Peter Flötner

Peter Flötner
Abraham and the Three Angels
ca. 1525-35
lead plaquette
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Peter Flötner
Triumph of a Sea Goddess
ca. 1530
carved soapstone with gilt-bronze rim
Harvard Art Museums

Peter Flötner
Foreshortened Figure on Stone Block
(perspective study)
ca. 1530-35
drawing
British Museum

Peter Flötner
Apollo playing the Lira da Braccio
ca. 1530-40
(false date and monogram added later)
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

Peter Flötner
Audience with Hungarian King
1534
woodcut (book illustration)
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Peter Flötner
Allegory of Wrath
ca. 1535
bronze plaquette
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Peter Flötner
Allegory of Bad Government
ca. 1540-45
stone relief
(modello for plaquette)
British Museum

Peter Flötner
Lot and his Daughters
ca. 1540
boxwood medallion
British Museum

Peter Flötner
Personification of Fortitude
ca. 1540
bronze plaquette
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Peter Flötner
Triumphal Arch for Entry of Charles V into Nuremberg
1541
woodcut
British Museum

Peter Flötner
Caryatids in Motion
1541
woodcut (book illustration)
British Museum

Peter Flötner
Wandalus, King of the Lusatians
(series, Ancestors and Early Kings of Germany)
ca. 1543
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress
British Museum

Peter Flötner
Allegorical Scene
before 1546
gilt-bronze plaquette
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Peter Flötner
Bacchanal with Silenus on an Ass
before 1546
lead plaquette
British Museum

Peter Flötner
Lovers, Death and the Devil
before 1546
woodcut
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Peter Flötner
Study of Male Figure from the back
before 1546
drawing
Universitätsbibliothek, Erlangen-Nürnberg

Peter Flötner
Three Capitals
before 1546
woodcut
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Peter Flötner
Woman in Roundel
before 1546
ink and watercolor on paper
Universitätsbibliothek, Erlangen-Nürnberg

from Salome

No wonder, shaggy saint, breast-deep in Jordan's

        Reflected gliding gardens,

That you assumed their swift compulsions sacred;

Nor that, dreaming you drank, so cool the water,

Regeneration, of which the first taste maddens,

        You let spill on the naked

    Stranger a pure and tripled mitre;

Nor that later, brooding, on the sacrament

        Of flowing streams, you went

Back where none flow, and went in a new dread

Of water's claspings, whose rapt robe, whose crown

Make beggar and prince alike magnificent.

        A dry voice inside said,

    "Life is a pool in which we drown."

Finally then, small wonder the small king,

        Your captor, slavering

In a gold litter, bitten to the bone

By what shall be, pretended not to hear

His veiled wild daughter sinuous on a string

        Of motives all her own

    Summon the executioner. 

– James Merrill (1959)