Spotlight on Hans Baldung Grien
Beautiful and strange: advanced imagery in an early work
This Spotlight focuses on the German artist, Hans Baldung Grien (1484/5–1545) and his painting of The Holy Family with Five Angels of c. 1507/8 (fig. 1). Baldung’s version of this familiar scene was painted very early on in his prolific career and demonstrates both the artist’s unique ability to render lifelike detail and his penchant — still developing at this time — for the extraordinary and fantastical.
Fig. 1. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8
A favoured student of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Hans Baldung, called ‘Grien’, created this Holy Family around the time when he departed from the master’s workshop in Nuremberg.1 The Italianate landscape complete with gondoliers visible behind the colonnaded balcony owes a debt to Dürer’s recent return from a two-year-long Venetian sojourn, during which time he left Baldung in charge of his prestigious atelier, a mark of both the trust between the two men and the younger’s immense talent.2 Best known for his iconographical explorations of death and the supernatural, Baldung’s oeuvre is a mesmerising combination of wonderfully beautiful and strangely disconcerting imagery.3
Baldung painted several representations of the Holy Family, though the Klesch painting is the earliest surviving rendition of this scene within his oeuvre. The figures cluster around the centre of the panel, with the infant Christ child at the exact midpoint. Both Christ and the Virgin Mary gaze softly towards an indeterminate point outside of the picture plane. Joseph, meanwhile, gazes downwards at his wife — reinforcing the strong diagonal from lower left to upper right — with his hands joined in benediction immediately above Christ’s downy head. To the viewer’s left, a small dog is intentionally cropped by the edge of the panel, its right eye just visible, pointed intently at the family as he guards the perimeter of the painting. In the central foreground, a flute-playing cherub grips the mantle of the Virgin with his left hand. The angel closest to Joseph gazes upwards, with his lips parted, as if caught mid-song, while his lute-wielding companion at the lower right frowns under a furrowed brow at his instrument.
Fig. 2. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8, detail
Baldung’s painting is riddled with odd physical dimensions — the left foot of the flute-playing cherub is sickled into an uncomfortable position which seems almost impossible, as if the anatomical right heel were grafted onto the left ankle (fig. 2). Perhaps most peculiar are the unique proportions of St Joseph’s skull and red eyes, made more prominent by the contrast with the green velvet curtain concealing the right side of the room (fig. 3). Joseph’s head was enlarged during the painting process, as evidenced by the presence of a pentimento wonderfully visible with the naked eye, and its exaggerated proportion can already be seen in two Baldung etchings dated to 1507, one of which derives from a Dürer composition from the 1490s of ill-matched lovers (fig. 4).4 This type of enlarged cranium, accompanied by a full white beard and sparser grey moustache, recurs in Baldung’s oeuvre at the end of his career, in a Holy Family dated to 1539 (now in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe), in which Joseph is portrayed with a distinct frown beside a beaming Virgin. If Baldung was operating within the confines of the accepted formulae for religious scenes when he painted the Klesch Holy Family, he was also experimenting with representations of the human form and with heterodox renderings of familiar themes.
Fig. 4. Albrecht Dürer, Das ungleiche Paar, c. 1495, etching, 148 x 138 mm, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Kupferstichkabinett.
Fig. 3. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8, detail
Baldung’s painting is riddled with odd physical dimensions — the left foot of the flute-playing cherub is sickled into an uncomfortable position which seems almost impossible, as if the anatomical right heel were grafted onto the left ankle (fig. 2). Perhaps most peculiar are the unique proportions of St Joseph’s skull and red eyes, made more prominent by the contrast with the green velvet curtain concealing the right side of the room (fig. 3). Joseph’s head was enlarged during the painting process, as evidenced by the presence of a pentimento wonderfully visible with the naked eye, and its exaggerated proportion can already be seen in two Baldung etchings dated to 1507, one of which derives from a Dürer composition from the 1490s of ill-matched lovers (fig. 4).4 This type of enlarged cranium, accompanied by a full white beard and sparser grey moustache, recurs in Baldung’s oeuvre at the end of his career, in a Holy Family dated to 1539 (now in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe), in which Joseph is portrayed with a distinct frown beside a beaming Virgin. If Baldung was operating within the confines of the accepted formulae for religious scenes when he painted the Klesch Holy Family, he was also experimenting with representations of the human form and with heterodox renderings of familiar themes.
Fig. 3. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8, detail
Baldung toyed with the balance between beauty and deformity, inviting viewers to contemplate the encoded messages within his work. By contrasting the pallid Virgin’s flaxen beauty with Joseph’s tawny, aged complexion — a juxtaposition much akin to that of an ill-matched pair — Baldung highlights the divinity of the Immaculate Conception. The blue sky and flourishing trees visible in the background contrast with the dark walls and single dandelion bloom of the interior space, the latter signifying perseverance through divine trial. Christ grasps a pear with His left hand — symbolising both original sin and the cycle of regeneration — proffered by a winged cherub. Finally, the infant’s gesture towards His heart, the eventual location of the side wound as it was understood at the time of painting, reveals the ultimate message, that of Christ’s sacrifice out of love for humanity. This Holy Family, surrounded by cherubs and made perfect by the presence of Christ, represents an early foray in Baldung’s oeuvre towards the rethinking of traditional iconography, the result being a unique marriage of the beautiful and marvellous.
