Matthias Gerung

1500 – 1570

German painter, printmaker, and tapestry designer. He was one of Hans Schäufelein 's pupils in Nördlingen. By 1525, he had settled in Lauingen, a Bavarian city on the banks of the River Danube in the Duchy of Neuburg. His major patron was Otto Heinrich, the protestant Elector Palatine of the Rhine. He was employed as local inspector from 1531 to 1567. He illuminated a New Testament and Apocalyse that came from a 15th-century Bible for the Count, between 1530 and 1531; he also produced a cycle of paintings about the destruction of Troy and the History of Paris for the Count's castle room in Neuburg (1540). He also designed a series of tapestry devoted to the Count's life from 1533 till 1543. The Count became Protestant in 1541, and, because of that, Gerung was employed to illustrate the rules of the new Church, and to design etchings to attack the Pope and the abuses of the Roman Church. These works compose the main body of Gerung's artistic work. However, Gerung apparently supported the Catholic Emperor Charles I in 1546. We can see this support in the painting for the city council in 1551 about Charles I and his army receiving homage from the people of Lauingen, in which Gerung represented himself as one of the characters. In his late work, notable is the painting Melancholy (1558) inspired by Dürer's famous print.

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