Getty Museum
Studies of Peonies
Creator
Martin SchongauerGerman Artist · 1450–1491
All works by this person →Today Martin Schongauer is famed for his graphic arts, but in his own day, he was celebrated for his painting. He was "so excellent an artist that his paintings were carried to Italy, Spain, France, and England, and other parts of the world," enthused one sixteenth-century report. Little is known of Schongauer's life, but his work shows so much influence of Rogier van der Weyden that Giorgio Vasar
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1472–1473
- Medium
- Gouache and waterolor
- Culture
- German
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
One of the earliest surviving northern European botanical studies drawn from life, this drawing shows a fully opened peony bloom, viewed first from the front and then from the back, and one bud. Martin Schongauer achieved subtly gradated coloration by laying in the basic forms in a broad painterly wash and then describing the details in bodycolor, opaque water-based color, with the point of the brush. Though an outstanding example of a highly finished drawing, it was made as a study for the painting, *The Madonna of the Rose Garden* of 1473, in the Dominican church in Colmar. During the late 1400s, people began to perceive the natural world in a radically different way. They ventured out into nature to study it and record it firsthand. Along with others artists, Schongauer became one of the leading pioneers of an effort to make studies directly from nature.
The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Getty Museum and other institutions.