On 11 April 1490, some time after that he had completed his three-year-long apprenticeship as painter in Michael Wolgemut’s atelier, and just a few weeks before his nineteenth birthday, Albrecht Dürer the Younger left his hometown Nuremberg in order to complete his education with the usual Wanderjahre. He returned nearly exactly four years later. Very little is known about the first part of this period. A preserved self-portrait in pen drawing, discussed in a following part of this article, is usually thought to have been executed c. 1491-92. It is also known that he arrived at Colmar as late that he missed the opportunity to study some time for Martin Schongauer, who had died on 2 February 1491. About the time he spent somewhere else scholars have not found any sure trace before in Basel 1492, reaching nearly consensus on the idea that even if he should have started his journey in direction north-west aiming at the Netherlands, he would rather soon have found it better to avoid a region tormented again by uprisings and wars. The probably very well-informed humanist Christoph Scheurl, also from Nuremberg and only 10 years younger than Albrecht, wrote in 1515 that it was ´after travelling all through Germany´ that the artist in 1492 arrived at Colmar, i e after maybe more than two years. If he really started aiming directly at the Netherlands, one may resonably guess that alarming news can have reached the young journeyman at some place in western Germany forcing him to take the decision to instead round Germany in a left-turning circle, in this way trying to reach the Netherlands at a later time on the tour.

Albrecht was the son of the goldsmith Albrecht Dürer the Elder in Nuremberg, now also known as an extremely interesting free artist, both painter and printmaker (see the previous article The Creator of the Housebook Style Identified). The in Nuremberg well-established Dürer the Elder, who certainly was more well-informed about the artworld of his time than most of his contemporaries, may hardly have sent away his son on a long travel without taking steps that the route would include one or more places at which the son’s unusual talent might be sought-after and could secure his living for some period. It is documented that Albrecht the Younger confidently followed his father’s advices also after that he had completed his education in Wolgemut’s atelier, at least as long as until he at his return in 1494 married the for him chosen bride Agnes Frey.

Anton Koberger, who was Albrecht’s godfather, was in Nuremberg running a very important printing firm. Among his productions was one in 1483 published High German edition, the so-called Ninth German Bible, illustrated with 109 woodcuts to which Koberger had taken over the stocks from the both Low German versions of the Bible that had originally been printed in Cologne c. 1478/79. One may guess that Koberger, as a skilful businessman, must have tried to and, as will be discussed in the following, maybe succeeded in taking over also some key persons of the group of artisans who had performed the work at Cologne. Nuremberg was in the following to become important for the production of illustrated books, of which the most famous are two by Koberger printed extremely richly illustrated incunabula: Stephan Fridolin’s Schatzbehalter with 96 page-size woodcuts (1491) and Hartmann Schedel’s Weltchronik with no less than 1.809 woodcut illustrations, yet printed from only c. 645 blocks (one Latin and one German version, both 1493). A whole staff must have been engaged during several years, guided by Michael Wolgemut and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, the both who seem to have designed most of the woodcuts, partly assisted by among else the talented Albrecht Dürer the Younger, whos unusual skilfulness already now may have been observed and rumoured to other German publishers that were actually engaged in the production of illustrated books.

Woodcut illustrated books were at this time beginning to become a very flowering business. Johann Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable type was rapidly spreading to more and more places. Specialists for the drawing of illustrations (Reisser) and for the cutting of these in the woodstocks (Formschneider) were soon to be found manywhere, and the quality of their work was during the 1470s steadily raising. Already the woodcuts of the Cologne Bible are of a remarkably high standard and originality. Not a single one of the Reissers or Formschneiders of this Bible has, however, until now been identified although a great many detailed studies have been published by a number of renowned scholars. We know in fact before Wolgemut and Pleydenwurff only the names of one drawer of woodcut illustrations and one woodcutter, both discussed in the following. All the rest of the artists and craftsmen during this early period have up to now been know only as anonymous.

The Latin books produced in Mainz by Gutenberg and later by Fust and Schöffer were mostly intended for well-established and learned users, especially the clergy. Other printers found soon that there was a raising market also for books printed in German, preferably so richly and informingly illustrated that they could interest also common people, even those who were hardly able to read. It was Bishop Georg I of Schaumburg’s secretary Albrecht Pfister who in Bamberg in the earliest years of the 1460s published the very first illustrated printed books. The designer and the cutter of the 5 illustrations of Der Ackermann aus Böhmen are of a quality that we do not find many proofs of for some time.

