Johannes Wechtlin
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Johann, Johannes or Hans Wechtlin was a German Renaissance artist, active between at least 1502 and 1526, whose woodcuts are his only certainly surviving work. He was the most prolific producer of German chiaroscuro woodcuts, printed in two or more colours, during their period in fashion, though most of his output was of book illustrations.


Life

He was born in about 1480-85, presumably in
Strasbourg Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...
, then in Germany and now in France, where his father, also called Hans Wechtlin, was a cloth merchant. Most of his identified works are woodcut book illustrations, the first, scenes from the ''
Life of Christ The life of Jesus in the New Testament is primarily outlined in the four canonical gospels, which includes his genealogy and Nativity of Jesus, nativity, Ministry of Jesus, public ministry, Passion of Jesus, passion, prophecy, Resurrection of ...
'', are from a Strasbourg book of 1502, and the last is a Strasbourg title-page of 1526. In 1505 he began a year of employment as a painter to
René II, Duke of Lorraine René II (2 May 1451 – 10 December 1508) was Count of Vaudémont from 1470, Duke of Lorraine from 1473, and Duke of Bar from 1483 to 1508. He claimed the crown of the Kingdom of Naples and the County of Provence as the Duke of Calabria 1480& ...
in Nancy. After he left Nancy he was in Wittenberg in 1506-7, where he must have met the court painter,
Lucas Cranach the Elder Lucas Cranach the Elder (german: Lucas Cranach der Ältere ;  – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is know ...
. He became a citizen of Strasbourg in 1514, and by 1519 was a master of the painter's guild there.


Single woodcuts

He left nineteen single-leaf wood-cuts (i.e.
prints In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserve ...
rather than book illustrations), apparently made in the period 1505-15, and is mainly remembered for his twelve chiaroscuro woodcuts, which are all extremely rare. The dating of these has been much discussed by art-historians, as part of the very tangled issue of the development of the German chiaroscuro woodcut. Bartrum assigns them "towards the end" of the 16th century. No surviving paintings are attributed to him, although a few drawings have been, tentatively. As with most artists in woodcut, art historians now consider that Wechtlin probably just designed the woodcuts, leaving the block-cutting to a specialist "formschneider" who pasted the design to the wood and chiselled the white areas away. The quality of the final woodcuts, which varies considerably, depended on the skill of the cutter as well as the artist. His best known print is the chiaroscuro ''Skull Within an Ornamental Frame'', "by far his most impressive" and "one of the most powerful magesof the German Renaissance", which is the only one for which there is evidence of dating, as it is copied in a book of 1512. Four of his chiaroscuro prints are somewhat ostentatiously classical, two on the very obscure subjects of ''
Alcon Alcon is an American Swiss medical company specializing in eye care products with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and incorporated in Fribourg, Switzerland. Alcon began as a US company and its US subsidiary’s headquarters remain in Fort ...
Slaying the Serpent'' and ''
Pyrgoteles Pyrgoteles ( grc, Πυργοτέλης) was one of the most celebrated gem-engravers of ancient Greece, living in the latter half of the 4th century BC. The esteem in which he was held may be inferred from an edict of Alexander the Great, which ...
'' (a famous Ancient Greek gem-carver), as well the better known ones of '' Pyramus and Thisbe'' and '' Orpheus''. They show Italianate influence, especially from the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi, from whom the figures of Pyramus and Thisbe are directly borrowed.Bartrum, 66-67 His woodcut technique is based on that of
Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
,Peters, 69 though his wooded backgrounds owe more to Cranach. His ''Knight and Halberdier'' (illustrated above) is in the chivalrous spirit influenced by Emperor Maximilian and his calls for a crusade; indeed the style of armour the knight wears is often called "Maximilian armour". Other early chiaroscuro woodcuts were equestrian portraits of similar knightly figures, a portrait of Maximilian by
Hans Burgkmair Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531) was a German Painting, painter and woodcut printmaker. Background Hans Burgkmair was born in Augsburg, the son of painter Thomas Burgkmair. His own son, Hans the Younger, later became a painter as well. From ...
, and versions of ''
Saint George and the Dragon In a legend, Saint Georgea soldier venerated in Christianitydefeats a dragon. The story goes that the dragon originally extorted tribute from villagers. When they ran out of livestock and trinkets for the dragon, they started giving up a human tr ...
'' looking very similar to the Emperor, by both Cranach and Burgkmair. Wechtlin's twelve prints were the largest individual contribution to the corpus of about sixty German chiaroscuro woodcuts from the early 16th century - the technique was probably invented by Burgkmair in 1508. Unlike Burgkmair's often frankly garish colours, Wechtlin's colour woodcuts use only two blocks and muted colours. In both the Cleveland and Cincinnati impressions of the ''Knight and Halberdier'' there are black line blocks and a "greyish-blue" tone block; other tone blocks are described as "blue-grey" (''Orpheus'' and the Skull) and "grey-green" (''Pyramus and Thisbe''). His monogram, used only on eleven of his chiaroscuro prints, consists in its fullest form of his initials "Io V" between two diagonally crossed pilgrim's staves, with a flower in the centre, on a
cartellino A ''cartellino'' (Italian for "small piece of paper"In modern Italian, ''carta'' means "paper", the diminutive ''cartello'' means "sign", and the double diminutive ''cartellino'' means "tag".) is an illusionistic portrayal of a written note inc ...
or plaque, a style copied from
Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
. His prints, recognised as a group, remained unattributed to any documented artist until 1851, when his name on the title page of a book he illustrated was connected with the monogram and the few documentary records. A similar monogram was used by the glass-painter Jacob Wechtlin, perhaps a brother.


