German and Netherlandish Paintings and Sculptures

On View: West Building, Main Floor

93 artworks on view.

A man hangs on a cross nestled into the splayed opening of a splintered, barren tree in a rocky landscape in this narrow, vertical composition, which is painted entirely in black and gray. The man’s hands are nailed to the ends of the wide crossbeam of the cross, and his overlapping feet are nailed to the vertical beam. He wears a ring of thorns on his head and a loincloth across his hips. A voluminous cloth lies just beyond the tree, and farther back on the angular rocks are a lion and mule. A cliff rises steeply to our left and a body of water to our right leads back to a castle-like structure.

Saint Jerome Penitent [left panel]

Jan Gossaert

c. 1509/1512

Oil on panel Accession ID 1952.5.40.a

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M41

Saint George and the Dragon

English 14th Century, English 15th Century

1370/1420

Painted and gilded alabaster Accession ID 1953.2.2

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M38

Madonna and Child with Saints in the Enclosed Garden

Anonymous Artist

c. 1440/1460

Oil on panel Accession ID 1959.9.3

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M39

Portrait of a Man

Hans Leonard Schäufelein

c. 1507

Oil on panel Accession ID 1937.1.66

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M35

An older woman sitting in a tall, wooden, throne-like chair, holding a seated baby in her lap, is flanked by a bearded man to our left and a young girl to our right in this vertical painting. All the people have pale or rosy skin and flat, plate-like halos, three of which are inscribed with names. The bearded man’s halo reads, “S IOHANE.” The older woman’s is “S ANNA,” and the young girl’s reads, “MARIA.” The throne takes up the right half of the composition. The face of the older woman, Saint Anne, is deeply creased, and she has jowls along her jawline and bags under her eyes. With a smile, she looks down at the baby in her lap. She wears a dark brown robe with a cream-white wimple that covers her hair and neck and cascades down her shoulders. A long, scarlet-red cloak drapes from her right shoulder, to our left, and across her lap. With that arm, she supports the seated baby, Jesus. The chubby baby is nude except for a silvery-white cloth gathered around his hips, and he faces our right, looking at the young woman there, Mary. He holds one hand up by his chest and, with the other, reaches for and grips a small, dark red apple Mary holds. Both Jesus and Mary have blond hair, rounded cheeks and jawlines, and full, rose-red lips. Mary’s long, wavy hair falls loosely to her waist. She holds out the apple with one hand and, with the other, picks up the skirt of her moss-green dress to reveal a powder-blue skirt beneath. One of Saint Anne’s large hands wraps around Mary’s lower back. The bearded man, Saint John, kneels on the other side of the throne, facing Mary. He looks at her with dark eyes under a gathered brow. Wrinkles line his cheeks, forehead, and the corners of his eyes. He points with his right hand, closer to us, at Jesus and gestures down at a white lamb, also with a halo, at his knees with the other. He has a cap of light brown, curly hair and a full beard. He wears a mustard-brown robe rolled back to the elbows. Behind the chair, a black wall has two steps down to span the background behind Saint John’s head. There is a white column on each step, and a landscape beyond has a river, trees, and a town nestled on craggy cliffs in the distance. The sky above is pale blue. With tiny letters, the artist signed the painting with his initials intertwined, “HBG,” on the throne between Saint Anne and Mary.

Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist

Hans Baldung Grien

c. 1511

Oil on hardboard transferred from panel Accession ID 1961.9.62

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M35

Saint Jerome Penitent [right panel]

Jan Gossaert

c. 1509/1512

Oil on panel Accession ID 1952.5.40.b

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M41

This painting shows a person standing in front of a window, turned slightly to the left. The person has fair skin, light blue eyes, and reddish-brown hair that falls just above their ears. Their pink lips are set in a neutral expression. They wear a flat black hat with a wide rim, and a brown fur mantle over a black garment with a tall white ruffled collar. They are holding a round orange fruit in their left hand, with a small gold ring on their pointer finger. The background on the right appears to be a green wall decorated with a faint yellow pattern. On the left is a window or opening that shows a landscape with a blue sky over a rocky mountain with green trees and small houses with red roofs. Below the mountain is a blue river and a brown road with a rider on horseback visible in the distance.