The next important steps in the creation of artistically illustrated incunabula were taken by the printer Günther Zainer in Augsburg in the years 1471-77. Scenes with several actors become more frequent, and it happens that even religious motifs are rendered with a somewhat farce-like humour, as when King Solomon in J de Theramo’s Belial (1472) is looking at a tempting Eve in a vision of the Fall of Man as if he would be very well prepared to replace the hesitating Adam. When the printer Johann Bämler in Bamberg in 1473 published the same text with new woodcuts, most of the actors had become properly dressed, even the tempting devil. An exception from the usual series of straightforwardnessly told scenes is a well composed woodcut in J Sprenger’s Rosenkranzbruderschaft (1476) showing Maria and Child celebrated with rose-garlands by a circle of men and women, and crowned by two angels. It is normally thought that this woodcut should have been among Albrecht Dürer the Younger’s inspirations for his painting Das Rosenkranzfest (1506, Nationalgalerie, Prag). Another possibility might be that Albrecht among else got inspiration from some painting by his grandfather Anton, who may be the artist that at the end of the 1430s was responsible for a big series of panels of an altarpiece for the Carmelite church in Vienna, most of them now preserved heavily damaged but repainted in the museum of the Klosterneuburg Abbey (see the article The Creator of the Housebook Style Identified).

In the big business centre Ulm in southern Germany, with near connections also to Italy, the printer Johann Zainer, a brother of Günther Zainer in Augsburg, published, probably in 1473, a with 10 woodcuts illustrated edition of Petrarca’s Epistola de oboedienta Griseldis. Shortly thereupon followed, also from the same publisher, Von den sinnrychen erluchten wyben, a translation to German by the learned physician Heinrich Steinhöwel of Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus. This book with its 100 biographies of famous women is dedicated to Duchess Eleonore of Austria-Tirol, partly educated in France and known for literary interests, and is illustrated with as many as 80 woodcuts. The Boccaccio illustrations are of a for German art new and interesting quality. The obviously well-educated artist has created a series of scenes with rather dramatically gesticulating actors, maybe inspired from some foreign illustrations. Some characteristics of his style seem to be recognizable in many later German woodcuts, pointing at the possibility that we may see the work of a talented artist working and inspiring other artists during several years.

Of very special interest for the history of German book illustration is also Der Spiegel menschlicher Behältnis, a German translation of the Speculum humanae salvationis. It was printed by Peter Drach in Speyer c. 1474, however long thought to be dateable to c. 1480 because its illustrations were interpreted to have been inspired from the less interesting woodcuts of Bernard Richel’s edition of the same book in Basel 1476. The woodcuts of Drach’s book are of a for the time advanced artistic quality, obviously inspired from Netherlandish art, among else a version of the blockbook Biblia pauperum from the 1460s. In the experienced artist who executed these illustrations, as well as in the artist who illustrated the both Zainer publications, we see precursors to the creators of the famous woodcuts of the a few years later produced Cologne Bible.

Among artists qualified enough at this time for big and difficult commissions one is tempted to guess at first on the unfortunately very little known Erhard Reuwich, established as both painter and printer in Mainz at least in the first half of the 1480s and as famous as book illustrator that he by the surely very well-informed Bernard of Breydenbach was chosen as the artistic member of the well-known group that went on pilgrimage to Palestine in 1483-84, an event from which Breydenbach in 1486 published a report illustrated with woodcuts which in the book’s colophon are mentioned to be by Reuwich. The publishing of the name of an illustrator in a printed book is at this time very unusual, probably unique with exception for the name of a woodcutter in the by Lienhart Holl in 1482 printed Cosmographia that will be discussed in the following. This seems to point out Reuwich as an unusually renowned artist. He had problably during several years both disciples and assistants who later had their own careers as painters or book illustrators. In the previous article The Question of Different Hands I have tried to show that the young artist Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, at least in 1486 an assistant to Reuwich, may have been an important contributor e g to the illustrations of Breydenbachs report from the pilgrimage to Palestine.

