This fully illustrated catalogue presents the most up-to-date research on the seventy-five paintings in the National Gallery created in the German-speaking lands before 1800. Among them are important groups of works by artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger—including his famous double portrait The Ambassadors of 1533—Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Adam Elsheimer, the fifteenth-century Cologne painter known as the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece and his Westphalian contemporary, the Master of Liesborn.

This is the first catalogue of the National Gallery’s German paintings since 1959 and includes revelatory entries on a number of important new acquisitions, among them significant works by Albrecht Altdorfer, Wolf Huber, Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Hans Rottenhammer and Hans Wertinger. The German Paintings before 1800 also includes two essays, the first discussing the history of the paintings’ acquisition by the National Gallery and the taste for German painting in Britain, and the second addressing the ways in which these German artists produced their work.