No documents at all tell us the reason why the c. 28-year-old goldsmith journeyman Albrecht Dürer the Elder in 1455 chose to return to Nuremberg, the city where he several years earlier had spent at least some part of his forming years, maybe in the Holper goldsmith atelier. This workshop may have been very important. Hieronymus Holper was a master since 1435, the year when he probably took over the workshop of his father Heinz Holper. About the last-mentioned goldsmith there has been forwarded to posterity the obviously interesting information that he executed Pilder auf Panzer, which may mean that he was known for engraved decorations on harnesses. In 1467 the 40-year-old Albrecht married his master’s 15-year-old daughter Barbara and paid the fee for citizenship of Nuremberg. As a goldsmith master from 1468 des Holper aiden made an excellent career, as can be seen from documents presented by A Gümbel in an article in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 1915.

Nuremberg was at this time the world’s leading commercial city, a centre for the metal trade and known for the manufacture of e g armaments. It was here that one of the first German paper mills had been established as early as in 1398. If Gutenberg had been looking for the place that offered the best possibilities for a successful fulfilling of his printing inventions, he would hardly have been able to find a better one. Maybe it was also really here that he spent the period from March 1444 to October 1448, when his whereabouts are unknown. There was in this city certainly a big need for decorations on harnesses, a handicraft that may be quite as likely to have inspired to commercial engravings on paper as that of the goldsmiths. One of the most qualified of the engravers of the Dürer time, Lucas van Leyden, is in fact mentioned to have learnt both as a goldsmith and as an armourer, that is in a workshop where there were produced Pilder auf Panzer.

If not already before, Albrecht Dürer the Elder had at least during his many years in the Holper workshop, from 1455 and on, the possibility to experience with printing procedures. We can see that from the fact that he, when he, probably in 1467/68, left this atelier and established his own workshop, seems to have been able to start at once with his so original production of engravings, probably drypoints printed from a week metal, maybe zink. It has, however, never been able to identify the place where the very first printing on paper of images from engraved metal plates developed into professional activity.

A small number of craftsmen and artists were in the middle of the fifteenth century since a few years engaged in the improvement of the technical proceedings. The so often repeted statement that the first engravings from copper plates should have been produced by goldmiths in the region of Upper Rhine or Strasbourg, and as early as in the late 1430s, is in spite of researches and discussions during more than a century still only a guess with little foundation. The very first printed date on an engraving is the year 1446 on a representation of the Flagellation, part of a Passion series of 7 prints attributed to a so-called Master of 1446. To him has also been attributed a series showing the Apostles. It has with long-sought arguments been guessed that this artist should have been working in the south-west parts of Germany. Knowing now that Nuremberg was the home of the Housebook Master, Albrecht Dürer the Elder, the remarkable artist who in this city produced a lot of excellent early engravings, it seems more reasonable to consider if not Nuremberg in reality may have been the place where engravings for commercial use were first produced. Maybe is it not an accidental occurrence that the year 1446 is just in the middle of the short period when Johann Gutenberg, the master of professional reproduction, may be supposed to have spent some years in Nuremberg.

The most original and productive of the earliest engravers is known only as the anonymous so-called Master E S, who has never been identified although his work is of the greatest importance. This artist’s activity is interpreted to be encircled within the period c. 1455-67, which is nearly exactly the years when the to Nuremberg returned Albrecht Dürer the Elder worked as an assistant in the Holper workshop. Master E S shows an at this time unusual intention to render religious motifs less conventionalized and with features studied from nature, often with an air of commonday life. It looks as if nothing in life offered him any such difficulties that he could not master to give artistic form. Many of the faces bear a look of an inner, or very often quite visible smile, all characteristics we find typical also for Albrecht the Elder’s works. If the Master E S was not as big a creator as e g Schongauer or Dürer the Younger, he was yet without competion the greatest personality of the print world of his time beside the now at last identified Housebook Master Albrecht Dürer the Elder.

