Konrad Witz was born in Rottweit, Wurtemberg, between 1400 and 1410 and became one of the brilliant artists of Southern Germany working as a painter and sculptor in Switzerland mainly. He came to Basel in 1431 and was listed in the Guild of painters of that city in 1434. A year later he painted the altar piece of Basel known as his most important work inspired by the Speculum Humanae Salvationis doctrine so dear to 14th Century humanists such as Dante.
Many panels from this altarpiece were dispersed over the following centuries. Nine remained in the Kunstmuseum of Basel, another is in the Berlin museum and two in Dijon.
Witz was perhaps the pupil of Niklaus Lawlin Rsch, a Swabian who had settled in Basel, and of an Alsatian painter named Hans Tieffenthal. He however was influenced by Flemish painters such as Jan van Eyck notably regarding the effects of draperies, minute details, the expressions of the faces of sitters, colours and settings.
Witz was also compared with the Master of the Annunciation of Aix and to many Burgundian painters of his time. In fact, it has been established that most painters of the 15th Century worked under foreign influences, notably Flemish and Italian and Burgundy acted as a channel between various currents.
Witz also painted a Crucifixion in Basel, now in the museum of Berlin since 1908 and a Holy Family. He then went in touch with the Bishop of Geneva who invited him to paint the main altar of the Saint Peter cathedral there. He also painted another altar in Geneva in 1444. The central part of the Saint Peter altarpiece disappeared while the two sides are now in the Art and History Museum of Geneva. In one of them, Witz painted with realistic precision and incredible poetry the banks of the Leman Lake for the Miraculous Draught of Fishes.
He also painted in Geneva "The Conversation between Saint Catherine and Saint Magdalene", now in the museum of Strasbourg, which was rather exhaling a bourgeois atmosphere with his wife and daughter posing as models.
Witz notably painted a Saint Christopher in a decor of water and rocks but without the realism shown in the Miraculous Draught of Fishes while another of his paintings, Joachim and Ann is now in the Kunstmuseum of Basel.
There is also an Annunciation in the museum of Nuremberg and a Dance of the Dead, which has been attributed to him.
Witz was also a sculptor though no work has been found to support such assertion while a certain confusion might have arisen due to the fact that there was a sculptor named Hans Witz working during the 15th Century. Nevertheless, Witz contributed to promote a specific German painting. He died around 1446.
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