Book illustrations

His best known book illustrations in his own time were 135 woodcuts from
Sebastian Brant Sebastian Brant (also Brandt) (1458 – 10 May 1521) was a German humanist and satirist. He is best known for his satire '' Das Narrenschiff'' (''The Ship of Fools''). Biography Brant was born in Strasbourg to an innkeeper but eventually enter ...
's 1502 edition of Virgil's '' Aeneid'', "perhaps the most influential book illustrations ever produced in Europe", though the attribution to him is not universally agreed. This was the first printed Virgil with illustrations. These crowded compositions retain many Gothic features, compared for example with
Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered ...
's rather earlier painted illustrations to Dante. They were copied in many other book editions and about thirty years later in a famous series of
Limoges Limoges (, , ; oc, Lemòtges, locally ) is a city and Communes of France, commune, and the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne Departments of France, department in west-central France. It was the administrative capital of the former Limousin region ...
enamel plaques by the "Master of the Aeneid Series", one of many such derivative works. Better-known today are the often rather gruesome woodcuts for
Hans von Gersdorff Hans von Gersdorff, also known as ''Schyl-Hans'', (* approx. 1455; † 1529 in Strasbourg) was a well-known surgeon who published the ''Feldbuch der Wundarzney'' ("Field book of surgery") in 1517 (published by Johannes Schott in Strasbourg), wit ...
's (1455–1529) ''Feldtbuch der Wundartzney'' (literally "Field-book of the Wound-doctor", 1517, 1st edn.), a manual for the military surgeon (see Commons). These have sometimes been coloured by hand, but are printed in black and white.copy at Columbia University Library
/ref> His frontispiece for the 1526 edition, produced when he was probably in his forties, is the last known trace of him. He is not to be confused with
Hans Weiditz Hans Weiditz the Younger, Hans Weiditz der Jüngere, Hans Weiditz II (1495 Freiburg im Breisgau - c1537 Bern), was a German Renaissance artist, also known as The Petrarch Master for his woodcuts illustrating Petrarch's ''De remediis utriusque fort ...
, another Strasbourg woodcut artist of the period.


Notes


References

* Bartrum, Giulia; ''German Renaissance Prints, 1490-1550''; British Museum Press, 1995, * Jane S Peters in KL Spangeberg (ed), ''Six Centuries of Master Prints'', Cincinnati Art Museum, 1993, no. 38,


External links


Cleveland
''Saint John on the island of Patmos''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Wechtlin, Hans German printmakers Artists from Strasbourg 16th-century German artists Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown