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The World of Artists
5
In the collector's cabinet (2): new ideas of beauty

German painters such as Cranach and Baldung opted for an approach to the nude that combined both an admiration and rejection of the model devised and proposed by Dürer (see the next room). German collectors' cabinets were filled with images of nudes that relied on a type of beauty remote from the Italianate ideal evident in Dürer. This can be seen by comparing his Adam and Eve with the type of nude depicted by Cranach and Baldung as well as by the draughtsman and printmaker Hans Wechtlin.
Adam and Eve


Hans Baldung Grien
Adam and Eve, 1531
Oil on panel. 147.5 x 67.5 cm
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Judith with the Head of Holofernes


Lucas Cranach, the Elder
Judith with the Head of Holofernes, after 1537
Oil on panel. 75.2 x 51 cm
Viena, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie
Adam and Eve

Lucas Cranach, the Elder
Adam and Eve, c. 1513-1515
Oil on panel. 72 x 62 cm
On loan from the Federal Republic of Germany.
On deposit with the Mainfränkisches Museum in Würzburg