Cologne School

Cologne School. Term applied to painting produced in Cologne from the late 14th century to the early 16th century. There was not, as the term might imply, a specifically local style at this time, but in the early 19th century, when romantically inclined collectors began to look for old German pictures, it so happened that many of their panels came from the Cologne region, and the city, with its huge unfinished Gothic cathedral, became a symbol for the spirit of the Middle Ages. The alleged founder of the ‘School’, Master Wilhelm, is a semi-legendary figure and no pictures can be attributed to him with certainty. During the first quarter of the 15th century painting in Cologne had all the characteristics of the lyrical ‘soft style’, that is of International Gothic. This style may have been perpetuated by guild rules and guild supervision; in any case it was still employed by Lochner in the middle of the 15th century. A little later, Netherlandish naturalism was influential on artists in Cologne. The great Flemish centres are not far away, and one of Rogier van der Weyden's principal works (the Columba Altarpiece, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich) was in Cologne from probably about 1460. Of many anonymous painters of the time, the Master of the Life of the Virgin is perhaps the most attractive.