18 April 2008 – 21 September 2008

Focus on: Master of the Housebook (circle) -

The fourth exhibition in the “Focus on” series revolves around a Middle Rhenish panel from the Städel Museum collection: St. Jerome (St. Jerome in his Study), 1480, Inv. no. 1215, by the Master of the Housebook and/or his circle. There is a great deal more to this small and unassuming work than meets the eye at first sight. The still-life-like elements in St. Jerome’s study bear witness to the influence of Old Netherlandish painting, which had developed the principle of “disguised symbolism”, a strategy for alluding to an entire secondary motif or storyline. The manner in which that happens here is quite astonishing. It is not so much the legend of the saint himself but that of the lion, St. Jerome’s loyal companion, that is conjured up by the hearth and the firewood.



This unusual augmentation of a pictorial tradition points to a great inventor: the master of the medieval Housebook, in whose studio the work was executed. With his pioneering art, he inspired the entire region between Speyer and Koblenz. Bringing the circumstances in the fifteenth-century artist’s studio back to life for the viewer, the exhibition also explores the question as to which of the master’s employees actually carried out the Städel panel.


Curator: Dr. Bodo Brinkmann

Address

Städel Museum / Städtische Galerie
Schaumainkai 63
60596 Frankfurt am Main
phone +49 69 605 09 80
http://www.staedelmuseum.de

Opening Hours

Tuesday, Friday-Sunday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Wednesday, Thursday 10 a.m. - 9 p.m., closed on Monday.

Description of the Museum

700 years of European history are represented in a collection of 2,700 paintings, 600 sculptures and 100,000 prints and drawings by artists ranging from Dürer, Holbein and Cranach to Rembrandt, Vermeer, Monet, Van Gogh and Cézanne to Matisse and Picasso, Bacon and Baselitz, Serra and Palermo.

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