Hans Roth [obverse]

Bernhard Strigel

1527

Oil on panel Accession ID 1947.6.4.a

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M35

Shown from the waist up, a light-skinned woman sits angled slightly to our right in this vertical portrait painting. The woman has blue eyes, faint brows, and a sloping nose ending in a small bulb. Her upper lip is thin and her lower lip full over a slight double chin. Her blond hair is pulled back under a gold, cap-like headdress and a black, wide-brimmed hat with a shallow crown. She wears a high-necked white, black, and gold dress with intricate detailing, a gold chain necklace that falls to her waist, and a black belt with a gold clasp and medallions. She wears two gold rings set with gems on the pointer finger of her left hand, which is folded across her belly over the other hand. A scarlet-red wallcovering with pink floral designs fills two-thirds of the space behind her. The rightmost third of the background opens onto a landscape with a tall, spindly tree, a leaping animal, presumably a dog, and a bridge across a body of water leading to a town. Across another body of water, perhaps a lake, mountains are marine blue in the distance under a clear, celestial-blue sky.

Margarethe Vöhlin [obverse]

Bernhard Strigel

1527

Oil on panel Accession ID 1947.6.5.a

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M35

Three women and five men play cards around a round table covered with piles of gold coins in this square painting. The people all have pale skin. The women have round faces, close-set, small eyes, delicate noses and lips, and cleft chins. They wear dresses with tight bodices and long sleeves, and cloth head coverings. The men have prominent, bumped noses, furrowed brows, and lines around their eyes. They wear hats and voluminous robes and coats in shades of ruby red, moss green, golden brown, and black. Two women and two men play cards, and each has a second person behind them or at their shoulders. The woman along the left edge of the painting wears gloves, and she looks out at us. She points at the table or at the space between her and another card player. She holds her cards up so the six of hearts at the front is visible in front of a face card of hearts and a card with spades. A clean-shaven man standing behind her stoops and drapes his arms across her shoulders, one hand limp and gesturing with a three and the other hand cupping the woman’s cards. He looks across the table. The next player is also a woman, who rests one wrist on her face-down cards on the table. She counts out coins with her other hand, and the bearded man behind her stands with one hand tucked into the opening of his robe, leaning back as he looks across the table. Next, a clean-shaven man holds three cards up to his chest as he turns to look to our left, his brows gathered and lips parted. A woman stands between these two players with a hand draped over each of their shoulders. She peers down at the man’s cards and makes a number two with that hand. Her other loose fist rests on the shoulder of the second female card player. The final pair, along the right edge of the painting, are two men. The card player holds his cards so we see the ace of spades at the front. He points at a row of coins or toward the gap left between him and the woman to our left. He leans forward and looks intently, chin jutted out, at the man with his hand tucked into his robe. A man with a long gray beard sits just over the fourth player’s shoulder and appears to look across the scene absently with heavy-lidded eyes. The round table is covered in a teal-blue cloth. A rectangular sideboard in the back left of the room is covered with a white cloth and holds a vase of white flowers, a vessel, a wooden basket, and a piece of fruit. The wall behind this is gray along the top and wood-paneled below. An alcove in the wall to the right holds two vessels, a round gold-colored, plum-sized object, and another basket. A pale yellow curtain is pulled to the right side of that alcove.

