Stefan Lochner

Stefan Lochner was a German painter working in the late International Gothic. His paintings combine that era’s tendency toward long flowing lines and brilliant colours with the realism, virtuoso surface textures and iconography of the early Northern Renaissance. Extant works include single-panel oil paintings, devotional polyptychs and illuminated manuscripts.

About Stefan Lochner in brief

Stefan Lochner was a German painter working in the late International Gothic. His paintings combine that era’s tendency toward long flowing lines and brilliant colours with the realism, virtuoso surface textures and innovative iconography of the early Northern Renaissance. Extant works include single-panel oil paintings, devotional polyptychs and illuminated manuscripts. Today some thirty-seven individual panels are attributed to him with confidence. Less is known of his life. His identity and reputation were lost until a revival of 15th-century art during the early 19th- century romantic period. For centuries a number of associated works were grouped and loosely attributed to the Dombild Master. One of Dürer’s diary entries became key, 400 years later, in the 20th century establishment of Lochner’s identity. Only two attributed works are dated, and none are signed. There are no signed paintings by Lochner, and his identity was not established until the 19th century. His influence on successive generations of northern artists was substantial. Apart from the many direct copies made in the later 15th century, echoes of his panels can be seen in works by Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling. He was described by Friedrich Schlegel and Goethe for its qualities, especially the ‘sweetness and grace’ of his Madonnas. Lochner’s identity remained unknown for centuries, and no known works were associated with him.

In 1816 Ferdinand Franz Wallalf, based on a name inscribed on a reading of him as Philipp Krafraf, identified him as the historical Stefan Lochner. He misinterpreted markings on the stone floor of the Annunciation centre to read ‘Maister Steffan’. In 1862 Gustav Waobloagen became one of the first chronological historians to try to place Lochner in place to place his works in a chronological place. He took the year of 1410, the year he took as completion of Johann Dominicus, Johann Wilhelm Wilhelm, who had no equal in his art and depicted human beings as if they were alive and well. He died in 1451 and there, apart from the records of creditors, mention of Stephan Lochner ends; it is presumed he died that year, aged around 40. In 1850 Johann Jakob Merloagen identified the historical Lochner with the historical Maister Steffan. He described Lochner as an excellent painter in a book called ‘in 1380 there was no one better’, and called him an ‘excellent painter’ in 1380. In 1520, Albrecht Dürers paid 5 silver pfennig to see an altarpiece by ‘‘Maisters’ Steffans’ some seventy years after Lochner had died. The description matches exactly the centre panel of the D Lombild Altarpiece of the City’s Patron Saints with a work mentioned in an account of a visit to Cologne in 1520 in the diary.

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