Fig. 4. Albrecht Dürer, Das ungleiche Paar, c. 1495, etching, 148 x 138 mm, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Kupferstichkabinett.
Notes
1. H. Jacob-Friesen (ed.), Hans Baldung Grien. Heilig / Unheilig., exh. cat., Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 2020, p. 94.
2. L. Silver, review of ‘Hans Baldung Grien: Heilig / Unheilig’, The Burlington Magazine 162, no. 1409 (August 2020), p. 701.
3. J.L. Koerner, ‘The Mortification of the Image: Death as a Hermeneutic in Hans Baldung Grien’, Representations 10 (1985), pp. 52–101.
4. Hans Baldung Grien, Der bartige Alte, c. 1507, etching, 10.9 x 8 cm, Stiftung Schloss Friendenstein Gotha.
Hans Baldung Grien, Das ungleiche Paar, 1507, etching, 17.3 x 12.5 cm, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett.
Spotlight on Hans Baldung Grien
Beautiful and strange: advanced imagery in an early work
This Spotlight focuses on the German artist, Hans Baldung Grien (1484/5–1545) and his painting of The Holy Family with Five Angels of c. 1507/8 (fig. 1). Baldung’s version of this familiar scene was painted very early on in his prolific career and demonstrates both the artist’s unique ability to render lifelike detail and his penchant — still developing at this time — for the extraordinary and fantastical.
Fig. 1. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8
A favoured student of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Hans Baldung, called ‘Grien’, created this Holy Family around the time when he departed from the master’s workshop in Nuremberg.1 The Italianate landscape complete with gondoliers visible behind the colonnaded balcony owes a debt to Dürer’s recent return from a two-year-long Venetian sojourn, during which time he left Baldung in charge of his prestigious atelier, a mark of both the trust between the two men and the younger’s immense talent.2 Best known for his iconographical explorations of death and the supernatural, Baldung’s oeuvre is a mesmerising combination of wonderfully beautiful and strangely disconcerting imagery.3
Baldung painted several representations of the Holy Family, though the Klesch painting is the earliest surviving rendition of this scene within his oeuvre. The figures cluster around the centre of the panel, with the infant Christ child at the exact midpoint. Both Christ and the Virgin Mary gaze softly towards an indeterminate point outside of the picture plane. Joseph, meanwhile, gazes downwards at his wife — reinforcing the strong diagonal from lower left to upper right — with his hands joined in benediction immediately above Christ’s downy head. To the viewer’s left, a small dog is intentionally cropped by the edge of the panel, its right eye just visible, pointed intently at the family as he guards the perimeter of the painting. In the central foreground, a flute-playing cherub grips the mantle of the Virgin with his left hand. The angel closest to Joseph gazes upwards, with his lips parted, as if caught mid-song, while his lute-wielding companion at the lower right frowns under a furrowed brow at his instrument.
Fig. 2. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8, detail
Fig. 3. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8, detail
Baldung’s painting is riddled with odd physical dimensions — the left foot of the flute-playing cherub is sickled into an uncomfortable position which seems almost impossible, as if the anatomical right heel were grafted onto the left ankle (fig. 2). Perhaps most peculiar are the unique proportions of St Joseph’s skull and red eyes, made more prominent by the contrast with the green velvet curtain concealing the right side of the room (fig. 3). Joseph’s head was enlarged during the painting process, as evidenced by the presence of a pentimento wonderfully visible with the naked eye, and its exaggerated proportion can already be seen in two Baldung etchings dated to 1507, one of which derives from a Dürer composition from the 1490s of ill-matched lovers (fig. 4).4 This type of enlarged cranium, accompanied by a full white beard and sparser grey moustache, recurs in Baldung’s oeuvre at the end of his career, in a Holy Family dated to 1539 (now in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe), in which Joseph is portrayed with a distinct frown beside a beaming Virgin. If Baldung was operating within the confines of the accepted formulae for religious scenes when he painted the Klesch Holy Family, he was also experimenting with representations of the human form and with heterodox renderings of familiar themes.
Fig. 4. Albrecht Dürer, Das ungleiche Paar, c. 1495, etching, 148 x 138 mm, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Kupferstichkabinett.
Baldung toyed with the balance between beauty and deformity, inviting viewers to contemplate the encoded messages within his work. By contrasting the pallid Virgin’s flaxen beauty with Joseph’s tawny, aged complexion — a juxtaposition much akin to that of an ill-matched pair — Baldung highlights the divinity of the Immaculate Conception. The blue sky and flourishing trees visible in the background contrast with the dark walls and single dandelion bloom of the interior space, the latter signifying perseverance through divine trial. Christ grasps a pear with His left hand — symbolising both original sin and the cycle of regeneration — proffered by a winged cherub. Finally, the infant’s gesture towards His heart, the eventual location of the side wound as it was understood at the time of painting, reveals the ultimate message, that of Christ’s sacrifice out of love for humanity. This Holy Family, surrounded by cherubs and made perfect by the presence of Christ, represents an early foray in Baldung’s oeuvre towards the rethinking of traditional iconography, the result being a unique marriage of the beautiful and marvellous.