Bradley's subjects at the Walker exhibition; and, inset, a picture from Ms Bradley showing the state of some of the gardens' records Pictures: EDDIE BARFORD/eb160908aroscoe-6, left, and eb160908aroscoe-5, inset; May 28, 1963, Cllr Ruth Dean, Alderman A Griffin, and Cllr Marion Brown admiring the tropical plants at Harthill Estate Botanic Gardens, during the annual inspection by Liverpool Parks and Gardens Committee
And there are prints by
Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Durer, dating from around 1470 and 1505 respectively.