The painter Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1475-1528), the greatest German colorist of the Renaissance, represented the highest achievement of German artistic development not directly affected by the Italian style.

The real name of Matthias Grünewald was Mathis Neithart Gothart. Grünewald was the name given to "Mathis, painter of Aschaffenburg" by the German art historiographer Joachim von Sandrart in 1675. At that time he wrote, "not a single man could be found who might be able to give account of Grünewald's activities even in a scanty memorandum or by word of mouth." The memory of the artist had indeed become so vague that only in the late 19th and 20th centuries was his historical existence reconstructed, although in a fragmentary and hypothetical manner.

It used to be thought that Grünewald was born in Würzburg between 1450 and 1480 and that he...