Philipp Renlin

A section from the large land map of the upper Danube region from 1589

An excerpt from the Ulm city map from 1597

Philipp Renlin the Elder (* around 1545 somewhere in southern Germany ; † in May 1598 in Ulm ) was a German painter and cartographer who achieved the most beautiful and interesting results in southern German country panel painting (alongside Johann Andreas Rauch ). His most impressive and best-known cartographic work is the large land table of the upper Danube region, a map measuring 265 × 112 cm, which he painted in fine watercolor technique and is now in the State Museum of Württemberg in Stuttgart . To this end, Philipp Renlin created a series of paintings (mostly portraits) and was a city painter in Ulm for twenty years.

Philipp Renlin's family did not come from Ulm. It is not known where it came from. But it will certainly have been at home in southern Germany. The father, who first worked as a saddler and then became a painter, has been in Ulm since 1546 and Philipp must have been an apprentice with him.

Before he was appointed city painter of Ulm in 1578, Philipp Renlin worked temporarily as a painter and cartographer in Blaubeuren (1567/77) and in Ravensburg (1571). The works created there have all been lost.

Apart from a city map from 1597, Philipp Renlin does not seem to have carried out any major cartographic work for Ulm itself. He has only been loaned out very often by the city as a land map cartographer. So in 1585 to Salem , where he may have created the country table of the Ostracher Valley. In 1589 he completed the large land table for the upper Danube region. In 1590 he carried out cartographic work for Count Palatine Philipp Ludwig in Neuburg an der Donau. A very special work during this working period was the Giengen forest map from 1591, which, along with the map of the upper Danube region, is probably one of his most beautiful achievements and is now in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg . At the same time he also created a number of land panels for the border area of Pfalz-Neuburg . In 1593 he was in Balzheim and recorded the landscape of the Illertal from Kellmünz to Aichen . There is no evidence of any cartographic work by him for the period from 1594 to 1597.

Philipp Renlin the Elder was married and had several sons, all of whom became painters and one of whom, Philipp Renlin the Younger (1569–1605), was also involved in cartography.

literature

• Georges Grosjean : History of Cartography , Geographical Institute of the University of Bern, Bern 1996, ISBN 3-906151-15-8
• Ruthardt Oehme: The history of the cartography of the German southwest: With 16 color plates and 42 black and white maps , Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Konstanz and Stuttgart 1961

Web links

Commons : Philipp Renlin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Index entry for Philipp Renlin in the Deutsche Biographie
• State bibliography of Baden-Württemberg with information on Philipp Renlin
• Palatinate-Neuchâtel recording in the Bavarikon internet portal