Virtual Exhibition “Renaissance and Reformation'

Lucas Cranach the Younger and Pancratius Kempff, Difference Between the True Religion of Christ and the False Idolatrous Teaching of the Antichrist in its Principal Features / Protestantism and Catholicism, 1546 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders

Virtual Exhibition “Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach” in Google Arts & Culture

01.03.2017
Gemäldegalerie

Luther goes USA – but the countdown to return home has already started. For only one more month visitors to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) have the opportunity to see masterworks from around 1500 by Dürer, Cranach, Holbein and Riemenschneider. Thanks to Google Arts and Culture you can now visit the exhibition online.

On the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of Luther’s theses, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, die Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, are presenting key works of German art dating from around 1500 in the exhibition “Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach” at LACMA. For all those who cannot travel to L.A. before March 26, 2017 Google Arts and Culture now makes it possible to explore the exhibition online. (For link to exhibition, see below.)

Over the last weeks and months we have already reported on Luther goes USA and the preparations and installation of the exhibition as well as the opening.

Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses – published on October 31, 1517 on the door of the Schlosskirche (Castle Church) in Wittenberg – became the trigger for the Reformation. Luther’s criticism was directed at the luxury and abuses of the Catholic Church and led to a schism in the church and to far-reaching social upheaval. In many places, not only in Germany, this year people will commemorate this “heretical” act and its consequences and invite critical debate.

The masterpieces shown in this exhibition reflect the social tensions of this epoch. Calling into question the powerful institution of the Catholic Church also opened up new perspectives on the world in other areas. The ideas of humanism and the Renaissance influenced human thought and shaped an epoch which remains one of the most important chapters in the history of German and European art and culture.

“Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach” is on show at LACMA in Los Angeles until March 26, 2017 and now also available on Google Arts and Culture. The exhibition has been made possible through the support of the German Federal Foreign Office.