About this remarkable Master E S history knows nothing at all except the very great number of excellent prints that have been attributed to him on ground of style. On a few of them we find printed the years 1466 and 1467 and on some the letters e, E, e S, E S or S, which has produced the guess that the initials might refer to Einsiedeln in Switzerland; some prints show the Virgin of Einsiedeln. These engravings were obviously intended to be sold among the great many people who every year went on pilgrimage to this rich Benedictine monastery, which just in 1466 was celebrating that it was 500 years since Pope Leo VIII had given them the right to sell letters of indulgence. This decision was grounded on the presented legend that Christ and angels should have appeared at the consecration of the first Mary chapel in 948.

As it seems rather unlikely that the initials E S should refer to any documented artist of a quality corresponding to the preserved engravings, there rests the possibility that the engravings might have been commissioned by some other person with the initials E S, someone who wanted to support the monastery with print editions saleable to the pilgrims. A possible donator would then have been Princess Eleonore Stuart, a daughter of King Jacob I of Scotland, a literate lady partly educated in France who in 1449 was married to Duke Sigmund of Tirol. Such a supposition is in a way supported by the fact that Duke Sigmund probably is among those who were portrayed by Albrecht Dürer the Elder (Alte Pinakothek, Munich, there attributed to a so-called Master of the Mornauer Portrait), and may even be identified on some of Dürer the Elder’s prints. Eleonore is known to have made several pilgrimages and to have supported many religious centres, among them Einsiedeln. Just at the beginning of the year 1467 she is mentioned to have travelled from Innsbruck to Basel and is known to have passed on the way e g Waldshut c. 40 km north of Einsiedeln.

Contrary to the œuvres of many other early engravers, the prints of Master E S show an evident diversity in style. It has therefore sometimes been suggested that some of them might be the work of another artist or artists. As a more likely explanation I would suggest that this difference in technique and form might be the result of cooperating hands, that the creating artist in some, maybe even in most cases is not identical with the engraver. Quite as with the invention of printing with movable type on a press, one may in a commercial workshop have tried to keep the possibility to produce editions of prints for sale as a secret as long as possible. There is in fact reason to consider seriously, if not most of the prints of somewhat different quality, that are now attributed to one single Master E S, in reality may be commercial products from the Holper atelier in Nuremberg, which in history is remembered as the place where Heinz Holper had produced Pilder auf Panzer, and maybe once was the place where Gutenberg worked with some kind of printing experiments.

If the idea of producing engravings for commercial sale was first realized in the Holper workshop, to which Albrecht Dürer the Elder may have been connected already in 1444, the reason why this so talented artist returned to Nuremberg may have been that he was wanted for the creating of drawings good enough to be reproduced in great number for sale. If so, the prints that have been attributed to the anonymous Master E S would then have been engraved in the Holper workshop by hands not always competent to reproduce on a level corresponding to the inventive Dürer the Elder’s drawings. The reason why the so originally creating Dürer the Elder did not and in fact probably could not himself execute engravings on the hard copper metal good enough for the printing of reasonable editions, we can learn from his son’s portrait of the 60-year-old father. Albrecht the Elder’s hands are swollen and slack, maybe from some illness, maybe as the result of some medieval punishment, e g of having had hands and feet locked in between wooden stocks, as a man is seen punished in the Planet drawing Saturn in the Housebook.

Even if the Holper atelier was essentially a goldsmith workshop, it obviously produced such a broad spectrum of works that its earliest known owner, Heinz Holper, was also know for decorations on harnesses. It is tempting to guess that this Heinz, who is interpreted to have died in 1463 or 1464, was a man of great importance in Nuremberg, maybe the real inventor of commercially printed engravings. One may even guess that it might be this goldsmith’s characteristic features that can be recognized on some early prints, drawings and paintings, e g as St Mattheus in the Apostles series by the Master of 1446, as St Peter on an engraving by the so-called Master of Johannes Baptista, and especially detailed on the so-called Master W B’s engraving of a very old man. By the hand of this very qualified artist W B - who will be discussed more fully, and given a tentative identification, in the folllowing article The Question of Different Hands - only three more engravings are known. We see on one of them an obviously powerful man dressed in a turban, maybe Albrecht Dürer the Elder’s employer the goldsmith Hieronymus Holper. Another engraving shows probably this man’s very distinguished dressed wife Kunigund Oellinger, and the third engraving a young lady who it seems possible to identify with Albrecht Dürer the Elder’s wife Barbara Holper. An excellent portrait of Barbara is preserved in Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.

