Baldung Grien, Hans (1484/85–1545)

German Renaissance painter, engraver, and designer. A prolific and accomplished artist, he designed tapestries and stained glass, produced many graphic works, and painted religious subjects, portraits, and allegories. His works, in which he sometimes employs a dramatic foreshortening, frequently display an interest in the occult, as in The Bewitched Stableboy.

He was born in Gmund in Swabia but lived chiefly in Switzerland, near Strasbourg. Early in his career he worked in Albrecht Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg (1503–09); some of Baldung's works reflect Dürer's influence. His principal religious paintings were his altarpiece for the cathedral in Freiburg, The Adoration of the Kings (Berlin) and Crucifixion (Basel), showing an ornate invention. The fantastic and sombre element recurrent in German art appears in such an allegory as his Death and the Maiden (Basel).

His woodcuts are variously signed HB, HBG, and HG.