Hans Brüggemann

Brüggemann is believed to have been born in Walsrode near Hanover around 1480 and to have perfected his art by travelling to Bremen, Münster, the lower Rhine and Antwerp before returning to Husum where he established his workshop.

[1] Few details of his life remain but there is a contract from 1523 between the parish council of Walsrode and Hans Brüggemann commissioning him to produce a small altarpiece for the local church.

Other works ascribed to Brüggemann without any certainty include the wooden sculpture of St Christopher with the infant Jesus in Schleswig Cathedral and a few other altarpieces in Northern Germany.

The high degree of perspective with freely sculpted foreground figures appears to reflect the style of Tilman Riemenschneider and Albrecht Dürer.

[3] Overall, the altar has an almost chaotic look but each of the individual scenes reveals Brüggemann's fine skills depicting Adam and Eve covering their nakedness or the expressions of Christ and Abraham being freed from the land of the dead.