Baldung Grien, Hans (b. 1484-85, Schwäbisch-Gmünd, Württemberg (now Germany); d. 1545, Imperial Free City of Strasbourg (now France)).  German painter and graphic artist.  He probably trained with Dürer in Nuremberg, but his brilliant color, expressive use of distortion, and taste for the gruesome bring him closer in spirit to his other great German contemporary, Grünewald.

By 1503 Baldung had moved to Nuremberg and had become a member of Albrecht Dürer's workshop.  It was probably here that he acquired the nickname "Grien", perhaps a reference to his use of the color green or a preference for green attire -- he has a marked affinity for the color green, and many of his religious scenes are bathed in a weird, supernatural glow.  It could also have distinguished him from Hans Schäufelein, Hans Süss von Kulmbach, and Hans Dürer, Albrecht's younger brother, all of whom were in Dürer's atelier.  Baldung immediately absorbed Dürer's formal vocabulary, as is evident in one of his earliest dated works, the 1503 pen drawing of Aristotle and Phyllis.  This picture symbolizes the power of the women by representing the philosopher Aristotle as he brings on his back his lover, Phyllis.  This story was often pictured by Renaissance artists.

 Baldung’s “Two Witches” will therefore be the center of an exhibition in the Städel Museum, which tries to illuminate its potential layers of meaning.  In our view, the very function of this painting, certainly a top quality collector’s item or “Kunstkammerstück”, was basically to engage a sophisticated audience (e.g. a dinner party entertained by its aristocratic or patrician owner) in a conversation that would touch not only on various views of witchcraft – taking a quite liberal stand on this – but also on artistic questions, on female beauty and the pictorial means of capturing it, as well as on erotic desires, on lust and love as well as its dangers, on prostitution and possibly even on syphilis, reflecting Girolamo Fracastoro’s artificial myth of the outbreak of the disease.  The exhibition will also highlight ironic subtexts contained in the work: Baldung’s mockery of contemporary theories of supernatural phenomena as well as his satirical comment on Albrecht Dürer’s art theoretical doctrine, which he obviously found too exacting.

Above all, “Two Witches” perfectly fits into Baldung’s general concept of – or rather his obsession with – the tragic relationship between love and death caused by the explicitly sexual dimension of the Fall of Man.  To make this point the exhibition will reunite the most important depictions of “The Maiden attacked by Death”, “Adam and Eve” and “The Fall of Man” Hans Baldung from Florence, Basel, Ottawa, Dresden, Coburg and Madrid. Finally, his famous woodcuts of “Wild Stallions” and a “Bewitched Horsegroom” will link the material related to witchcraft with that referring to the original sin. 

At the time of his death in September, 1545, Baldung was a member of the city council of Strasbourg and one of that city's richest citizens.  His artistic estate went to Nicolaus Kremer, who was probably a pupil.

Hans Baldung Grien was Dürer's most inventive and talented disciple, who nonetheless achieved a distinctive style.  Baldung's work was expressionistic, imaginative and vividly colorful.  His output was varied and extensive, including religious works, allegories and mythologies, portraits, designs for stained glass and tapestries, and a large body of graphic work, particularly book illustrations.  Baldung's oeuvre consists of approximately 90 paintings and altarpieces, about 350 drawings and 180 woodcuts and book illustrations.

Eroticism is often strongly present in his engravings, the best known of which is The Bewitched Groom (1544), which has been interpreted as an allegory of lust.  Visit Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt at : www.staedelmuseum.de