Barthel bruyn the elder biography for kids

In 1533 Bartholomäus (or Barthel) Bruyn (the Elder) (Wesel (?) 1493 – 1555 Cologne) bought the very same pair of houses named ‘Zum alten Grin’/’Zum (kleinen) Karfunkel’ on the corner of Quatermarkt/In der Höhle which Stefan Lochner had acquired in 1444. As the building had been in the hands of painters in the meantime too, this purchase was both practical and symbolic: Bruyn was placing himself in a long and glorious artistic tradition.

From the point of view of art history, Barthel Bruyn did indeed take up the threads of late-medieval Cologne painting, for example by painting backgrounds for reliquaries produced by goldsmiths, or by transferring the kinetics of hinged altarpieces to the portrait diptych. But even though numerous large-format religious paintings were produced by his workshop, his reputation as Cologne’s most famous Renaissance painter is based above all on his subtle portraits of leading members of Cologne society.

Believed to have been born in Wesel in 1493, when Bruyn was about 14 he probably went as an apprentice to work at the workshop of the painter Jan Joest. There he probably met Joos van Cleve, who was his senior by some ten years. It was the start of a long friendship. It may be that Bruyn arrived in Cologne as early as 1512, but we have documentary evidence that he was elected to a committee of the city council in 1518. With his wife he had five children (including two sons who themselves became painters), to whom he transferred ownership of the houses in 1550. In 1555 he died as a respected city councillor.

Of the two sons, Arnt and Bartholomäus, who helped the elder Barthel Bruyn in the painting of the Carmelite cloister in Cologne beginning in 1547 and subsequently practised their father's trade, only one appears to have enjoyed success. Whereas the first-born, Arnt, died in 1577 heavily in debt, and from whom no major commissions are recorded, the younger Barthel took over from his father both artistically and materially. In 1550 he married the well-to-do Agnes Patberg (died 1623) from Werden, in whose name he sold inherited properties in Werden. In 1557 Barthel Bruyn the Younger became the sole owner of his father's houses and atelier; he must have bought out his siblings. He served as a councillor beginning in 1579. The patrician Hermann von Weinsberg, one of his clients, tells of the painter's complaining of declining vision; it is possible that he was no longer able to paint very much after 1590. In 1593 he and his wife drew up a joint will. He died highly regarded and wealthy.

From our present-day perspective, this is somewhat surprising in view of the fact that the work of the younger Bruyn is lacking in any sort of innovation. The son closely adhered to the stock of compositions and types inherited from his father; except for updating costumes, he only occasionally modernised his use of line to satisfy contemporary tastes, but without improving the effect of his paintings. As a rule, his flesh tones and his colouring as a whole are paler than those of his father. Since the younger Bruyn never developed a truly individual style and almost never signed his works, scholars have naturally had a difficult time isolating his oeuvre. Yet two assured works permit an identification: the portrait diptych of abbot Petrus Ulner in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, certified by an inscription on the frame and dated 1560, and a triptych for Hermann von Weinsberg in Cologne's Historisches Museum for which the commission is documented.

"Barthel Bruyn" redirects here. For his son of the same name, see Barthel Bruyn the Younger.

Bartholomäus Bruyn (1493–1555), usually called Barthel Bruyn or Barthel Bruyn the Elder, was a German Renaissance painter active in Cologne. He painted altarpieces and portraits, and was Cologne's foremost portrait painter of his day.

Life

He was born in Wesel or Cologne. His early works suggest that he received his artistic training in the Lower Rhine. His earliest documented altarpiece is a Coronation of the Virgin (1515–1516) commissioned by Dr. Peter von Clapis, a professor at the University of Cologne. Bruyn’s altarpieces of the 1510s and 1520s are influenced by the style of Jan Joest, to whom Bruyn was related, and often emulate Joest’s habit of illuminating his figures from below.

By the time Bruyn painted the Essen altarpiece (1522–1525), he had combined Joest's influence with that of Joos van Cleve. In the 1530s, he developed a more Italianate style that reflects the examples of Raphael and Michelangelo, which he probably knew only at second hand through the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi and as filtered through the works of such artists as Jan van Scorel and Martin van Heemskerck.

Bruyn is especially known for his portraits. He was the first important portrait painter in Cologne, and the founder of a prolific school of portraiture that was continued by his sons Arnt and Barthel Bruyn the Younger. His subjects are usually portrayed at half-length against a flat background; the face is the center of attention, but costume details are crisply described, and prominence is given to the hands. Art historian Jean M. Caswell says Bruyn's depictions of the upper-middle-class citizens of Cologne are "lively and expressive, and they show no vain flattery". Bruyn did not sign his portraits, and some of them have in the past been misattributed to Hans Holbein, whose influence is appa