Adam Elsheimer is one of the unsung heroes of the history of European art. His paintings have an unmistakable richness of detail and invention – all the more remarkable given their small and intricate scale. Working in Rome, Elsheimer transformed every genre he touched – narrative, landscape and the depiction of interiors – and he played a crucial part in the formation of three of the most important artists of the seventeenth century: Rubens, Rembrandt and Claude Lorrain. Sadly, only a small number of his works survive. Perhaps because of this, there has been no major exhibition of Elsheimer’s work since 1966, and there has never been one that focused on his paintings.

The Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt, the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London are now collaborating for the first time on a show that aims to gather together all the artist’s surviving paintings, and in doing so will offer an extraordinary opportunity to see all of his pictures together for the first – and perhaps even the last – time.