High Altar

religious

Around 1560-70 Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, shocked by the continuing threats of iconoclasm and, perhaps, chastened by Protestant criticism of religious art, commissioned relatively few new, non-memorial paintings and sculptures for their churches. Most new works were intended for private devotional use. The revival of large-scale Catholic religious art occurred only rarely before the 1580s.

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About the Artist

Hans Mielich

1516 – 1573

German painter and illuminator. He was a leading painter in Munich of religious compositions, manuscript illuminations and portraits. He studied with his father, Wolfgang Mielich, a Munich municipal painter, who appears in the Munich tax records from 1509 onwards, but the years 1536-39, spent with Albrecht Altdorfer in Regensburg, were decisive for Hans Mielich's approach to colour. In 1536 he illuminated the title-page to the Freiheitenbuch of the city of Regensburg (Regensburg, Stadtmuseum). In 1541 Mielich travelled to Rome on a commission from Duke William IV of Bavaria. He stayed there until 1543, when he became a master in Munich. From 1545 onwards Duke Albert V of Bavaria helped him obtain commissions, and in 1558 Mielich became leader of the Munich painters' guild. He consistently signed his works with the monogram HM (=M in H).

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