Several here in the previous presented circumstances make it rather sure that the artist and printer Lienhart Holl left Nuremberg around 1489/90 in order to assist in Lübeck with the illustration of the by Bartholomäus Ghotan printed Revelationes sanctae Birgittae (published in 1492) and, before that, the completion of the interrupted work on the Lübeck Bible (published in 1494). There is, however, only a few circumstances known that would support the supposition that also Albrecht Dürer the Younger should have visited Lübeck. One fact of interest is that Albrecht in the 1480s obviously had so near connections with Holl that he was portrayed by this artist, who has also used the likenesses of them both for some of the figures in the illustrations of Voragine’s Passional oder Leben der Heiligen, printed by Koberger in Nuremberg in 1488. While some characteristics of the style of Lienhart Holl seem to be recognizable in Lübeck, there is hardly more than the remarkable high quality of a few of the illustrations of the Revelationes sanctae Birgittae that might point at a possible co-operation, maybe as a trained woodcutter, of an artist as talented as the young Dürer, who already in 1484 had been advanced enough to execute the in the previous mentioned pen drawing of himself, and in 1490 had been able to paint the very professional portrait of his father. With the exception for Albrecht’s here before mentioned two self-portraits in pen drawing from his travelling years, no other works have with much credability been identified before his arrival at Basel in 1492. One may guess that he during the first period of his travels made his living mostly as an appreciated painter of portraits, all lost like the ones he is mentioned to have painted of a book publisher and his wife in Strasbourg.

It is of course a possibility that Lienhart Holl and Albrecht the Younger left Nuremberg together in May 1990, but if so, at least Albrecht may not have been aiming at Lübeck. It seems more likely that he started his Wanderjahre in direction the Netherlands and reached some place at the Middle Rhine before he found it reasonable to change his plans. On his way he may hardly have been prepared to miss places of importance as Speyer, Heidelberg, Worms or Cologne, the last-mentioned city the home of his uncle the saddler Ladislaus and his cousin the goldsmith Nicolaus. The important religious centre Mainz must for Albrecht, as for any young and ambitious artist, have been of greatest interest, the place where the revolutionary art of book printing had been invented only a few decades earlier and where e g the respected painter and illustrator Erhard Reuwich had an atelier in which, as mentioned in the previous, the Nuremberg artist Wilhelm Pleydenwurff at least in 1486 was an assistant.

On 23 June 1491 the Mainz printer Jacob Meydenbach published in Latin the with 1073 woodcuts illustrated Ortus sanitatis, a popular compendium of plant and herb lore. Among the illustrations of this book, mostly copied from different sources and by different hands, some have a certain freshness that in the older literature sometimes has been put in connection with works by the young Albrecht’s father, then still known only as the so-called Housebook Master. It seems, however, more likely that it here may be the question of a new talent on the art scene, a young artist inspired by the so lively style of Albrecht Dürer the Elder. The ´light´ temperament he shows in some of his drawings is among the things that make it unlikely that we should here see works by the so seriously creating Albrecht the Younger. We may sooner see drawings by a young man who does not yet have given much thought to the possibility that he could have reason to fear a punishing God, a feeling that may often have troubled the probably homosexual Albrecht Dürer the Younger. A strange characteristic of this new artist’s style is a tendency to represent some persons clearly bow-legged, which may be of help when trying to identify him, as bow-legged men in the future are to be found among the illustrations of other books, sometimes with this stylistic invention copied rather clumsily.

A clue to the identifying of the so creative new artist, that Meydenbach has found for the freshing up of his edition of Ortus sanitatis, may be found in the lively composed and often reproduced scene with among else students analysing urine. On this woodcut there is in the lower right corner a picture of an elegant couple, of which the young man is wearing a headdress with Schnürlein, maybe a self-portrait. As a type he reminds of the young man we see on a very interesting portrait in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, that also may be supposed to be a self-portrait. This portrait is in the museum ascribed to a German (Upper Rhenish) Painter and it is dated just 1491, the same year as Meydenbach published his Ortus sanitatis. Below the with big figures painted date there are added, maybe by another hand, the letters H.H., probably the initials of the portrayed’s name. Through the window we see a view of a river that might be part of the Rhine in the neighbourhood of Mainz. Also this young man is wearing a headdress with Schnürlein of the type we have found to exist preferably in the circle of the ´Housbook Master´ Albrecht Dürer the Elder, pointing at some connection to Nuremberg. Albrecht Dürer the Younger has the same type of headdress among else on his in 1493 painted self-portrait that is now in the Louvre.

