GRYPHIUS, ANDREAS. — Playwright, Protestant, born at Glogau on 11 Oct. 1616, died there on 16 July 1664. He authored five tragedies, among them *Papinianus*, *Carolus Stuardus*, and *Cardenio und Celinde*, as well as several comedies, including *Peter Squentz* and *Horribilicribrifax*. Both his tragedies and comedies were composed almost exclusively on foreign models and are distinguished by an ornate style and an exaggerated predilection for the horrific.
With a profound religious sense, rigorously Lutheran in tone, he nonetheless infused his work with an austere and manly—though overly pessimistic—conception of life. He occasionally succeeded in imparting order and coherence to events and in endowing his characters with individuality. This was too little to merit, as his contemporaries did, the title of the German Shakespeare, yet it was enough to make him, even for us, the foremost dramatist of his time.
GRÜNEWALD, MATHIS — *The Virgin and St. John*. Detail from the *Crucifixion of Isenheim* (1512–16) — Colmar, Museum.