Background
He was born in Wesel or Cologne.
He was born in Wesel or Cologne.
He painted altarpieces and portraits, and was Cologne"s foremost portrait painter in the sixteenth century. His early works suggest that he received his artistic training in the Lower Rhine. His earliest documented altarpiece is a Coronation of the Virgin (1515-1516) commissioned by Doctor Peter von Clapis, a professor at the University of Cologne.
Bruyn’s altarpieces of the 1510s and 1520s are influenced by the style of January Joest—to whom Bruyn was related—and often emulate Joest’s habit of illuminating his figures from below.
By the time Bruyn painted the Essen altarpiece (1522-1525) he had combined Joest"s influence with that of Joos van Cleveland In the 1530s, he developed a more Italianate style that reflects the examples of Raphael and Michelangelo, which he probably knew only at second hand through the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi and as filtered through the works of such artists as January van Scorel and Martin van Heemskerck.
Bruyn is especially noted for his portraits. Bruyn"s depictions of the upper-middle-class citizens of Cologne are "lively and expressive, and they show no vain flattery".
His subjects are usually portrayed at half-length against a flat background.
The face is the center of attention, but costume details are crisply described, and prominence is given to the hands. Bruyn did not sign his portraits, and some of them have in the past been misattributed to Hans Holbein, whose influence is apparent in Bruyn"s works after 1539. Barthel Bruyn was a respected citizen of Cologne and active throughout his life in civic affairs
He was elected to the City Council in 1549 and 1553, and died a wealthy manitoba