BASEL.- In the sixteenth century, small-format stained glass paintings were widely popular in southern Germany and especially in Switzerland. Renowned and highly esteemed artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger, Niklaus Manuel, and Tobias Stimmer often provided the design drawings. Their fame has endured, but their work in connection with glass painting is largely obscure today. The Kunstmuseum Basel’s exhibition Luminous Figures. Drawings and Stained Glass Paintings from Holbein to Ringler draws attention to the quality and diversity of these works, spotlighting a fascinating yet almost forgotten facet of Renaissance art.

The small colorful stained glass paintings were virtually omnipresent in the sixteenth century, gracing monasteries and churches as well as town and guild halls and university buildings. Few of the final works are extant today, but numerous designs have survived: outstanding Old Masters drawings that are now preserved in various collections in Switzerland, Germany, and Great Britain.

The Kunstmuseum Basel has almost four hundred preparatory drawings in its Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings) and just over twenty glass paintings from the period, from which we have chosen the most significant and appealing specimens for the exhibition. The selection includes not only one of the earliest extant design drawing for a glass painting, but also a large number of drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger, who was particularly active in this field. Also among the works from our collections is a series of stained glass paintings that Ludwig Ringler created for the University of Basel.

Beyond its immediate artistic appeal, the genre is of great interest in both a historical and a sociocultural perspective. Stained glass paintings were commissioned by institutions such as the estates of the Old Swiss Confederacy (today’s cantons), monasteries, and guilds as well as individuals. Donating such a work was a common and widely recognized act of social communication, lending lasting expression to alliances, friendships, and honors. That is why virtually every stained glass painting prominently features the donor’s coat of arms. The imagery surrounding this central element varies widely and includes depictions of religious themes as well as personifications and allegories, representations of professions, and motifs and scenes from Swiss history.

Featuring around ninety works (twenty stained glass paintings, seventy drawings) from the medium’s heyday in the sixteenth century, the exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Basel | Neubau’s underground galleries sheds light on this genre, whose key role in the history of visual art in Switzerland is rarely appreciated. As a special highlight, we were able to identify several instances in which both the preparatory drawing and the final glass painting have survived, and now present both works side by side, reunited after half a millennium.

The treasures from our own holdings are complemented by valuable works on loan from collections in Switzerland and abroad, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, and the Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, Zurich. Several glass paintings that are still installed in the buildings for which they were originally created have been removed for inclusion in the exhibition. The Schützenhaus Basel, for example, has kindly agreed to send three panels from its large cycle of windows.

The Kunstmuseum Basel will reopen on May 12, 2020.