Stefan Lochner was a German late Gothic

Gothic art

Gothic art was a Medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of the Alps, never quite effacing more classical...

 painter.

His style, famous for its clean appearance, combined Gothic attention towards long flowing lines with brilliant colours with a Flemish influenced realism and attention to detail. His compositions are often sprinkled with fanciful angels, singing and playing musical instruments.

He worked mainly in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, and his principal work is the triptych

Triptych

A triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...

 of the Altar of the City Patrons (done in the 1440s, which is in the Cologne Cathedral), which represents the city in homage to the infant Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

. The epitome of his style is Madonna of the Rose Bower (c. 1450, housed in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum

Wallraf-Richartz Museum

The Wallraf-Richartz-Museum is one of the three major museums in Cologne, Germany. It houses an art gallery with a collection of fine art from the medieval period to the early twentieth century...

 in Cologne), showing the Virgin and Child reposing in a blooming rose arbor and attended by Lochner's characteristic child Angels.

The asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 12616 Lochner

12616 Lochner

12616 Lochner is a main-belt minor planet. It was discovered by Cornelis Johannes van Houten, Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld, and Tom Gehrels at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, on September 26, 1960. It is named after Stefan Lochner, a German late Gothic painter of the...

was named in his honour in late 2008.