Monday, April 4, 2016

European Prints and Drawings from the 16th century

Hans Baldung
Heraldic Unicorn
1544
drawing
British Museum

Anonyumous print-maker after Hans Baldung
Heraldic Unicorns
ca. 1575-1600
woodcut
British Museum

"In 1503 he [Hans Baldung] traveled to Nuremberg. There he met Dürer and became his most reliable assistant and one of his closest friends; when Dürer left for Venice, he entrusted his workshop to Baldung ... After returning to Strasbourg, Baldung did devotional illustration for treatises on the Virgin Mary and painted nude maidens gazing at themselves in mirrors, stalked by Death, fairytale knights galloping through the woods, and Christs in the sepulcher. In 1510 he began to dedicate himself to themes linked to the image of the female body, ranging from monstrous and seductive figures of witches to allegorical figures." 

Hans Baldung
The Fall of Man
1511
woodcut
British Museum

René Boyvin after Rosso Fiorentino
Jupiter and Europa
ca. 1545-55
engraving
British Museum

René Boyvin after Rosso Fiorentino
Saturn and Philyra
ca. 1545-55
engraving
British Museum

René Boyvin after Rosso Fiorentino
Salt cellar with Neptune
1550s
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
1544
engraving
British Museum

"The liberation of 16th-century science from Aristotelian tradition offered a new, more direct relationship with nature. One emblematic example, closely tied to art, was the study of anatomy. ... Direct observation, made possible by dissection, showed that one could not constrain the 'accidents' of biology within a schematic relationship of predefined proportions. An alternative to the auctoritas of classical authors thus appeared. Dürer offers the most obvious case of an artist-cum-intellectual torn between the two tendencies. He studied not only 'virile,' athletic male nudes  the standard 'type' from Greek art forward  but also the bodies of women and children, and body types ranging from obese to emaciated."

Hendrik Goltzius
Standard-Bearer
1587
engraving
British Museum

Hendrik Goltzius
Soldier from behind
ca. 1582
engraving
British Museum

Hendrik Goltzius
Captain of Infantry
1587
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hans Holbein
Wild Man
ca. 1528
drawing
British Museum

Hans Holbein
Two Putti
ca. 1543
drawing
British Museum

Hans Holbein
Woman with children
ca. 1532-33
drawing
British Museum

Jan Rutlinger
Queen Elizabeth I
ca. 1590-1600
engraving
British Museum

"The English 16th century, which attained its cultural apogee during the age of Shakespeare, can be viewed as a succession of lacerating divisions and internecine wars. To list them briefly: the Anglican schism brought about by the king, using as pretext the pope's refusal to authorize his divorce; the early phase of persecution that culminated in the execution of Sir Thomas More; the suppression of the monasteries between 1535 and 1540; the emblematic loss at Portsmouth of the Mary Rose, flagship of the war fleet (1545); the contest for the throne between the two half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth; the continuous wars along the Scottish borders; the beheading of the deposed Scottish queen, Mary Stuart ... One could go on."

– Quotations from European Art of the Sixteenth Century by Stefano Zuffi, translated by Antony Shugaar (Getty Museum, 2005)