German painting: Adam Elsheimer - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 2007 - 55 Euro Cent

Today unknown to many, Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610) was one of the most important and innovative German painters in the 17th century. Even Peter Paul Rubens admired the talent of the young Frankfurters, who at the age of 20 moved to Italy - first to Venice, later to Rome. There he made a breathtakingly rapid artistic development, which was suddenly interrupted when a student and former patron had him thrown into the guild tower after a fight. At the age of 32, Elsheimer died as a result of his imprisonment and left only 40 paintings to posterity. His influence on artists like Rubens or Rembrandt was nevertheless immense. In addition to his talent for portraying poetic landscapes, he still admires his ability to narrate religious and ancient stories in an ingenious way and to depict them figuratively in the smallest of spaces, albeit with a monumental effect. The painting "The Excavation of the Crosses" selected for this year's special stamp comes from Elsheimer's main work, the "Frankfurter Kreuzaltar". The altar, created between 1603 and 1605, consists of seven panels: in the center, the figure-rich "Glorification of the Cross", around which six further smaller scenes from the "Legend of the True Cross of Christ" are grouped. The altar was lost for more than 300 years. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main succeeded in acquiring the individual panels between 1950 and 1981 and reassembling the altar.