Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel_Paintings Collection, The Masterpieces (1)

Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel
Paintings Collection, The Masterpieces
(1)

CRANACH, Lucas the Elder
Lucretia
1535-40
Oil on wood, 79 x 64 cm

Lucretia (detail)
1535-40
Oil on wood, 79 x 64 cm

The Judgment of Paris
1528
Oil and tempera on limewood,
84.7 × 57 cm

The Judgment of Paris (detail)
1528
Oil and tempera on limewood,
84.7 × 57 cm

HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger
Lais of Corinth
1526
Limewood, 34,6 x 26,8 cm

Lais of Corinth (detail)
1526
Limewood, 34,6 x 26,8 cm

BALDUNG GRIEN, Hans
Death and the Woman
1518-20
Oil on panel, 31 x 19 cm

BALDUNG GRIEN, Hans
Death and the Woman (detail)
1518-20

BALDUNG GRIEN, Hans
Death and the Maiden
1517

BALDUNG GRIEN, Hans
Death and the Maiden (detail)
1517

MASTER of the Fontainebleau
School
Diane de Poitiers
c. 1590
Tempera on wood, 115 x 98,5 cm

MASTER of the Fontainebleau
School
Diane de Poitiers (detail)
c. 1590
Tempera on wood, 115 x 98,5 cm

GRÜNEWALD, Matthias
The Crucifixion
1515
Oil on wood, 74.9 x 54.4 cm

The Crucifixion (detail)
1515
Oil on wood, 74.9 x 54.4 cm

MODIGLIANI, Amedeo
Marie, Daughter Of The People
1918
Oil on canvas, 50 x 62 cm

MODIGLIANI, Amedeo
(detail)
1918

CHAGALL, Marc
Jew in Black and White
1914
Oil on cardboard, mounted on
canvas, 101 x 80 cm

CHAGALL, Marc
Jew in Black and White (detail)
1914
Oil on cardboard, mounted on
canvas, 101 x 80 cm

PICASSO, Pablo
The Absinthe Drinker, Woman in
the Loge
1901

PICASSO, Pablo
The Absinthe Drinker, Woman in
the Loge (detail)
1901

Paintings Collection, The Masterpieces (1)
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PICASSO, Pablo
The Absinthe Drinker, Woman in the Loge
In the French art of the early 20th century, there was a great interest in "vicious" characters. Picasso had many predecessors and a special attention should be drawn to the
influence of Toulouse-Lautrec.
Many paintings were devoted to the theme of absinthe, the drink that became a kind of fetish in Paris at the turn of the century. Many special properties were ascribed to this
strong wormwood liqueur, often referred to as the "green fairy": it was thought that people addicted to absinthe suffered not just from simple alcohol abuse, but from its special
"sublime" form, and that they immersed in a world of hallucinations and fantasies.
So thematically Picasso is still moving in the "mainstream" of the epoch. However, the images created by the young artist are sharply dramatic.

Lucretia
The story of the rape of Lucretia was one of the best-known episodes in the early history of Rome. It told how Sextus Tarquinius, brutal son of the tyrannical king, forced the
virtuous wife Lucretia to accede to his lust by threatening that he would kill both her and her servant-boy if she refused, and afterwards claim that he had discovered them
together in the act of adultery. To prevent this dishonour to her husband and family, Lucretia permitted herself to be raped, and was thereby able to tell her story and demand
vengeance before she committed suicide.
The panel depicts the suicide of Lucretia after she was violated by Sextus Tarquinius, the king's son. Of all secular subjects he treated, Lucas Cranach painted this subject
the most frequently, in almost 40 versions. At first he showed her only rarely as a pure nude, either half- or full-length, usually, as the daughter of a Roman nobleman, she
appeared in a magnificent costume. However, after about twenty years, he increasingly favoured the nude version.
Here, as in other nudes by Cranach, the painter's main interest is not in the narrative but only in the female nude. This is emphasized by placing the body before a uniform
black background.

The Judgment of Paris
Cranach became a celebrated court painter for the electors of Saxony in Wittenberg. Among the most popular mythological scenes produced by him and his workshop for his courtly
patrons were those featuring Venus, in particular, the Judgment of Paris. Painted about 1528, this picture depicts Paris, dressed in a contemporary suit of armor, as he deliberates over
the fairest of three goddesses: Minerva, Venus, and Juno. While Mercury stands nearby holding the coveted prize—a golden apple (here transformed into a glass orb)—Cupid aims his
arrow at Venus, signaling Paris’s decision in favor of the goddess of love.

Lais of Corinth
Lais of Corinth was a hetaira in ancient Greece who was famous for her dazzling beauty and her high price. The well-formed, elegantly proportioned beauty of the figure in the
panel speaks for itself; the gold coins and the right hand stretched out towards the viewer draw attention to the payment the woman expects for her services. Whether the
courtesan is to be equated with the Lais who sat for, and was the lover of, the most noted painter of antiquity, Apelles, is still a matter of speculation.
The worldly-wise elegance of pose and expression of this courtesan, combined with the soft and smoky modelling of her features, shows the influence of Venetian painting,
which, by the 1520s, was already renowned (and sometimes attacked) for its air of opulent hedonism.
Lais - said to have been the mistress of the ancient Greek artist, Apelles - signifies Mercenary Love, it has been thought that a similarly posed figure in a smaller work entitled
Venus and Cupid (also in Basel) might be a pendant to this, representing Pure Love. However, although Venetian artists were familiar with the theme of `Sacred and Profane Love'
contrasted, as in Titian's great work of that title, no such conclusion seems possible in Holbein's case.
As Giorgione's Judith reveals, Holbein's sources were preeminently the sinuous, well-proportioned figures that Leonardo and Raphael had used for their Madonnas (as `perfect'
women) but which had taken on other, less spiritual qualities once they reached Venice. Nevertheless, Holbein's adaptation seems to restore some of the earlier Renaissance
innocence and Lais's demure expression belies her supposedly brazen costume. The artist shows greater interest in effectively foreshortening the figure's right arm than in
presenting a character of easy virtue.

