GetWiki

{{Short description|German painter and woodcut printmaker (1473–1531)}}

factoids

| death_place = Augsburg, GermanyGermany>German| known_for = Painting, printmaking, woodcut| training =| movement =| notable_works =| patrons =| awards = }}Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531) was a German 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.{{sfn|Gietmann|1908}} From 1488, Burgkmair was a pupil of Martin Schongauer in Colmar. Schongauer died in 1491, before Burgkmair was able to complete the normal period of training. He may have visited Italy at this time, and certainly did so in 1507, which greatly influenced his style. From 1491, he worked in Augsburg, where he became a master and eventually opened his own workshop in 1498. Burgkmair was a Lutheran.BOOK, Carey, F., Museum, B., The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come, University of Toronto Press, 368, 1999, 978-0-8020-8325-8,weblink 2022-10-11, 148,

Career

File:Wappenschild.jpg|thumb|140px|right|Burgkmair's 1522 colored woodcut of the Coat of arms of the Swabian League, with a flag of St. George. Two (putto|putti]] support a red cross in a white field; the motto: What God has joined let man not separate.)German art historian Friedrich Wilhelm Hollstein ascribes 834 woodcuts to Burgkmair, the majority of which were intended for book illustrations. Slightly more than a hundred are "single-leaf" prints which were not intended for books. His work shows a talent for striking compositions which blend Italian Renaissance forms with the established German style.From about 1508, Burgkmair spent much of his time working on the woodcut projects of Maximilian I until the Emperor's death in 1519.{{sfn|Gietmann|1908}} He was responsible for nearly half of the 135 prints in the Triumphs of Maximilian, which are large and full of character. He also did most of the illustrations for Weisskunig and much of Theuerdank. He worked closely with the leading blockcutter Jost de Negker, who became in effect his publisher.Landau & Parshall, 212He was an important innovator of the chiaroscuro woodcut, and seems to have been the first to use a tone block, in a print of 1508.WEB,weblink Emperor Maximilian on Horseback, Artbma.org, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070106155206weblink">weblink 2007-01-06, His (:File:Hans Burgkmair the Elder - Lovers Surprised by Death.jpg|Lovers Surprised by Death) (1510) is the first chiaroscuro print to use three blocks,WEB,weblink Lovers Surprised by Death, {{Failed verification|date=March 2014}} and also the first print that was designed to be printed only in colour, as the line block by itself would not make a satisfactory image. Other chiaroscuro prints from around this date by Baldung and Cranach had line blocks that could be and were printed by themselves.The Renaissance Print, David Landau & Peter Parshall, Yale, 1996, {{ISBN|0-300-06883-2}} He produced one etching, Venus and Mercury (c1520),WEB,weblink Hans (the Younger) Burgkmair, Artnet.de, etched on a steel plate, but never tried engraving, despite his training with Schongauer.Burgkmair was also a successful painter, mainly of religious scenes, portraits of Augsburg citizens, and members of the Emperor's court. Many examples of his work are in the galleries of Munich, Vienna and elsewhere.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}Burgkmair died at Augsburg in 1531.

Burgkmair and the foundation of modern ethnology

{{multiple image| image1 = Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian I - 010.jpg| image2 = Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian I - 011.jpg| width = 150| align = right| footer_align = center| footer = People of Calicut, from the Triumphal Procession}}{{multiple image| image1 = Burgkmair's Natives of Arabia and India, Peoples of Africa and India series (1508).jpg| image2 = Burgkmair's Natives of Guinea and Algoa, Peoples of Africa and India series.jpg| width = 250| align = right| footer_align = center| footer = Peoples of Africa and India series (1508)| alt1 = Natives of Arabia and India, 1508, handcolored woodcut, 27.2 X 41.2 cm. Freiherrlich vonWelserschen Familienstiftung, Neunhof (artwork in the public domain; photograph copyright Freiherrlich v. Welserschen)Familienstiftun| alt2 = Natives of Guinea and Algoa, 1508, handcolored woodcut, 28.5 X 42.4 cm. Freiherrlich vonWelserschen Familienstiftung, Neunhof (artwork in the public domain; photograph copyright Freiherrlich v. WelserschenFamilienstiftun}}Burgkmair's time was a period of development for ethnography and the new Humanist science of chorography (promoted by Conrad Celtes at the University of Vienna).BOOK, Poe, Marshall T., A People Born to Slavery": Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748, 1 January 2002, Cornell University Press, 978-0-8014-7470-5, 119,weblink 24 December 2021, en, BOOK, Vogel, Klaus A., Cosmography, Park, Katharine, Katharine Park, Daston, Lorraine, Katharine Park, The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 3, Early Modern Science, 2003, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-57244-6, 488,weblink 24 December 2021, en, Using commercial ventures of the Welsers in Augsburg as a pretext, the humanist Konrad Peutinger goaded Emperor Maximilian into backing his ethnographical interests in the Indians and supporting the 1505–1506 voyage of Balthasar Springer around Africa to India.{{sfn|Noflatscher|2011|p=236}}JOURNAL, Leitch, Stephanie, Burgkmair's Peoples of Africa and India (1508) and the Origins of Ethnography in Print, The Art Bulletin, June 2009, 91, 2, 134–159, 10.1080/00043079.2009.10786162, 194043304,weblink 24 December 2021, Based on an instruction dictated by Maximilian in 1512 regarding Indians in the Triumphal Procession, Jörg Kölderer executed a series of (now lost) drawings, which served as the guideline for Altdorfer's miniatures in 1513–1515, which in turn became the model for woodcuts (half of them based on now lost 1516–1518 drawings by Burgkmair) showing "the people of Calicut."JOURNAL, Feest, Christian, The people of Calicut: objects, texts, and images in the Age of Proto-Ethnography, Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas, August 2014, 9, 2, 295–296, 10.1590/1981-81222014000200003, 84828234, free, In 1508, Burgkmair produced the People of Africa and India series, focusing on depicting the peoples whom Springer encountered along coastal Africa and India.{{sfn|Noflatscher|2011|p=236}} The series brought into being "a basic set of analytic categories that ethnography would take as its methodological foundation".{{sfn|Leitch|2009|p=135}}

Gallery

File:Hans Burgkmair d. Ä. 005.jpg|Emperor Frederick IIIFile:Hans Burgkmair d. Ä. 006.jpg|Eleanor of Portugal, Holy Roman EmpressFile:Triumphzug Kaiser Maximilians 1.jpg|Print in the Triumphs of MaximilianFile:Hans Burgkmair d. Ä. 001.jpg| Altarpiece of John the Evangelist, 1518 (Alte Pinakothek)

See also

• German Renaissance
• Quaternion Eagle

Notes

{{Reflist}}

References

• EB1911, Burgkmair, Hans, 4, 817,
• {{CE1913 |wstitle=Hans Burckmair |first=Gerhard |last= Gietmann |volume=3}}
• BOOK, Noflatscher, Heinz, Maximilian I. (1459 - 1519): Wahrnehmung - Ãœbersetzungen - Gender, 2011, StudienVerlag, 978-3-7065-4951-6, 245,weblink de,

External links

• {{Commons category-inline|Hans Burgkmair d. Ä.}}
• weblink" title="archive.today/20140410142614weblink">Burgkmair's Flodden woodcut
• Prints & People: A Social History of Printed Pictures, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Burgkmair (see index)
• Lambiek Comiclopedia biography.

{{Authority control}}