It is rather likely that one of the two goldsmiths Holper, father and son, might be identical with the so-called Master of 1446. The first engraver of real professional artistic quality seems, however, to have been the anonymous who is known as the Master of the Playing Cards, an artist who H Lehmann-Haupt has tried to show might have been in connection with Johann Gutenberg. The year 1455, when Albrecht Dürer the Elder returned to Nuremberg, is remarkable in the history of European culture, because it seems to have been just at this time that Gutenberg in Mainz had succeeded in completing the two volumes of his famous 42-line Bible, the printing of which with movable metal type probably had proceeded since c. 1452-53. The artistic lash we see in the work of the Master of the Playing Cards points at the possibility that he might be identical with the artist, the so-called Fust Master, who in the middle of the 1450s started to illuminate some of the earliest printed books from the Fust-Schöffer printing firm in Mainz, among them the 42-line Bible. The style of this illuminator represents a summit of border decoration in the Bohemian traditon, the obvious result of a long earlier practice. He works with a more limited range of motifs than the in style near related Albrechtsminiator - here guessed to be identical with Anton Dürer - and he is in difference to this artist clearly interested in representing his motifs somewhat dramatically and in a certain depth.

The Fust Master seems to have started with the illumination of printed Mainz books in the years nearest after 1455, just the time when Gutenberg had been forced to leave the enterprise that was founded on his invention of printing with movable type. He was obviously already a virtuoso illuminator when he decorated the Mainz incunabula. His style is energetic, sometimes nearly furious, and yet always extraordinarily controlled. Very characteristic are some again and again represented cut-off pieces of branches. This expressive motif is also used as part of the Fust-Schöffer printing firm’s famous press mark, which strengthens the supposition that the artist may have been very near connected with this revolutionary new enterprise and that he even may have been working in Mainz during some period, if so probably as long as until c. 1466, the year when Johann Fust unexpectedly died on a journey to Paris. It is a surprising fact that the law clerk Ulrich Helmasperger has on two occasions used a near related motif with a cut-off branch when signing documents, e g on the famous one from which we have been able to get some kowledge about how Gutenberg in 1455 lost his printing invention to Johann Fust. On these drawings we see a hand raising from a case triumphantly holding a cut-off branch bearing a flower.

The Fust-Schöffer firm’s so original press mark, later often copied, and the obviously intentially repeated use of cut-off pieces of branches in the border decorations have the character of telling something that may have been understandable by people connected with the invention of printing. A possible explanation would be that this motif had been ordered by Fust and was intended to refer to the so abruptly broken cooperation with the inventor Gutenberg, a man with ambitions that seem to have been unsuited for commercially successful printing. As it is said in the Gospel of Mattheus:

Even if the Fust Master was very near engaged in the illumination of incunabula, there may be reason to doubt if he really was living for some time in Mainz. The extremely complicated printing procedure must have claimed so much interest and working time that it seems difficult to imagine that there should also have been the possibility to pay much time to the marketing of the books, of which the illumination must have been an essential part. It seems more likely that the selling of the books was essentially arranged with the help of contractors, like e g the Holper workshop in Nuremberg, with which Gutenberg as mentioned may have been acquainted already since the 1440s and where there at the now actual time, the 1450s, seems to have been a small group of artists professionally engagaged in the production and selling of prints, among them maybe not only one of the goldsmiths Holper, and the to Nuremberg returned Albrecht Dürer the Elder, but probably also the Fust Master.

