(b Kronach, Franconia, 1472; d Weimar, 16 Oct. 1553). German painter and designer of woodcuts. He takes his name from the small town in south Germany where he was born. Very little is known of his life before he moved to Vienna in 1501/2 and started working for the humanist circles associated with the newly founded university. His stay in Vienna was brief (he left in 1504), but in this period he painted some of his finest and most original works. They include portraits, notably those of Johannes Cuspinian, a lecturer at the university, and his wife Anna (1502–3, Reinhart Coll., Winterthur), and several religious works in which he shows a remarkable feeling for the beauty of landscape characteristic of the Danube School. The finest example of this manner is perhaps the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), which shows the Holy Family resting in the glade of a German pine forest.

Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)


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