Stefan Lochner

Cologne in the 1440s was one of the richest cities north of the Alps, full of powerful guilds and dominated by a cathedral that had already been under construction for two centuries. The painter who became its finest, Stefan Lochner, came from the Lake Constance region far to the south and settled in the city around 1440, where he sat on the painters' guild council and bought a house near the market.

His largest surviving work was made for the council chapel, a triptych of the Adoration of the Magi with the city's patron saints on its wings. The three kings kneel before the Virgin in robes of deep red and gold, set against a flat gold ground in the older manner, yet the faces and hands are studied from life in a way that felt new. This was what Cologne prized: sweet faces, jewel colour, and a careful naturalism held inside Gothic elegance.

Almost nothing about his art was recorded in his lifetime, and none of his panels are signed. We can attach his name to the altarpiece mainly because Albrecht Dürer, passing through Cologne in 1520, paid two coins to have the chapel opened and noted in his journal a picture by "Master Stefan." Lochner died in 1451, probably in one of the plague outbreaks that swept the city. The altarpiece was moved into Cologne Cathedral in 1810, where it still stands in a side chapel.