Fitted into the shape of a trefoil, the composition appears to be a design for a pane of glass. A whole series of such cracks in the panes have been preserved from Albrecht Dürer's Nuremberg studio. Here Death, dressed only in a scanty cloth, rides on an emaciated, wearily dragging rascal. The skeletal figure eagerly fixes his target, he is about to shoot a deadly arrow, and there are more at hand in the well-filled quiver. The surrounding Latin inscription also gives the gloomy rider a voice: "Beware, unfortunate one, that I do not bed you, pierced by my missile, on this hideous bed of the bier," the rider calls out to his counterpart.

A counterpart to Dürer's finely drawn sheet in dark ink has been preserved in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg: It shows the Nuremberg provost Dr. Sixtus Tucher in front of his own grave. So the admonishing words were directed at him - and it is he on whom the rider, with his arm raised, applies his deadly shot.

In times of angry plague epidemics, people wanted to be prepared for death. The Nuremberg provost always had two stained glass paintings made according to the drawings; they decorated the windows in his study and warned him daily of the dangers of the plague and his own impermanence. Albrecht Dürer's grand glass tear is just one of many drawings that the Kupferstichkabinett Hannover preserves together with countless graphic works.

The soft lime wood was ideal for the differentiated design of material qualities. An agraffe decorated with pearls adorns the headdress, the different textures of the robes are skilfully shown, and the Würzburg carver has confidently reproduced the moving, fluttering end of the veil. Today we see the saint looking pensively at the ground as a bust, but originally it was probably a standing full figure that an early collector sawed off at the bottom and converted into a bust. Thanks to the generous support of a group of committed women from Würzburg and Hanover, the work was restored in 2003 - a beautiful example of civic engagement that has brought Riemenschneider's unknown saint to new life.

The mystical betrothal of the boy Jesus to St. Catherine is expanded here to include John the Evangelist. According to an inventory, the charming painting was located in the private apartments of a member of the Augsburg Fugger family in 1617. It was probably created for Katharina Thurzo, the wife of Raimund Fugger von der Lilie. Here, Hans Burgkmair takes up a representational tradition that is particularly popular in Venetian painting, in which the Mother of God is shown with the child kneeling and in silent conversation with saints. The painter states his name, the year the painting was created and his origins in Augsburg on the scroll between the Mother of God and Saint John.

The small circular picture works like a can: if you remove the lid, the portrait of the reformer and humanist Philipp Melanchthon becomes visible in the bottom of the lower part. The inscription in the lid, which is filled with rich Renaissance ornaments, provides information about the identity of the sitter. She speaks directly to the viewer and praises the artist who created the work: “You who see Melanchthon's facial features as if they were almost alive. Holbein created them with extraordinary skill."

Such capsule paintings were popular as gifts among art connoisseurs and supporters of the Reformation. In their precious design, they compete with contemporary portrait medals and, thanks to their execution in the medium of painting, achieve a much higher degree of realism. The portrait of the Greek professor and close comrade-in-arms of Martin Luther was probably created during Holbein's English period and comes from the Elector of Hanover's possession. Holbein probably never met the great reformer. His portrait is based on depictions by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach.

Agnolo Bronzino was the favored portrait painter at the Medici court in Florence in the 1540s. His portraits have a dignified detachment and cool elegance; their brilliant painterly execution immediately captivates the viewer. It cannot be said with certainty whether the painting in Hanover is a portrait of an actual person or a purely ideal portrait. Due to the oval shape of the picture, the young man appears in a detail, as was usual for ancient ruler busts. In front of the dark background, the athletic body stands out extremely vividly, and the light coming from the left models some areas of the skin as if they were made of marble. Bronzino skilfully seeks comparison with the neighboring genre of sculpture and yet leaves no doubt that it is a painted picture. Despite all the severity and coolness, here and there a particularly sensual moment flashes through: the pink cloth reveals the body rather than covering it, and with the nipple only half hidden, a decidedly erotic moment enters the picture.

Gerrit Dou's paintings were admired and enthusiastically collected from an early age. Rembrandt's student was one of the most successful painters of his time, his hard work was legendary - and so were the prices for his internationally sought-after pictures. One of his biographers reports that a cloth was always stretched over the easel in Dou's Leiden studio so that not a speck of dust would settle on the delicately smooth painting surface; another writes that Dou always kept his brushes safely locked up for the same reason. When you look at the picture in Hanover, in which an unknown African in an oriental costume looks over his shoulder at the viewer, one might readily believe this information. Such tronies, head studies of orientals in exotic costumes, of soldiers or aging people, were extremely popular in Leiden painting.

In his bouquet, Jacob van Es arranges roses, a masterfully painted iris and four tulips, whose yellow-red flaming flowers shine jewel-like in precious isolation against the simple background. The Flemish painter, who specialized in still lifes, did not choose the latter as a motif by chance. Today tulips are cheap mass-produced goods, but in the 17th century they were a sought-after luxury item. Shortly after the first colorful specimens arrived from Constantinople to Vienna and from there to Holland in the middle of the 16th century, a veritable storm of enthusiasm broke out for the newly discovered plant. In a very short time, an entire country succumbed to the colorful play of flowers, and horrendous sums of money were offered on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange for the most original varieties. Up to 5000 guilders – 17 times the annual income of a craftsman – were raised for a single onion. In 1637 the relationship between supply and demand collapsed completely and the first documented stock market crash in economic history occurred.

