Stefan Lochner

His paintings combine that era's tendency toward long flowing lines and brilliant colours with the realism, virtuoso surface textures and innovative iconography of the early Northern Renaissance.

Art historians associating the Dombild Altarpiece master with the historical Stefan Lochner think he was born in Meersburg in south-west Germany around 1410, and that he spent some of his apprenticeship in the Low Countries.

J. F. Böhmer in an 1823 article identified the Dombild (meaning "Cathedral picture") or Altarpiece of the City's Patron Saints with a work mentioned in an account of a visit to Cologne in 1520 in the diary of Albrecht Dürer.

[12] Johann Dominicus Fiorillo discovered a 15th-century record that read "in 1380 there was an excellent painter in Cologne called Wilhelm, who had no equal in his art and who depicted human beings as if they were alive".

In this way, he placed the lighter "gaiety" of Lochner's Madonna paintings from the beginning of his career with the more stern and pessimistic crucifixions and doom panels at the end.

[15] Based on their similarity to the Altar of the City Patrons, art historians have attributed other paintings to Lochner, although a number have questioned whether the diary entry was authentically made by Dürer.

[18] The outline of the historical Stefan Lochner's life has been established from a small number of records, mostly relating to commissions, payments and property transfers.

[19] There are no documents relating to his early life, a contributing factor being the loss of archival records from his supposed birthplace during the French occupation of Cologne.

[20] The primary sources relating to Lochner's life are a June 1442 payment by the city of Cologne in relation to Friedrich's visit; deeds of 27 October 1442 and 28 August 1444 outlining the transfer of ownership of the house at Roggendorf; October 1444 deeds for the purchase of two houses in st Alban; his 24 June 1447 registration as a citizen of Cologne; his December 1447 election to the municipal council; his Christmas 1450 re-election to that post; an August 1451 correspondence with the city council; a 22 September 1451 announcement of the setting up of a plague graveyard next to his property, and finally, court records dated 7 January 1452 detailing the appropriation of his property.

[27] The city had a long tradition of producing high-quality visual art, and in the 14th century, its output was considered to be equal to that of Vienna and Prague.

Cologne's artists concentrated on more personal and intimate subject matters, and the area became known for its production of small panels of "great lyrical charm and loveliness, which reflected the deep devotion of the writings of the German mystics".

[31] According to the art historian Emmy Wellesz, after Lochner's arrival "painting in Cologne became infused with a new life", perhaps enriched by the earlier exposure to the Netherlandish artists.

He introduced a number of progressions to painting in Cologne, especially by filling his backgrounds and landscapes with specific and elaborate details, and by rendering his figures with more bulk and volume.

His devotion is reflected in his figures: it charges with symbolic meaning the smallest details of his paintings; and, in a hidden, almost magical way, it speaks from the concord of his pure and glowing colours.

"[38] Lochner painted with oil, preparing the surface in a way typical of other North German artists; in some works, he attached canvas to the panel support underneath the usual chalk ground.

In this, he refers to an older tradition of indicating women of high nobility whose paleness was associated with a life spent indoors, "shielded from toiling in the fields, which was the lot of most".

[47] Notable and elaborate painted examples include the tooled gold border of the angelic concert in his Last Judgement, and Gabriel's clasp on the outer wing of the Dombild altarpiece.

Infrared reflectography of the underdrawings for the Last Judgement panels show letters used to denote the final colour to be applied, for example g for gelb (yellow) or w for weiss (white), and there are few deviations in the finished work.

Lochner employed the notion of supernatural illumination not just from van Eyck but also from von Soest's Crucifixion, where light emanating from Christ dissolves around John's red robe, as yellow rays eventually become white.

[52] Unlike the painters in the Low Countries, Lochner was not so concerned with delineating perspective; his pictures are often set in shallow space, while his backgrounds give little indication of distance and often dissolve into solid gold.

Recent dendrochronological examination of attributed works indicate that his development was not linear, suggesting that the more advanced Presentation in the Temple is of 1445, predating the more Gothic Saints panels now divided between London and Cologne.

Two surviving double-sided wing panels from an altarpiece with images of saints are in the London National Gallery and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne (this is now sawn through so both sides can be displayed on a wall).

The borders are ornamented in bright colours and contain acanthus scrolls, gold foliage, flowers, berry-like fruits and round pods.

[66] The art historian Ingo Walther detects Lochner's hand in the "pious intimacy and soulfulness of the figures, always expressed so gently and elegantly, even in the extremely small format of the pictures".

In addition, a number of contemporary stained glass panels are similar in style, and there has been debate whether he might have been responsible for church murals; the over-life-size figures of the Dombild and Virgin with the Violet indicate his ability to work on a monumental scale.

[68] Two drawings on paper in the British Museum and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts were at times thought to be studies for the Munich Nativity.

From the latter, he adopted the somewhat antiquated manner of depicting figures, especially females, with doll-like, eloquent and sensitive features to present "iconic, almost timeless" atmospheres enhanced by the then old-fashioned gold backgrounds.

His subjects, females in particular, usually have high foreheads, long noses, small rounded chins, tucked blond curls and prominent ears typical of the late Gothic, giving them the characteristic monumentality of 13th-century art, placing them on seemingly similar shallow backgrounds.

[78][79] The Heisterbach Altarpiece, a dismantled double set of wings now broken apart and divided between Bamberg and Cologne, is heavily indebted to Lochner's style.

The inner panels show sixteen scenes from the lives of Christ and of the Virgin that bear multiple similarities to Lochner's work, including in format, compositional motifs, physiognomy and colourisation.