This leads us to suppose that Albrecht Dürer the Younger may have known the so lively creating artist in Meydenbach’s Ortus sanitatis already from Nuremberg and that they can have met e g in Michael Wolgemut’s atelier, where Albrecht became a pupil on 30 November 1486 and studied for three years. When I red that Albrecht Dürer the Elder had regretted that his son had lost time when he chose to interrupt his goldsmith studies, I found this a little confusing, as one or two years spent in his father’s atelier would surely have been of great value for any artist’s future career. Now I am bound to believe that his father’s comment may partly have been based on the fact that there had appeared on the German art scene other young artists maybe as talented as the young Albrecht, artists who had been able to start their education before Albrecht and therefore would be able to commence their careers before him.

Among very talented young artists, whos education and early whereabouts are very little or not at all known, it may be of special interest to take into consideration Hans Holbein the Elder, guessed to have been born around 1465-70, and Lucas Cranach the Elder, normally thought to have been born in 1472. Holbein the Elder was around 1490 probably fully educated, maybe partly in Nuremberg, and may very well be identical with the the young man we see on the in 1491 dated portrait in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has the added letters H.H. In 1493, when he bought a house in Augsburg, he is referred to as a citizen of Ulm. His features, known from the self-portrait together with his two sons Ambrosius and Hans Holbein the Younger as part of his painting of the Basilica of S Paolo fuori le Mura (1504, Schaezlerpalais, Augsburg), and as part of the painting of St Elisabeth (Sebastian Altar, Alte Pinakothek, München), do not contradict such a supposition.

There is the possibility that also Lucas Cranach the Elder may have been present in Mainz in 1491. One of the most engaging books that I have ever red dealing with the art of the fifteenth century is the one that A Shestack in 1971 published about the both anonymous Master LCz and Master WB. This so wonderfully illustrated and clearly argumented book happens, however, to have the regrettable weakness that some essential conclusions seem to be less well motivated than the opposite. As I have discussed in the previous article The Question of Different Hands, there are very good reasons to identify the Master WB with the rather well-known artist Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, deceased young and maybe therefore long misunderstood. Shestack engaged himself hard in trying to show that the by some scholars suggested identification of the Master LCz with a mentioned artist Lorenz Katzheimer ought to be correct, although no work by this Bamberg artist is surely known. At the same time Shestack strongly opposed the also by some scholars accepted rather logical theory that LCz might have been a signature used by Lucas Cranach the Elder prior to this artist’s Vienna sojourn in the early years of the sixteenth century.

Not only the letters H.H., also the rather well known features of Lucas Cranach the Elder, make it, however, little probable that it should be a portrait of this artist that we see in the in 1491 dated portrait in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Lucas Cranach the Elder’s appearance is very detailed represented in the artist’s self-portrait as part of the Sippen-Altar from c. 1512, now in Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. Albrecht Dürer the Younger’s silverpoint drawing from 1524 (Musée Bonnat, Bayonne) shows him as more middle aged. Even later is the self-portrait in oil in Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence that was executed in 1550 and is marked Aetatis suae LXXVII. The form of the nose on all these portraits seems, however, to make it impossible to recognize a real likeness with the very young man on the in 1491 dated portrait i New York. A presence in Mainz of the probably rather wealthy young journeyman Lucas the Elder around 1491 is yet not at all unlikely, and a contact with Meydenbach may have made him interested in a later scientific study of nature at some university, which might explain that his tracks are lost for many years. If so, it might also explain why Cranach by Frederick the Wise in 1520 was awarded privilegium for a chemist’s shop in Wittenberg, a business that at this time included the sale of a lot of products, as e g paint colours, sugar and even wine.

Also a Portrait of a Young Man in the Institute of Arts in Detroit is of interest in this connection. It shows an elegantly dressed teen-aged boy holding a carnation, seemingly portrayed as engaged. He is wearing the headdress with Schnürlein which seems to be an exclusivity for persons who are in some way connected with the art-milieu of Albrecht Dürer the Elder’s Nuremberg. In the museum and in the art literature this portrait is for stilistic reasons interpreted to be a work by Michael Wolgemut. The painting is clearly dated 1486 together with some letters that have been interpreted among else as Cz, Lcm, LCz, Hm, Hz, or just as LM, as did W H Valentiner, who found that this young man had some resemblance to a rather unusual portrait in Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid that is thought to show a Levinus Memminger, portrayed by Wolgemut, because there on this painting were found both the letters L M and the coat of arms of the Memminger family. The Nuremberg patricier Levinus Memminger, who died in 1493, must however in 1486 have been older than the teen-aged boy that we see on the painting in Detroit.

