Art: GERMAN MASTERS

THE hallmark of German art at its best, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, has been its strong design and sure draftsmanship. Nowhere is this more evident than in the long history of great German drawings. Now, for the first time, U.S. gallerygoers have a chance to judge the full sweep of the Germans’ monumental achievement. The first full-scale exhibition of six centuries of German drawing ever put together in one show opened this week in Washington’s National Gallery, first stop in a cross-country tour of four major U.S. cities. To show the whole range of German drawing, from medieval guild model books to 20th century Germany’s Käthe Kollwitz, the West German government assembled 153 key works from 26 German museums and collectors. The result proves that though German artists rarely top the rich palettes of Italian painters or outdo the French in taste and elegance, as superb draftsmen they are second to none.

Until almost the peak of the Italian Renaissance, German painters remained absorbed in refining their own massive, strong-lined Gothic style. The first great German artist to cross the Italian Alps was Albrecht Dürer, who returned with his eyes aglow. Back home in Niirnberg, young Dürer began turning out drawings and prints that combined the high skills of medieval German craftsmanship with the new techniques and ideas he had discovered in Venice. The result was the opening of the Northern Renaissance. Dürer’s prints and drawings became sought-after collectors’ items and elevated graphic art into a recognized art form in its own right. Even in his preliminary drawings, such as the one he did for a now destroyed Frankfurt altarpiece (see cut). Dürer revealed the caliber of his genius: with a few deft brush strokes on green paper, he was able to depict the figure of an aged apostle fully molded, superbly draped and dramatically lighted, with a power and emotional impact that few oil painters could surpass.

The success of Dürer’s work led the way for other German artists—Matthias Grünewald, Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Holbein the Younger and Martin Luther’s great friend, Lucas Cranach—whose work made Germany for half a century the leader of the Northern Renaissance. The level of excellence achieved in this brief period is shown by Cranach’s son and pupil, Lucas Cranach the Younger. Starting with a piece of paper tinted slightly pink, the young Cranach sketched the head and shoulders of the young Princess Elizabeth of Saxony (see color page) with quick brush strokes of brown ink, then tinted the face and hair with oil paint. The result of a few hours’ work is a freshly seen and unforgettable image of a young girl—demure, a trifle petulant and uncertainly trembling on the threshold of womanhood.