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Huddaeus, here depicted at the age of fifty, was a Protestant minister and superintendent in Minden, Westphalia. He was known even beyond that region as a scholar and was also esteemed by Melanchthon. The saying on the parapet refers to his ability to proclaim the word of the Gospel and at the same time contains the date 1568 as a chronogram. The running hourglass and the skull are reminders of the transience of everything earthly and, as the words on the papers announce, of the preacher’s own awareness of his nearing end. The background is filled with a broad landscape including the Porta Westfalica (Westphalian gate) and a view of Minden, to which the painter has added many charming details such as a leaping hare, shepherds, travelers, and sailboats on the Weser River.

Details

  • Title: Hermann Huddaeus
  • Creator: Ludger tom Ring the Younger
  • Date Created: 1568
  • Physical Dimensions: 40.3 × 31.2 cm
  • Technique and Material: Oil on oak wood
  • Provenance: From the royal Prussian castles
  • Museum: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
  • Inv.-No.: 622
  • ISIL-No.: DE-MUS-017018
  • External Link: http://www.smb.museum/museen-und-einrichtungen/gemaeldegalerie/home.html
  • Copyright: Photo © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders; Text © Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach, A Cooperation of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München, Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Nov 20, 2016 – March 26, 2017, Munich: Prestel, 2016; cat. no. 112 / Stephan Kemperdick
  • Catalogue: https://prestelpublishing.randomhouse.de/book/Renaissance-and-Reformation/Stephanie-Buck/Prestel-com/e504919.rhd
  • Artist Dates: 1522 Münster–1584 Braunschweig
  • Artist Biography: Ludger tom Ring the Younger was probably trained as a painter in his father’s atelier in Münster, which he continued to run, together with his brother Hermann, after the death of their father, Ludger the Elder. Living in Braunschweig from 1572 at the latest—possibly after a stay in Antwerp—Ludger the Younger worked primarily as a portraitist. His paintings of flowers are among the oldest surviving autonomous still lifes.

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