When looking closer at the supposed portrait of Levinus Memminger in Madrid, it seems, however, to be possible to see that the letters on it in reality are to be read as Ic M, and that they therefore probably refer to a person called Jacob, maybe some relative of Levinus Memminger, provided that the coat of arms really is that of the Memminger family. For my part I am prepared to believe that we here rather may see a portrait of Jacob Meydenbach, the publisher of Ortus sanitatis in 1491, and that the many plants, the birds and the rich landscape on the painting would refer to the content of the book. Another possibility might be that a portrait of Levinus Memminger has been painted over an earlier portrait of Meydenbach, because the supposed Memminger is interpreted to be seen also on a portrait in a wing panel painting of the St Catherine Altarpiece that is donated by Memminger to the Lorenzkirche in Nuremberg.

Among woodcuts that are with more or less good reasons thought to have been designed and maybe cut by Albrecht before he started on his travels in 1490, is e g a religious motif in the Passional oder Leben der Heiligen, an incunabula published in 1488 and, as already mentioned, probably to a great part a work by Lienhart Holl. But at least one illustration seems different in style from the others and leaps to the eye because of the uniqueness of its concept and the unusual degree of inventiveness: the “St. Michael and the Devil”. The lifelike rendition of the archangel, the three dimensionality of the stones in the foreground, and the backward glance of the bull about to be shot by an archer are remarkable, writes W L Strauss (in Albrecht Dürer. Woodcuts and Wood Blocks, 1980). Albrecht’s hand has also with good reasons been found recognizable in e g The Seventh Day of the Creation in Schedel’s Weltchronik.

The first surely identified woodcut by Dürer from his travels is the St Jerome Curing the Lion on the title page of the by N Kessler on 8 August 1492 published Epistolare beati Hieronymi, because there is on the back of the wood block the notation Albrecht Dürer von nörmergk. The quality of this picture confirms that its designer was already a very experienced woodcutter. The different technical quality of some designs and especially of the woodcuttings has, however, resulted in never ending discussions as regard the part the young artist may have had in the production of three very important series of illustrations that were in work in Colmar, Basel and Strasbourg during his stay at these places in the early years of the 1490s. It is, however, not known exactly which part, or maybe parts of this period that he spent in Basel, where a severe plague was rampant from September 1492 to March 1493, causing both the death of more than 3.000 inhabitants and that many fled the city.

The so unusually inventive Albrecht Dürer the Younger has of course especially been commissioned to deliver designs, while the transfer of drawings on paper to wood blocks may to a great extent have been submitted to less talented artisans, in this way in many cases making a sure identification of the creating artist difficult. Unquestionably by the young travelling artist himself is, however, the astonishingly advanced series of poetic illustrations that probably already in 1492 was drawn directly on wood blocks for an edition of the Comedies of Terence, which then happened to be left unpublished, most likely because the work on this book was interrupted by the severe plague in Basel. When another, less talented artist was later engaged to cut these mostly very detailed drawings in the blocks, the result seems to have disappointed the publisher, who also may have learnt that another illustrated Terence edition had been published at Lyon by J Trechsel in 1493. Whatever it was that happened, this failed publication has resulted in that of Albrecht Dürer’s series of illustrations 126 uncut blocks have from the Amerbach printer family arrived at Kunstmuseum, Basel, most likely commissioned by the by Dürer contemporary printer Johann Amerbach. 13 blocks were once cut, “albeit very coarsely” (W L Strauss), but of these are now only 6 preserved.

