GRUNEWALD, MATHIAS, German painter, active be tween 1500 and 153o, at Frankfurt, Mainz, Aschaffenburg and in Upper Alsace. Although he was one of the greatest artists of his time, and was ranked by Melanchthon with Darer and Cranach, very little is known of his life. He was an overpowering per sonality, the last and greatest representative of the German Gothic ; for although he lived at a time when the Italian Renais sance was penetrating into Germany, his forms and figures are conceived as expressions of strong accentuated feelings rather than as rhythmic parts of a co-ordinated organic unity. His repre sentations of the Crucifixion are among the most passionate and moving scenes produced in art. His colour is rich and glowing, and his effects of chiaroscuro seem to presage the art of Rem brandt. His earliest work extant is the "Flagellation," dated 1503 in Munich. Of the same period are the "Crucifixion" in Basle, and his great masterpiece in the Colmar museum, which consists of nine paintings forming part of a large four-winged altarpiece which also contained carved figures by another artist. In 1517 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the Maria Schnee chapel at Aschaffenburg. The centrepiece rep resenting the Virgin is now in the church of Stuppach near Mergentheim, and the right wing with the "Foundation of S. Maria Maggiore" is in the museum at Freiburg. Soon after-. wards GrUnewald became court painter to Albrecht of Branden burg, cardinal and elector of Mainz.
Grunewald's powerful and expressive drawings are to be seen in the galleries of Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Karlsruhe, Oxford, Paris, Stockholm and Erlangen. A whole book of his drawings was recently discovered in the possession of the Savigny family, and was acquired by the Berlin museum.