The last-mentioned artist was not the only one who contributed to the illumination of incunabula from the Fust-Schöffer printing office. It was early observed that illuminations near related to those in some of the in Mainz printed incunabula are to be found already in illuminations attributed to the artist Michael in the here before discussed circle of artists that were working for the Klosterneuburg Abbey. Eine der wesentlichsten Wirkungen der österreichischen Miniatorenschule ist von dem Illuminator Michael insofern ausgegangen, as seiner Dekorationsweise der Schmuck der Gutenberg-Bibeln folgt, der ohne Zweifel von einem Minator unserer Richtung ausgeführt wurde (K Öttinger 1938). It has, however, been guessed that the illuminator of the mentioned Mainz books should not have been identical with the Michael that has been identified as one of the Klosterneuburg artists but with a follower of him. In Frage kommt aus zeitlichen Gründen nur ein Schüler des Illuminators, writes E Vaassen (1973), because she finds that it is the earliest works by Michael that are most like the style of the illuminator of some in Mainz printed Gutenberg Bibles. Gut möglich erscheine es mir, statt eines solchen Künstlers den ebenfalls für Klosterneuburg tätigen Zeitgenossen Veit als Paten für die Illumination der Wiegendrucke anzusehen. Dieser “enger Gehilfe und Nachfolger des Meister Nikolaus und von diesem nich immer eindeutig zu unterscheiden” (G. Schmidt in Die Gotik in Niederösterreich 1963) vertritt einen Rankenstil, der eine enorme Ausbreitung erfahren sollte und dem im Grunde auch Hand II der Grillinger-Bible folgt (Vaassen).

It is easy to accept the supposition that the artist referred to above, who like the Fust Master was engaged in the illumination of several incunabula from the Fust-Schöffer printing firm, may be the one called Veit, now by me tentatively identified with Anton Dürer. There is also reason to doubt the interpretation of the name Michael which might be a misreading of Israhel, because the similarities between the characteristic style of the Fust Master and that of Israhel van Meckenem the Elder are in some works so evident, that there is very little reason to doubt that it is the question of the same person. Especially in Israhel’s engraved series of ornamental compositions - by M Lehrs in 1915 still ascribed to the anonymous so-called Master of the Berlin Passion - there is an abundance of similarities with Fust Master illuminations.

It has been guessed that the so-called Master E S should have died in 1467, the latest date found on one of the prints, and that his plates should then have been taken over by his guessed apprentice Israhel van Meckenem the Younger, who is known to have retouched and reprinted several of the copper plates. With our new knowledge that the initials E S may refer to works designed by the to Nuremberg returned Albrecht Dürer the Elder, it seems more likely that the young and talented Israhel the Younger was chosen to replace Albrecht the Elder, maybe already before this artist left the Holper atelier. That Israhel van Meckenem the Younger was also made use of for the illumination of several manuscripts, quite as Albrecht the Elder and Israhel the Elder, is shown clearly in E Vaassens mentioned long article in Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 1973, although she is so careful to avoid the mentioning of possible artist names. It was nor possible for her to find more than a certain likelihood for the idea that her so-called Würzburg workshop should have been situated in Mainz. With our new knowledge it seems reasonable to suppose that several in the third quarter of the fifteenth century produced extensive artistic works may, quite as some of the Housebook drawings, in fact have been administrated by the Holper workshop in the big commercial city Nuremberg.

The very qualified Fust Master, now here tentatively identified with Israhel van Meckenem the Elder, has been studied especially by E König, who has tried to follow his activity during several years. On the basis of some of König’s significant observations it seems to be possible to make a better distinction between illuminations by Albrecht Dürer the Elder and by other artists educated in the same Bohemian tradition and their imitators. Problems that will be discussed in the following article The Question of Different Hands.

From a fortunately preserved letter from Albrecht Dürer the Elder to his wife Barbara (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg) we know that the old goldsmith in 1492 mit mü vnd arbet travelled to the emperor’s court in Linz, where Frederick III already the day after Albrecht’s arrival wanted him to unpack the pilder that he had to show. What it was that interested the emperor so much (het sein genad fast ain gefalen dar an vnd sein genad het zu mal vil mit mir zu reden…) has up to now confused the interpreters, unaware of the fact that the goldsmith was also an excellent free artist with commissions from the emperor during several years. Maybe it was some of his drypoints that he had brought to Linz, maybe the emperor once again had commissioned him to deliver drawings from some happenings in the circle of his son Maximilian.

Copyright © 2001-2007 Knut Andersson. All rights reserved.