LOCHNER, STEPHAN. - German painter, born in Meersburg on Lake Constance, he lived and worked in Cologne, where he is recorded as active from 1442 until his death, which occurred in 1451, apparently in the city’s poorhouse. From 1447 to 1450 he was elected to the council of the painters’ confraternity. Dürer, as is known from one of his pupils, greatly admired the cathedral altarpiece, considered by his fellow citizens the masterpiece of local painting. This information made it possible to identify the painter with Master Stefan of Cologne.
The only work of his bearing a date is the Presentation in the Temple in the Darmstadt Picture Gallery, from 1447; his activity seems to have intensified in the last decade of his life and can be reconstructed from various panels preserved in German museums, such as the Madonna of the Violet, dating before 1443, the Nativity in the Diocesan Museum, and the Last Judgment in St. Lawrence’s, Cologne, dating after 1446 (part of which is also in the museums of Munich and Frankfurt). Less late would be instead the Crucifixion and the Madonna of the Rose Garden, in the Munich Picture Gallery. L., although regarded as one of the leading representatives of the Cologne school, stands out markedly from his contemporaries for a more immediate and more composed sense of nature, fostered by his contacts with Flemish and French painting, for a poetic use of light and color, and for a clear and effective compositional vision.