Strange Beauty... The title brought me to get interested in the exhibition as I was not keen to German painting or Renaissance before if I am quiet honest.
In my memory, these style of oil paintings, drawings and prints were seen in my father's very big and heavy collections of art book when I was very little. They were bit dark or ugly and scary scene to a little girl.
However, I am enough a grown-up not to be frighten and my attitude towards German masters is changed. German artists in their times, were willing to express a true, nature of beauty rather than embellishing the creatures.
Lucas Cranch the Elder
Cupid complaing ot Venus, about 1525
Hans Holbein the Younger
The Ambassadors,1533
Hans Holbein the Younger
A lady with squirrel and a starling
Albrecht Dürer
A Virgin with a Child(madonna)
Hans Holbein the Younger
Christina of Denmark (Duchess of Milan)
Mattias Gruewald
An Eldery Woman(Praying Woman)
Portrait of Albercht Durer
Sainsbury Wing
Critics have sometimes described German Renaissance art as 'ugly' because of its excessive emotion or natural detail, but the images themselves present more subtle relationships between beauty, nature and artistry. Alberecht Durer wrote of his constant search for accurate proportion, but he also observed that the human body exists in varied ideals of 'perfection', German artists created beautiful images by exploring the diversity of the human form, wether variations in body type, the effects of ageing, or the expressive power of gesture.
19 February - 11 May 2014
National Gallery
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