The museum is proud of its five works by the celebrated Lucas Cranach the Elder, the exhibition including his masterpieces Venus and Cupid (1509) and The Virgin and Child under an Apple Tree (c.1525), as well as the charming Portrait of a Lady (1526).
Portrait of a Young Man by the renowned German portrait painter Ambrosius Holbein, the elder brother of Hans Holbein, is a marvellous example of Northern Renaissance portraiture. Works by Ambrosius are of great rarity, for he died young.
Of 16th-century portraits, we should note Portrait of Palatine Otheinrich (1540s) by the painter and engraver Georg Pencz, a pupil of Durer, and the paired portraits, typical of German art of the mid-16th-century, by Christoph Amberger.
The striking large canvas Allegory of Peace, Art and Abundance by Hans von Aachen, court painter to the Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, and the small work on copper, St.Christopher, attributed to Adam Elsheimer, are regarded as the best 17th-century paintings in the collection.
The Hermitage collection of the 18th century German painting is the second largest outside Germany. It is made up of artists who were celebrated during their careers, such as A.R. Mengs, whose Hermitage works include Perseus and Andromeda (1778) and Self Portrait (between 1774 and 1783), Antoine Pesne, court painter to the Prussian kings and creator of the excellent companion portraits of Dinglinger the jeweler and his wife (both 1721), and Angelica Kauffman, who, at that time, was the only woman to be accepted to the Royal Academy in London and selected as a member of the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome.
German portraiture of the second half of the 18th century absorbed the achievements of European painting. A number of works by Johann Friederich Tischbein, the most outstanding member of the Tischbein dynasty of portraitists, includes such remarkable works as Portrait of a Man (1785) and Portrait of Queen Louisa (1798).
