Turmoil – social, political and spiritual – overshadowed southern Germany on the cusp between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. As elsewhere and at other times, the response of some artists to such conditions was an apparent denial of troublesome actuality beyond their workshop walls, and the creation of artworks of serene melancholy and stylised beauty.

The limewood and sandstone sculptures of Tilman Riemenschneider (c. 1460–1531) exemplify this tendency. Beauty of design and virtuosity of chisel never waver. But his genius propelled his art far beyond the realm of elegant escapism and suffused it with a profound spirituality which reaches out and touches us today. It helps that his best work remains in the places for which he made them, many of these being little country churches located deep in the lovely countryside of his native Franconia.

Riemenschneider qualifies as one of the greatest of great artists who remain largely unknown by the art-loving public – at least in English-speaking countries: in Germany he has long been a hero. That he enjoyed considerable success in his lifetime as both artisan and citizen is demonstrated by his large workshop and appointment as mayor of Würzburg. But his ambivalent response to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 led to his imprisonment by the Prince Bishop, an insight, rare for the mediaeval period, into the conflicts not only of the times but in the artist’s own mind. 

By contrast, with Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) we do not have to rely on inference because we can read his copious correspondence and theoretical treatises. Also Franconian, and only slightly younger, he was nevertheless a very different artist from Riemenschneider. Painter, draughtsman, designer and printmaker, he travelled widely, north and west to the Netherlands and the Rhineland and south to Italy, principally Venice. Here he was immersed in the ideals and practices of the Italian Renaissance, and his radically innovatory creations and staggering dexterous skills transformed the art of his homeland. Many regard him as Germany’s greatest artist; indisputably, he ushered in a new era for German art.

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