HNA notes with sadness the death of a beloved colleague, Konrad Renger. His career began with the 1970 publication of his Freie Universität dissertation (1969) as Lockere Gesellschaft. Zur Ikonographie des Verlorenen Sohnes und von Wirtshausszenen in der niederländischen Malerei (Berlin: Mann, 1970). That seminal work inaugurated the study of bordello scenes and related subjects in sixteenth-century Netherlandish paintings and prints. Renger followed it up with ongoing studies of both sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art, chiefly paintings. His curatorial career trajectory began with a research fellow position at the Kunsthistorisches Institut of the Freie Universität and was followed by a stint at the Staatliche Grapische Sammlung in Munich. From there he moved to the Alte Pinakothek as curator, then chief curator of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich.
Renger’s publications were both curatorial and scholarly and included several major books. In 1986 he published an exemplary study, Adriaen Brouwer and das niederländische Bauerngenre 1600-1660 as well as important studies of Rubens and his century, based on the outstanding Munich collections: Peter Paul Rubens. Altäre für Bayern (1990); Die Pranke des Löwen. Rubens Skizzen aus St. Petersburg und München (1997); (with Claudia Denk) Flämische Malerei des Barock in der Alte Pinakothek (2002); and (with Nina Schleif) Flämische Barockmalerei, Staatsgalerie Neuburg an der Donau (2005). Meanwhile a stream of fundamental thematic articles emerged, which were collected as a tribute with Schriftenverzeichnus by the museum as Lehrhafte Laster. Aufsätze zur Ikonographie der niederländisxhen Kunst des 16. Und 17. Jahr-hunderts (2006). These included, among others, foundational studies on the Ill-Matched Pair, Carnival and Lent, the genre of ice skating scenes, and Rubens’s versions of Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus.
On a personal level, Konrad Renger was a warm and generous colleague, even acting as host to foreign visitors. He introduced me to the delights of white asparagus in his own kitchen among many other gemütlich occasions. I personally will miss him greatly. May his memory be a blessing.
Larry Silver
University of Pennsylvania