The museum is proud of its five works by the celebrated Lucas Cranach the Elder, the exhibition including his masterpieces Venus and Cupid (1509) and The Virgin and Child under an Apple Tree (c.1525), as well as the charming Portrait of a Lady (1526).

Portrait of a Young Man by the renowned German portrait painter Ambrosius Holbein, the elder brother of Hans Holbein, is a marvellous example of Northern Renaissance portraiture. Works by Ambrosius are of great rarity, for he died young.

Of 16th-century portraits, we should note Portrait of Palatine Otheinrich (1540s) by the painter and engraver Georg Pencz, a pupil of Durer, and the paired portraits, typical of German art of the mid-16th-century, by Christoph Amberger.

The striking large canvas Allegory of Peace, Art and Abundance by Hans von Aachen, court painter to the Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, and the small work on copper, St.Christopher, attributed to Adam Elsheimer, are regarded as the best 17th-century paintings in the collection.

18th-century Germany adored Anton Raphael Mengs, master of Neoclassicism, whose work is epitomised by Perseus and Andromeda (1777-1783) and Self-portrait (1774-1783). Antoine Pesne, court painter to the Prussian kings, produced a brilliant pair of portraits of the jeweller Diglinger and his wife (both 1721). Angelica Kauffmann was the only woman of that time to be accepted into the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.

German portraiture of the second half of the 18th century absorbed the achievements of European painting. A number of works by Johann Friederich Tischbein, the most outstanding member of the Tischbein dynasty of portraitists, includes such remarkable works as Portrait of a Man (1785) and Portrait of Queen Louisa (1798).

If you enjoyed this collection, you might want to also visit the other collections at the State Hermitage Museum.

German Sculpture