Renaissance in the North

Augsburg was influenced by the humanist culture of Italy from an early stage. Thanks to the art-loving trading houses with international operations like the Fuggers, as well as the long sojourns of Emperor Maximilian I and the frequent Imperial diets, the city offered artists like Holbein the Elder and Burgkmair an ideal setting for the development of a new form of art. Together with the works of Dürer, Holbein the Younger and others, many of their most important works bear witness to the highly fertile and yet contrasting ways in which the two artists adopted the Italian Renaissance.