Painting on Light - Drawings and Stained Glass in the Age of Darer and Holbein

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During the late Gothic and early Renaissance periods--when oil painting was just establishing itself as an important medium--stained glass was everywhere, adorning churches, city halls, castles, hospitals, universities, private homes and chapels, and even public bathhouses. In Germany and Switzerland, stained glass reached new heights of sophistication when the greatest artists of the era, incorporating recent developments in art, made innovative designs for the medium. Now an exhibition of more than sixty glass panels and about eighty preparatory drawings from collections in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere has come to North America. Painting on Light: Drawings and Stained Glass in the Age of Durer and Holbein opened last summer at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and is currently at the Saint Louis Art Museum through January 7.

Lee Hendrix, curator of drawings at the Getty Museum and cocurator of the exhibition with Barbara Butts (guest curator at the Saint Louis Art Museum), calls the exhibition "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view in one place a large quantity of radiant paintings on glass juxtaposed with related drawings." The show focuses on works designed by Albrecht Durer (1471--1528) and Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98--1543) and on works revealing their immediate influence, as these two artists played a pivotal …