Masterworks

Of all German painters of the Renaissance the one who strikes us today as the most progressive was Hans Baldung Grien. There is a psychological intensity to his work that appeals to modern audiences. Grien was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd on the Upper Rhine. He was apprenticed to Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg and in 1509 settled in Strasbourg, where he spent the rest of his highly successful career.

This intimate portrait of Holbein's wife and her two children is one of the few pictures he painted for himself, without being commissioned to do so. Unfortunately it is no longer in its original state. The figures, painted on paper, have been cut out and pasted onto a panel...

Basel was the centre of humanism and perfectly captured the essence of the Middle Ages as they were being superseded by a more modern age, hungry for knowledge. Classical culture walked side by side with Christianity; and in the spotlight of art stood man - his deeds and tribulations, his relationship to nature...

Of the twenty works by the German painter Konrad Witz that survive, eleven can be found in the Kunstmuseum in Basel. All these precious surviving panels originally formed part of three large altarpieces, then removed from their churches during the Reformation, and mutilated or destroyed. Some were sawn apart and the pieces are now scattered between several different museums...

Dali's astonishing imagination conjures up a world in which nothing makes sense. The half-open drawers protruding eerily from the woman's body are empty. Have they been ransacked? What could they have contained? The horrible protuberances growing out of the woman's spine are supported by a system of crutches. Behind her stands an echo of herself, another of Dali's mysterious female monsters...