Grien, Hans Baldung

(c. 1484/1485-1545)

   German painter who received his training in Nuremberg from Albrecht Dürer. Grien was born into a family of academics from Schwäbisch-Gmünd. By 1500, he is documented in a workshop in Strasbourg, and in Nuremberg by 1503. He is known to have completed two altarpieces for the Cathedral of Halle (1507), specifically the Three Kings Altarpiece (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) and St. Sebastian (Nuremberg Museum), as well as stained glass and book illustrations in Freiburg, where he spent five years. In Freiburg, he also was charged with the cathedral's altarpiece (1512), a polyptych with scenes from the infancy of Christ and his Passion. The macabre figures prominently in Grien's art, as exemplified by his Three Ages of Woman and Death (1509-1511; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) and Death and the Woman (c. 1517; Basel, Kunstmuseum). Grien's interest in the supernatural is best revealed in his woodcuts, including his Witches of 1510, one of many representations of these characters of the occult.