Hans Sebald Beham
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hans Sebald Beham (1500 – 1550) was a German printmaker who did his
best work as an engraver, and was also a designer of woodcuts and a
painter and miniaturist. He is one of the most important of the
"Little Masters", the group of German artists making old master
prints in the generation after Durer.
The older brother
of Barthel Beham by two years, he was born into a family of artists
in Nuremberg. In 1525, along with his brother and Georg Pencz, the
so-called "godless painters", he was banished from Nuremberg,
accused of heresy (against Lutheranism), blasphemy and not
recognising the authority of the City council. Within months the
three were allowed to return to the city, but Beham was exiled again
in 1528 for publishing a book on the proportions of the horse
regarded as plagiarised from an unpublished manuscript by Albrecht
Dürer, who had recently died. After a period spent working in
various German cities, from 1532 he lived mostly in Frankfurt until
his death in 1550.
He is increasingly
known just as "Sebald Beham", as this how he usually signed his name
in full. The "Hans" seems to derive from the first letter of his
monogram only. However, up to about 1532 his prints were monogrammed
'HSP', reflecting the Nuremberg pronunciation of his name: Peham.
After this date, when he had moved to Frankfurt, his monogram became
'HSB'.
Beham is best known as a prolific printmaker, producing
approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts,
including woodcut book illustrations. He worked extensively on tiny,
highly detailed, engravings, many as small as postage stamps,
placing him in the German printmaking school known as the "Little
Masters" from the size of their prints. These works he produced and
published himself, whilst his much larger woodcuts were mostly
commissioned work. The engravings found a ready market among German
bourgeois collectors, but were not much seen in Italy. He also made
prints for use as playing cards, wallpaper, coats of arms, and
designs for other artists, including many designs for stained or
painted glass. He also illuminated two prayer books and painted a
table top (now in the Louvre ) for Cardinal Albrecht, Archbishop of
Mainz.
The book on the proportions of the horse, for which he was exiled in
1528, was an artist's manual, later followed by one on the human
figure. These were simplified borrowings of Dürer's works on the
subjects, but rather easier to use (and cheaper), so they had a
long-lasting success among artists.
His engravings
cover a range of subjects, but he is especially known for scenes of
peasant life, and scenes from classical myth or history, both often
with an erotic element. His early work was done under the shadow of
Dürer, who was still working in Nuremberg, and one early woodcut
"Head of Christ", to which the AD monogram was added in the 2nd
state (probably not by Beham), was long believed to be a work by
Dürer by Adam Bartsch and others. He also borrowed from his brother
Barthel's rather more original works. In his later work he boldly
re-interpreted many of Dürer's most famous prints in works like his
Melancholia of 1539 that exploit the difference in scale between his
work and the original.
