Martin Schongauer
Martin Schongauer (Colmar, towards 1450 - Old man-Brisach, 1491) was a painter and Alsatian engraver of the end of the Moyen-âge. The engraver (on wood and copper) most famous of its time, his fame extended as far as Italy (Michel-Angel admired it) and in the Netherlands. Albrecht Dürer wanted to become its disciple, but Schongauer died prematurely whereas Dürer was not any more but at a few days of voyage from Colmar.
Wire of Gaspard Schongauer, a goldsmith colmarien having acquired the right of middle-class in 1445, the young person Martin Schongauer studied at the university of Leipzig towards 1465 before following an itinerant formation which one knows few things, put besides his probable presence with Beaune, in Burgundy, where it copied the last Jugement of Rogier van der Weyden in 1469. Of return to Colmar little time after this last date, Schongauer there carried out the Vierge with the bush of pinks (1473) and acquired of the house known as " In Cygne" (1477). Although he was the pupil of an Alsatian painter (perhaps Gaspard Isenmann of Colmar), Martin Schongauer reported his voyages (which perhaps took it along to the Netherlands) a thorough knowledge of the Flemish art of the 15th century that he integrated with much smoothness into a pictorial style uniting the expressionism and the idealism of the international Gothic into the naturalism of the Scandinavian Rebirth. The most famous works of Schongauer are the Retable S of Jean d' Orlier (Musée of Unterlinden, Colmar) and of the Virgin to the Bush of Pinks (Église of the Dominicains, Colmar), this last table considered by much as a chief of work of the German painting of all times because of its harmonious, delicate and balanced character, and of the smoothness of its composition (of which perception however is distorted today by the fact that the table, in the rectangular beginning and of colossal size, was cut out thereafter on the four sides) and of its color. The museums of Berlin, Vienna (Austria) and of Munich have as for them small tables, representative them-also of the religious reasons.
The cathedral of Old man-Brisach (city whose painter acquired the right of middle-class in 1489) is decorated of his Fresque S representing the last Jugement , his last work, unfinished and very degraded, but which is not less impressive by its great dimensions (v.1489-1491).
Martin Schongauer was called " beautiful Martin" ( Hübsch Martin - alternative orthographies Hüpsch or Hipsch , litt. " pretty Martin"), because of the grace and of finished of its work, but more probably still because of the shortening of its patronym as a Martin Schön ( schön = beautiful).
The painter Hans Burgkmair was his pupil between 1488 and 1490.
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