Hans Weiditz

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Hans Weiditz ("The Petrarch Master")
(German, c. 1495 - c. 1536)

Two armored figures from
"Die Burgermeister Nürnbergs"
Woodcuts, hand-colored
with watercolor washes

Sheet 12 x 7-3/4 in. (30.5 x 19.7 cm);
blocks each approximately 8.5 in
(21.6 cm) high

Provenance:
The Hamburg art market; Schrader and Smith, Richmond, Virginia

This is a leaf from a publication of about 1570 entitled Die Burgermeister Nürnbergs, with impressive large woodcuts attributed to "The Petrarch Master" (Hans Weiditz). On one side, Herr Hans Jacob Fugger stands by his elaborate, quartered arms. On the verso, Herr Antoni Welserl strides forth bravely making a rhetorical gesture. Both are dressed in parade armor and each is accompanied by his coat of arms.

Hans Weiditz was an important member of the small group of outstanding woodcut designers of the German Renaissance, whose membership included Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, and Hans Burgkmair. He is also referred to as "The Petrarch Master", owing to his woodcut illustrations of Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae, or Remedies for Both Good and Bad Fortune, or Phisicke Against Fortune.

The fact that Weiditz was nearly alone in illustrating a great number of secular books makes him in many ways a more interesting artist than his more famous colleagues.

In his essay on Hans Weiditz, William M. Ivins, Jr. (1881-1961), former Curator of Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, shares his infectious enthusiasm for the artist whose life had remained largely unappreciated until modern scholarship brought to light his great contribution to German Renaissance art.