It is immediately clear to most viewers which city can be seen here: it is Venice, or more precisely the church of S. Maria dei Miracoli, which is staged here in an almost melancholic way by Bernardo Bellotto. The Italian painter is famous for his spectacular views of the lagoon city. He repeatedly painted the main attractions of Venice - initially together with his employer Antonio Canal, but from 1430 also independently. The images were prepared with the camera obscura and then arranged into atmospheric overall compositions using a complex process using various intermediate graphic stages.

Giovanni Paolo Pannini directs our attention to the most important church in Christianity, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The enormous size of the building becomes immediately clear. Little by little it becomes clear how skillfully Pannini stages his perspective. One row of pillars of the nave leads vertically into the depths, the other is set at an angle. Only gradually does the eye begin to wander into the side aisles, new colors and aspects of the furnishings appear. The staffage figures in particular are highlighted by the light falling at a steep angle: on the right there are a few more simply dressed visitors, otherwise higher-ranking people populate the church interior; A few monks and even a cardinal also mingled with the crowd.

Giovanni Paolo Pannini has studied St. Peter in Rome several times in pictures. His paintings were extremely popular with baroque tourists, especially aristocrats on the “grand tour”. And his contemporaries praised Pannini not only for his skills in perspective, but also as an outstanding colorist, whose brushstrokes are seductive and whose work shows no effort. If you compare his view of the interior of St. Peter's with the photographs taken by tourists today, it becomes clear how intensively Pannini was interested in the church. The painter succeeds in the feat of really showcasing this enormous building using perspective, light and color.

Josef Ernst von Bandel was a German architect, sculptor and painter who is best known today for his colossal Hermann Monument: The 26 meter high statue was erected near Detmold in 1875 because it was believed to be the historical site of the Battle of Varus. However, throughout his life, the artist himself referred to another work as his "main and magnificent work": The Decorating Venus! The goddess of love sits life-sized with her right leg folded under her on a decorated three-legged stool, onto which her robes have also fallen. At the feet of the nude figure there is a richly ornamented jewelry box from which pearl necklaces and a hair band practically spill out. Immediately after the bath, the beauty is still braiding her flowing hair, tying it and placing it in pigtails around her head. Not only the hairstyle and the classic profile of the goddess, her entire body design is inspired by the art of antiquity. The “Capitoline Venus” in particular served as a model for the artist, even though it has a completely different posture. When Ernst von Bandel made the first models of the Venus figure in 1831/32 and 1834, the famous Roman sculpture, a copy of the non-preserved so-called Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles, was being re-installed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. Bandel began executing his Venus in Carrara in 1838 on the occasion of his second stay in Italy. After a long interruption, it was completed there between 1843 and 1844; In 1846, the marble sculpture with its smooth, previously extremely polished surface was on display at the 14th art exhibition in Hanover.

Dutch painting, landscapes and people had a great influence on Max Liebermann's art. From 1874 onwards, the artist, who is now one of the most important German impressionists alongside Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth, regularly spent the summer months on the Dutch North Sea coast. There he studied the rural life of the common people and devoted himself to plein air painting. He also repeatedly painted riders on the beach - this constant repetition of a theme shows that the motif was actually secondary for Liebermann in his impressionistic phase, and that instead he was primarily interested in the changing weather and light conditions. The version shown is a kind of painted photograph, comparable to today's "snapshots": Backlit by the sun, it shows the full format silhouette of a rider in the latest sports outfit - it is the equestrian fashion with breeches and peaked cap that is still established today. Liebermann traveled to Holland for the last time in 1913, and after the outbreak of the First World War he never returned there.

Today we remember Max Slevogt as one of the most important German impressionists, best known for his Palatinate landscape paintings. But this view is too one-sided, because throughout his life Slevogt not only produced according to nature, but also from his imagination. This is shown, for example, in the “Faces” portfolio, which includes 21 stone and zinc prints and in which the artist, among other things, processes his experiences as a war correspondent on the Western Front in 1914. One of the sheets is the “suicide machine”: What seems like a parking meter actually offers a way to end your own life quickly and efficiently. When a coin is inserted, a shot is fired from the pistol and hits the suicidal user directly in the heart. The offer seems popular; two well-dressed men came anonymously to the well-kept Berliner Allee this morning to take advantage of it. With this graphic, Slevogt creates a caricature of big city life during the “Belle Epoque”. These years before the outbreak of the First World War are not only a “beautiful” time for the artist, but also a deceitful time in which people show off on the outside and corrupt on the inside. Melancholy and depression were widespread, and suicide was the only way out for many.

Nudes are a typical motif in Corinth's painting. The artist repeatedly showcased naked bodies in different contexts and facets. The painting “Susanna and the Two Old Ones,” created in 1923, chooses a religious subject as the setting for nudity and thus combines two focal points of Corinth's work. The model for the depiction is a story from the Apocrypha: Susanna is observed bathing by two aging judges and pressured into sexual intercourse. Corinth implements the motif several times. In an early version the focus is on the reproduction of the sensual female nude, but in this final version of the theme the mood of the image has turned threatening. Susanna stands as a nude figure with her back to the viewer, towered over by the only vaguely depicted old people. She tries to protect herself from the lustful looks, but seems to have no way of escaping. The figures standing close together and filling the picture suggest an oppressive confinement. The contours seem to be almost dissolved by the expressive brush strokes. And due to the unreal pink tones in which the entire picture is painted, it seems as if the flesh tone of the nude radiates across the entire picture. This obscurity of space and the inherent value of color are typical characteristics of Corinth's late work - the focus is no longer on the sensuality of the naked body, but on painting itself.