After a very late, fairly enjoyable, and not very cheap lunch in the huge Arkaden shopping mall – so many ice cream places, so little protein – I walked back to the Kulturforum to visit the wonderful Gemäldegalerie (‘Painting Gallery’) for a small exhibition on the 16th-century artist and engraver Georg Pencz; the one-room show was curated by the Kupferstichkabinett (‘Engraving Cabinet’), the Gemäldegalerie’s neighbours in the Kulturforum.
Georg Pencz (~1500-1550) was some 20 years younger than Albrecht Dürer, the towering figure of 16th-century German painting and printmaking. Like Dürer he was based in Nuremburg, then the leading art centre in the German-speaking world, and in fact worked for a time in Dürer’s workshop. After Dürer died in 1528, Pencz – active as a painter, cartographer and engraver – was one of the most highly sought-after artists in Nuremberg; Dürer had apparently already faded into obscurity. Today, sadly, Pencz’s name is little known.
Most of the engravings on display were quite small, as if for book illustrations; beautiful and very interesting. But there were two or three larger (‘A4’ size) works, one of which was a remarkable coloured engraving titled ‘Venus’:
A larger Dürer too, which was pretty darned good. I wandered round the rest of the gallery, much of which I’d visited before, enjoying the works which attracted my eye rather than trying to be academic! The Kupferstichkabinett, upstairs in the same building, is closed for a while, and I ended a pleasant afternoon with a welcome hot chocolate in the large laid-back café next door. In the evening to the wilds of Görlitzer Straße to eat at the excellent Italian De Noantri.
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