The Card Players

Anonymous Artist

probably c. 1550/1599

Oil on panel Accession ID 1961.9.27

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M41

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman sits in front of a vast landscape and holds a nude baby boy on her lap in this horizontal painting. The woman, Mary, sits with her knees angled to our left, but she looks at us from the corners of brown eyes. She has a delicate nose, smooth cheeks, a pointed chin, and her pink lips are closed. A few strands of blond hair escape from braids that overlap across the top of her head. She wears a rose-red dress over a translucent white undergarment, which is visible along the neckline and on the forearms. A cloth striped with azure and powder blue, pale pink, lemon yellow, and teal drapes across her seated thighs and wraps back around her hips. One hand rests in her lap near one of the baby’s feet, and the other braces the child’s other hip. The baby, Jesus, has tightly curled blond hair and a flushed face. His body resembles a somewhat muscular adult. Jesus rests his shoulders back against the woman’s chest and turns to look up at her. One hand touches one of her breasts and the other holds a butterfly by its parchment-yellow wings. The foot not by the woman’s hand rests on a gold dagger near the woman’s far hip. A gnarled tree with dark green leaves winds from a rocky crag to our left. The pair are lit from our left, and Mary casts a shadow on the large, flat boulder on which she sits. The land dips steeply down beyond the boulder. A man wearing a pale pink garment that flaps in the wind stands on a rocky outcropping near a grazing animal. Tiny in scale, three more people walk or run in the distance to our right. Stone structures are tucked in among tree-dotted hills that roll gently back to a hazy blue, mountainous horizon, which comes about five-sixths of the way up this composition. The sky above is a similar icy blue.

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Maerten van Heemskerck

c. 1530

Oil on panel Accession ID 1961.9.36

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M41

This painting shows a group of seven people gathered together, three adults and four children. On the left, woman in a blue dress, green cloak, and white headscarf is holding a nude child on her lap. She is seated on what appears to be a brown bench. Two other children stand by her knees, playing with the child on her lap. Two men stand next to the woman on the right, one a younger bearded man in a red robe and tall red hat, and the other an older man wearing a fur-lined jacket over a peach-toned shirt and a yellow cap over his hair. In front of this group, near the bottom left corner, a fourth child in a white robe sits or crouches on the ground, holding a long T-shaped staff with white squares of cloth at the top. A small brown dog on the right is biting the staff. All seven people have pale skin, and the woman and children all have golden halos around their heads. At the top of the painting, the background is gilded in textured gold, while the floor at the bottom is gray.

Saint Mary Cleophas and Her Family

Bernhard Strigel

c. 1520/1528

Oil on panel Accession ID 1961.9.88

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M35

A woman wearing a cobalt-blue robe and a white veil sits with her hands raised, palms out, as she looks toward a slender, bearded man who stands to our left in this vertical painting. Both have light skin and delicate features, and they sit in a room with stone walls and arched windows. There are faint circles under the woman’s light brown eyes. She has a long slender nose, and her pink lips are pursed. One knee is bent, and she is low to the ground, suggesting she sits on a stool. A book lies open on a wooden stand in front of her to our right, below her left elbow. The ruffled edges of her multi-layered, white veil sweep over her forehead and down to her shoulders. Her loose, long-sleeved blue garment is edged with gold and falls in angular folds to pool at her feet. She holds her long-fingered, slender hands up at her chest, palms facing the man to our left. He stands with his body angled toward her as he looks down, his head tipped slightly forward. His brown hair falls over his shoulders. His voluminous, gold-edged, red cloak is fastened at his throat with a gold, jeweled brooch, and it drapes over his shoulders and around his lower torso, leaving his arms, chest, and a gash over his right ribs exposed. He holds a tall, gold staff topped with a jeweled cross in his left hand, to our right. A moss-green pennant flutters back from the base of the cross, as if lifted in a breeze. The man holds up his other hand so the palm faces the woman with the first two fingers raised. Round, puncture wounds with red blood mark the palm of that hand and tops of both bare feet. The floor is patterned with gray, brown, blue, and green tiles. The wall behind the woman has honey-brown paneling along the bottom half and the top half is slate gray. Gray columns are spaced along that wall, supporting a curving, vaulted ceiling. Two arched windows pierce the wall behind the woman, and both have stained glass designs within the curving tops. The window closer to us opens onto a narrow view of a landscape with a rose-pink arch over a bridge, and a path winding through green fields. An open door over the shoulder of the man, to our left, shows the stepped roofline of a pink building under a blue sky. The entire scene is framed with a flattened arch supported by gleaming columns of polished, veined brown stone, creating the impression that we look onto the people and room through the arch. The columns have leafy capitals and white bases. The tan-colored arch is carved with a row of stylized rosettes along the opening that spans the top of the painting.

Christ Appearing to the Virgin

Anonymous Artist

c. 1475

Oil on panel Accession ID 1937.1.45

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M39