In time preceding the illustrations of the Cologne Bible is also another remarkable incunabula. It was probably c. 1476/77 that the Ulm printer Johann Zainer published his with more than 200 woodcuts illustrated Aesopus: Vita et Fabulae, by H Kunze (in Geschichte der Buchillustration in Deutschland. Das 15. Jahrhundert 1975) characterized as ein Markstein in der Geschichte des illustrierten Buches des 15. Jahrhunderts. The woodcuts that illustrate this collection of old fables are of such a quality that as possible artists were once suggested among else Martin Schongauer and the then not yet identified ´Master of the Housbook´ Albrecht Dürer the Elder. L Fischel has shown (Bilderfolgen im frühen Buchdruck 1963) that the creator of these woodcuts in some cases seems to have been inspired from sculptures in the cathedral of Ulm, interpreted to have been completed c. 1474 in the workshop of Jörg Syrlin the Elder and thus of course well-known by everyone in the city. Her suggestion that Syrlin himself or one of his assistants might have been the so originally creating woodcut artist seems, however, less likely than that there had in the 1470s arrived in Ulm an educated painter of identificable quality, maybe one who had had the possibility to practice some period in the atelier of the artist who had been responsible for the illustrations of the by P Drach in Speyer c. 1474 printed Der Spiegel menschlicher Behältnis, by me guessed to have been Erhard Reuwich. The one who created the woodcuts of the Aesopus was a sensible artist who shows so much resemblance to the dramatic style of the artist who had illustrated Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus that it seems reasonable to guess that it may be the question of the same artist, now with a greater routine.

As growing up in an artistically very advanced family in the big commercial and intellectual centre Nuremberg, the young Albrecht must from childhood have had the favour of being well-informed about the progressing revolution of the book world and the since the 1470s growing interest in woodcut illustrated books. When he in 1486 succeeded in persuading his father to be allowed to continue his education as pupil in Wolgemut’s big atelier, he may already have had a special interest in the commercial possibilities of woodcut illustration. He started his apprenticeship on 30 November and according to normal proceedings he ought to have ended this education just three years later on 30 November 1489. About the nearly half a year until he in May 1490 started on his Wanderjahre we know nothing at all for sure, but one may be allowed to guess that the pedantic Albrecht was already now systematically planning for his future career and may have got time for visiting nearby places that were of special interest for him, like e g Ulm, the important early centre for the production of illustrated books, about which he must have been rather well-informed with the help of contacts with to Nuremberg travelling book illustrators and by books he could study in his home or in the Wolgemut atelier.

Already from very young years Albrecht must have been near acquainted with the about ten years older artist Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, the probably most talented young artist in the generation nearest before himself in Nuremberg. At the end of 1486 Pleydenwurff seems to have returned to Nuremberg from a period he had latest spent in Reuwich’s atelier in Mainz. Pleydenwurff was at this time obviously already not only a very advanced painter but also well trained in the woodcut technique, which probably made him wanted in his hometown for the production of a great many woodcuts in the planned Schatzbehalter and Weltchronik. Another important aquaintance that the young Albrecht must have made before his travelling years was with the interesting book printer Lienhart Holl, who in 1482 in Ulm published a Latin version of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia, the first German atlas. This splendid book in large folio, with part of the edition printed on wellum, is lavishly illustrated with handcoloured initials and 32 handcoloured woodcut maps of which the World Map is signed Insculptum est per Johannes Schnitzer de Armsheim. The publishing of the woodcutter’s name points at the posibility that he was of special importance among the group of artisans that were engaged in this production and that his reputation was such that the mentioning of him might favour the sale of the book. Commercially engaged in Holl’s Cosmographia was the here previously mentioned publisher Peter Drach in Speyer, who took over 100 books, a great part of the edition.

Armsheim, the place from which the woodcutter Johannes came, is situated c. 30 km soutwest of Mainz, so one may guess that he like many other book artisans had learnt his profession in Schöffer’s printing firm in this city. About the publisher Holl we know a good deal of facts, among else thanks to researches by E Weil (Der Ulmer Holzschnitt im 15. Jahrhundert 1923) and P Amelung (Frühdruck im deutschen Südwesten, 1473-1500: Eine Ausstellung der Württembergischen Landesbibliothek 1979). In an essay in Printing the Written Word. The Social History of Books, circa 1450-1520, edited by S Hindman (1991), M Tedeschi has summarized and commented Holl’s short history as printer of incunabula in Ulm.

It seems rather probable that Holl is identical with a Lenhart buchtrucker, mentioned in Augsburg in 1475. He may thus have been born c. 1450 or earlier and may have been one of those who had had the possibility to learn printing in Mainz. He is present in Ulm at least as early as in 1478, when he became a member of the Roman Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit. In my opinion there is reason to consider, however, if he may not then have been in Ulm already for some years and could be the same artist that has designed and maybe also cut a great number of the for its time advanced woodcuts of the Aesopus, the here before mentioned c. 1476/77 printed fable collection. In Ulm Holl became important as a publisher with high artistic ambitions, however financially unlucky and for this reason banished from the city already in 1484. He had then managed to publish only a few more books, most remarkable a with 126 page-size woodcuts excellently illustrated version of Bidpai’s old animal fables, a German translation of Johannes of Capua’s Directorium humanae vitae, called Buch der Weisheit der alten Weisen (1483, reprinted already the same year and then again in 1484).

