Wendel Dietterlin

Dietterlin was born at Pfullendorf in Württemberg; his original name was Grapp and he may have been a member of a family of artists in Swabia,[3] spent most of his life in Strasbourg (then Strassburg), where he married Catharina Sprewer on 12 November 1570, and where he is known to have painted frescos for the Bruderhof, the Bishop's residence, in 1575, but he is later recorded in Hagenau in 1583 and in Oberkirch in 1589.

The Renaissance Lusthaus having later been rebuilt several times and almost entirely replaced in 1845 by the new Hoftheater (which was destroyed in a fire in 1902, when some of the remains of the original building came to light),[5] nothing is now preserved of the paintings from the hall, but they are depicted in a 1619 etching by the Strasbourg-based painter and engraver Friedrich Brentel showing the interior of the large room.

The style, with "exaggerated foreshortenings", appears influenced by North Italian models, such as Giulio Romano's frescos in Mantua, through German intermediaries.

Dietterlin's architectural treatise Architectvra: Von Außtheilung, Symmetria vnd Proportion der Fünff Seulen was first published in separate parts in 1593 and 1594, and finally in a combined and expanded edition in 1598.

Dietterlin was dependent on many older models, and like other representatives of the Northern Renaissance (such as Hans Vredeman de Vries) he filled his surfaces with scrollwork, strapwork, gemshapes and grotesques.