LEMBERGER, Georg - b. ~1492 Landshut, d. 1540 Magdeburg

German painter and woodcut designer. His main achievement was to introduce the painting principles of the Danube school to Middle Germany; he worked largely in Protestant context. Between 1513 and 1515 Lemberger may have joined Altdorfer in Regensburg and collaborated on the miniatures in the Triumphal Procession of Emperor Maximilian I (Vienna, Albertina). He may also have visited Wolf Huber in Passau at that time. He moved to Leipzig in 1520.

The few known paintings by Lemberger are clearly linked, in their luxuriant depiction of landscape, to the Danube school and show an unusual liking for decorative detail.

Lemberger’s talent as a draughtsman is apparent in his paintings, an even more crucial in his woodcuts. In Leipzig and Magdeburg he became one of the most important book illuminators in his period.

St George Freeing the Princess

This small composition represents a theme popular in North European painting and gives us an interpretation of the legend which is particularly charged with fantastic effects. The strangely elongated trees appear to sprout up one on top of the other, waving their ghostly fronds as if in a dream-like vision. The three small archaic figures are somehow lost in the painting, which seems to aim more at conveying the unknown, mysterious forces of nature. The fully armoured knight with his plumed helmet and the fragile kneeling princess thus become merely the pretext for the representation of a far loftier and subtle magic.