The subject of M Tedeschi’s essay is the social history of Holl’s book printing, apprehended especially as a study of financial happenings and theories about Holl’s maybe insignificant capacity to see to the ´marketability´ of his books, in this way not so much commenting the fact that Holl’s Cosmographia and Buch der Weisheit der alten Weisen are illustrated productions aiming at an artistic height that had up to then hardly been pursued. Holl was obviously, as most good artists and artisans, primarily interested in performing a professional job, relying on that people would appreciate the result. The content of Cosmographia is considered to have been a little out of date already when it was published. With the beautifully handcoloured double page of the World Map opened before oneself it is, however, unavoidable to get the impression that Holl must have felt a great happiness to have organized the creation of this magnificent and complicated work, in many ways also an admirable piece of art.

Holl’s career was, however, in fact not as meteoric short as has been thought up to now. It has e g rested unobserved that he originally probably was educated as a painter, or possibly as a goldsmith, and that he was at least a painter of portraits, a new knowledge that strengthens the old supposition that he also may have been a professional woodcutter himself. That only the specialized woodcutter is mentioned by name may depend on the fact that Holl’s creative capacity at this time was well-known and included in his presentation as publisher. The reason why he needed help for the illustration of Cosmographia may have been that the execution of all the small details of the charts and many small texts must have been especially suited for an artisan trained to work with sharp details, a practice that the assistant Johannes from Armsheim could have learnt e g as designer of print equipment at the Schöffer printing firm in Mainz. Johannes’s ability may even have been the reason why it was decided to reproduce the charts of Cosmographia engraved in wood instead of in metal as they had been in the previous in Italy printed editions of this book.

On the double page of the World Map we see several heads blowing wind from different quarters. The two in the lower left corner - repeted mirrored in the lower right corner - have the character of being portraits, if so probably showing the likenesses of the two men who have been prominent in the production of the book. The head farthest to the left in the left corner shows rather surely the publisher Lienhart Holl himself, as I will discuss further in the following. The other, also rather well characterized windhead would then reasonably show the specialized form-cutter Johannes from Armsheim, supposedly one such travelling artisan of which the time was rich. This head has a great likeness with one of the two grotesque, but yet very portrait-like ones that are represented in woodcut between the rich calligraphic lines of the great initial L on the title-page of Les ditz joyeux des oiseaulx, an undated incunabula interpreted to have been printed in the the late 1480s by the so-called Imprimeur du Champion des Dames in Lyon. Just this decorated initial L has later been reused in the also undated incunabula L’amant rendu cordelier (Paris) and again in Legende dorée (Vérard, Paris 1496).

In the calligraphic woodcut initial L there is a second man portrayed, somewhat bigger than the other one, thus obviously more important at the workshop. He can thanks to his extremely characteristic features with resonable certainty be identified with a man who later was to become very famous, the book publisher Johann Froben (Frobenius), established in Basel at least from 1490 and until his death in 1527, always taking special interest in the artistic side of book printing, in fact guessed to have practiced himself as woodcutter. He published among else many texts by his friend Erasmus of Rotterdam, who has referred to him as Fürst aller Buchdrucker. Froben is guessed to have been born c. 1460 in Hammelburg. He is earliest mentioned in 1486 as connected with A Koberger’s big printing establishment in Nuremberg, maybe as a woodcutter or as a proof reader, maybe in both these professions. His education must reasonably have included studies at a university, although this has not been proofed. His intelligent but ugly face with a very characteristic big saddle-backed nose, a projecting big mouth and marked chin is well-known from the excellent portrait that Hans Holbein the Younger has painted of his friend (c. 1523, copy in Kunstmuseum, Basel). All these features are also recognizable in the portrait in the initial L, although this woodcut has been interpreted to be much earlier.

There seems in fact to exist two more, up to now not identified portraits of Johann Froben. One is a drawing by Martin Schongauer, no doubt of essential interest for the history of art because so few facts are known about this remarkable artist. A softly smiling man dressed up in a turban and with a beard added, who is portrayed on one of Schongauer’s small studies of faces (Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig), seems in many features to be a recognizable portrait of Froben, if so telling us that there existed near connections between these two persons of outstanding culture. If also Lienhart Holl was part of this friendship, which seems rather likely, it would help when trying to understand how he managed to arrange such a wonderful illustration of Buch der Weisheit der alten Weisen, woodcuts that in dramatic intensity and artistic simplicity seem to be outstanding at this time, by P Amelung in 1979 characterized as unvergleichlich schönen Holzschnitten.