BALDUNG GRIEN, Hans
Death and the Woman
In this painting a voluptuous young maiden turns to receive the kiss of her lover, only to discover, to her horror, Death. The skeletal figure gently holds her head, a
gesture that belies the finality of his impending bite. His patches of wispy hair and rotting skin mock her flowing tresses and supple flesh. The dark setting, unnoticed at
first, is a cemetery as she stands on a gravestone, perhaps her own. This Vanitas picture (an image that alludes to the transience of life) typifies Baldung's predilection
for erotically charged twists to more conventional themes, such as the Dance of Death

BALDUNG GRIEN, Hans
Death and the Maiden
In the later version of the theme by Baldung, the awaited lover of the maiden turns out to be a grimacing Death, who embraces her with its bony fingers pulling at her hair,
a reminder that her beauty will soon vanish, as the ominous inscription above her head warns: "This is your end."

The Crucifixion
The panel is referred to as the Small Crucifixion.
Matthias Grünewald (originally named Mathis Gohardt) is widely acclaimed as the greatest German Renaissance artist, whose religious paintings and drawings are known
for their visionary expressiveness of intense color and agitated line.
His most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece (1506-1515), a polyptych that decorated the hospital chapel of the Isenheim monastery near Colmar, Alsace, now in
France. In the central panel, the crucified body of Christ is pitted with black sores that would have resembled those on the plague victims who visited the monastery in
hope of a cure. Although only ten or so paintings survive, Grünewald’s art has had a lasting influence, inspiring artists from Albrecht Dürer to Jasper Johns, who traced the
Isenheim Altarpiece onto his own work.

MASTER of the Fontainebleau School
Diane de Poitiers
The painting shows Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of King Henry II of France before her mirror. She was a famous beauty of the time
After the king's death, de Poitiers was banished from court by his widow Catherine de'Medici to the chateau in Anet given to her by the king. She died there in
1566 and was buried in a tomb in a specially built funeral chapel.
Her grave was desecrated during the French Revolution and her body flung into a common grave outside the chateau's walls.

MODIGLIANI, Amedeo
Modigliani's main interest was the human figure in the form of nudes and portraits. "Marie" is one of his rare children's portraits. It developed together with a number of others in 1918
in southern France. The artist, together with his art dealer Léopold Zborowski and other friends, had escaped from Paris in March to escape the German bombardment during the First
World War. In addition, the stay in the south should provide recovery for Modigliani suffering from tuberculosis. "Marie" probably originated in May. It is the only one of the children's
portraits to bear the name of the model.

CHAGALL, Marc
Jew in Black and White
Marc Chagall had a prolific career that spanned more than eight decades of the twentieth century. While his work often exhibits influences of the contemporary movements he
encountered in France and Germany, his subjects and decorative lyricism reveal his love of Russian folk art and his roots in Hasidic Judaism.
In his 1931 autobiography, My Life, Chagall related how, while visiting Vitebsk (present-day Belarus), the city in which he was born, he realized that the traditions in which he had
grown up were fast disappearing and that he needed to document them. He paid a beggar to pose in his father’s prayer clothes and then painted him, limiting his palette primarily
to black and white, as befit the solemnity of the subject. This portrait is noteworthy for the simplicity of its execution; nonetheless, its striking patterns, abstract background, and
the slightly distorted features of the model demonstrate Chagall’s absorption of modern trends, especially Cubism.
Chagall often painted variants or replicas of works he particularly loved; the original is now in the Kunstmuseum, Basel. The later compositions differ from the original only in
small details.

The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the largest and most significant public art collection in Switzerland, and is listed as a
heritage site of national significance.
The Kunstmuseum possesses the largest collection of works by the Holbein family. Further examples of Renaissance art
include important pieces by such masters as Konrad Witz, Hans Baldung (called Grien), Martin Schongauer, Lucas Cranach
the Elder and Mathias Grünewald. The main features of the 17th and 18th centuries are the Flemish and Dutch schools (e.g.
Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Jan Brueghel the Elder), German and Dutch still life painting.
Key works from the 19th century include the Impressionists represented by Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Paul
Cézanne as well as the paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Switzerland’s Arnold Böcklin and Ferdinand Hodler. In the 20th
century, the focus is on works of Cubism with Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris. Expressionism is represented by such figures
as Edvard Munch, Franz Marc, Oskar Kokoschka and Emil Nolde. The collection also includes works from Constructivism,
Dadaism and Surrealism and American art since 1950. Further highlights are the unique compilations of works from Pablo
Picasso, Fernand Léger, Paul Klee, Alberto Giacometti and Marc Chagall.
In the realm of more recent and contemporary art, the collection maintains substantial bodies of work by Swiss, German,
Italian, and American artists, including Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Georg Baselitz, A.R. Penck, Brice Marden,
Bruce Nauman, Jonathan Borofsky, Roni Horn, Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Enzo Cucchi, Martin Disler, Leiko
Ikemura, Markus Raetz, Rosemarie Trockel and Robert Gober.
In the year of 1939 a large body of work by German-Jewish artists, whose paintings were considered to be degenerate art by
the Nazi-Regime in Germany could be saved by the Kunstmuseum, were brought to Switzerland and are on display in the
museum up to this day.

Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel_Paintings Collection, The Masterpieces (1)

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