Also L Fischel mentions (in Bilderfolgen im frühen Buchdruck 1963) the woodcuts of Buch der Weisheit der alten Weisen as masterpieces of deutscher Graphik und des ulmischen Stils … Der deutsche Inkunabelholzschnitt hat in ihnen seine Reife erreicht. When trying to identify the artist who has executed them she makes the same mistake as previous interpreters and does not observe that at least the title-page is of a different and somewhat lower quality than most of the more characteristic woodcuts. This title page seems to have been executed by the leader of the atelier Lienhart Holl. The one who with such perfection has executed the greatest part of the remarkable woodcuts might have been the young Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, who probably at this time had had the possibility to practice some time in Schongauer’s atelier. We find later the same high quality among some of the woodcuts of the in Nuremberg printed Schatzbehalter and Weltchronik, works that Pleydenwurff was contracted to illustrate together with Michael Wolgemut. The woodcuts would then in time be nearly contemporaneous with the series of pen drawings to Histoire von Herzog Herpin von Bourges und seinem Sohn Lewe that are mentioned here in the previous article The Question of Different Hands. They seem to show Pleydenwurff at the height of his creative ability. The portrait that he somewhat later seems to have painted of his sickly looking employer, the painter Erhard Reuwich in Mainz, may have been the starting point for a sickness of his own, maybe tuberculosis ending with his too early death in Nuremberg about a decade later.

Of very special interest for the history of wood engraving might be that it seems possible to identify Johann Froben’s so characteristic profile also on one of the followers of King Darius on an excellently executed woodcut of the Cologne Bible, obviously telling us that this intelligent and learned man was part of the group that produced this c. 1478/79 printed incunabula. That he also had artistic talents may be understood from the fact that he according to himself also worked as chalcograph, probably meaning woodcutter. That he should have practiced in this profession is indirectly strengthened by the fact that it has been observed that no form-cutter is mentioned among his staff in Basel. Illustrations on which short texts are added is a vaguely identificable part of the woodcuts, maybe the work of Froben. One may guess that Froben was one of the artisans that A Koberger succeeded in taking over from the Cologne workshop together with the woodstocks he later reused for the illustration of his own so-called Ninth German Bible of 1483. As already mentioned, Froben is documented as a member of Koberger’s staff in 1486.

If the identification of Froben’s so characteristic face among the figures on the mentioned woodcut in the Cologne Bible should really be correct, which seems very likely, it would mean that it has at last been possible to add one essential new detail to our knowledge of the so long enigmatic group of artists who with such success produced this Bible. Froben was, however, probably not the only artist that worked as woodcutter for this bible. Another one may have been the one who among else has executed the big woodcut with the Creation and in this connection seemingly has signed the work by showing his features in the grotesque windheads that are blowing in four directions. These faces have in fact likeness to one of the in the previous mentioned portrait-like heads on the initial L on the title-page of Les ditz joyeux des oiseaulx, and, even more interesting, the face that is seen together with Lienhart Holl’s face on the World Map of Holl’s in 1482 in Ulm printed Cosmographia, there by me tentatively identified as the in this incunabula mentioned woodcutter Johannes Schnitzer de Armsheim.

As regards the illustrations of the Cologne Bible most scholars have discussed the deep inspiration they show from Netherlandish art, some have found a possible inspiration from Italian art, and a few have found that also woodcut illustrated French books might have been known by some of the artists. One may guess that this last-mentioned inspiration could have been transmitted by Johann Froben. Maybe he studied for some time in Paris, as it is known that his near friend Johannes Amerbach did. There is in fact a Johannes Heimburger mentioned at the university of Paris, which possibly might mean Froben.

Among reasonably guessed main drawers we may to the at this time well-reputed Erhard Reuwich now with good reasons add the here discussed painter Lienhart Holl, earlier known as an inventive printer of ilustrated incunabula. Holl is documented to have had near connections with Peter Drach, who in the middle of the 1470s printed his for its woodcuts remarkable Der Spiegel menschlicher Behältnis, here tentatively put in connection with Erhard Reuwich. Nearest in style remind the best of these woodcuts some of the works that with good reasons can be attributed to the artist Michael Wolgemut, who a couple of years later bought a house in Nuremberg and established a workshop in which among else the famous woodcuts of the Schatzbehalter and Schedel's Weltchronik were produced. A circle seems to close itself with the help of the names Reuwich, Holl, Froben, Wolgemut, and Johannes Schnitzer.

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