The title-page and also some of the other illustrations of G de la Tour’s Der Ritter vom Turn, published by M Furter in Basel in 1493 with together 46 woodcuts, are seemingly based on designs by the young Albrecht, and he has probably also cut the best of them. Some of the designs may have been transfered to the wood blocks by a less competent artist, who may also have been responsible for several own designs. On the title-page we see in the background three men of which one has an obvious resemblance to Friedrich of Zollern, Bishop of Augsburg, and the man in the middle a resemblance to this man’s father Count Jos. Niclas I of Zollern, persons whos features Albrecht probably knew from more than his fathers illustrations in the so-called Housebook (See the article The Question of Different Hands). The man farthest to the right has some resemblance to one of the men on the very interesting painting in the St Ulrich Church in Augsburg, on which it has been possible to identify the young art student Martin Schongauer at the centre of a group that maybe also shows members of the atelier in which he studied.

There is of course the possibility that it can have been one of Martin’s brothers that was commissioned to cut some of Albrecht’s designs. When the journeyman Albrecht arrived at Colmar, he met there Schongauer’s brothers Paul and Ludwig, however not Jörg (Georg), a goldsmith who since latest in 1482 was a citizen of Basel. It is known that Jörg in 1494 became a citizen of Strasbourg and that he died in 1514. He was married to Apollonia, a daughter of the famous sculptor Nicolaus Gerhart of Leiden. Maybe his move from Basel was caused by the plague. Ludwig Schongauer was a painter in Ulm, Augsburg and latest Colmar. He is on 28 Januar 1494 mentioned as deceased, maybe as a victim of the severe plague in 1493. If it was Ludwig that collaborated on the Terence illustrations, his early death could have been the reason for the interruption of the work on this project.

On 11 February 1494 Johann Bergmann von Olpe in Basel published Sebastian Brant’s Das Narren Schyff, an immediate bestseller. Its 115 woodcuts from 106 blocks have also been the subject of discussions as regard how much of the work the young Dürer may have contributed with. Brant is thought to have made suggestions for these illustrations, it is yet Dürer’s creative mind that is recognizable in the greatest part of the designs, however hardly his hand anywhere. For my part I am prepared to guess that this Bergmann von Olpe edition might have been copied from a now lost original edition, as often happened with illustrated books in these years. At least two woodcutters are thought to have been at work, none of them good enough to be confused with the so precise Dürer, who probably had left Basel before this work was completed. One contributor has been identified as the so-called Haintz Narr Master, to whom also other book illustrations have been attributed, e g the woodcuts of J Meder’s Quadragesigmale de filio prodigo, printed in Basel by M Furter in 1495 with illustrations very like those in Der Ritter vom Turn. The artist seems to know Albrecht Dürer, maybe both the Elder and the Younger. As some kind of irony he has in one single of the woodcuts, Der Sohn als Schweinehirt, represented the young man with features resembling those of Albrecht the Younger.

It was Furter who in 1493 had published Der Ritter vom Turn, a book to which I have guessed that one of the Schongauer brothers may have contributed, thus possibly the identity of the Hainz Narr Master. As the style of the Haintz Narr Master is not identified after the middle of the 1490s, it seems reasonable to suppose that this anonymous might be identified with the so early deceased Ludwig Schongauer. We see the hand of the Hainz Narr Master also in the introductory 7 woodcuts of A Methodius’s Revelationes divinae, printed by M Furter in Basel in 1498. Another artist has continued these illustrations. Here, as also in Quadragesigmale de filio prodigo, we find some of the men represented as bow-legged.

We do not know when Ludwig was born, maybe between 1450 and 1455. He became a citizen of Ulm in 1479 and married Anna Lindenmair, the widow of a painter Stäbler and the sister of the painter Hans Lindenmair. Although from 1486 a member of the guild of painters of Augsburg, he seems still to have been a painter also in Ulm. He engaged journeymen in the years 1486, 1488 and 1490. He moved to Colmar after the death in 1492 of his brother Martin and became a citizen there in 1493.

A few prints signed with the letters L and S, and between them the same cross as his brother Martin used in his signature, show him as an untrained engraver of among else animals. They are thought to be from his late period in Colmar. He is always referred to as a painter. No signed work has, however, been found, so what he may have painted is still unclear. It has with reason been guessed that he at least occasionally has collaborated with his brother Martin. An altarpiece with paintings of the Life of the Virgin in the museum of Ulm has tentatively been ascribed to him. Ce sont des peintures qui présentent des rapports assez étroits avec des illustrations de livres publiés à Ulm chez Johann Zainer (en 1473, donc probablement avant l´arrivée de l´artiste dans la ville), mais fort peu, ni avec les autres gravures signées LS, ni avec l´art de Martin Schongauer (A Châtelet in the catalogue to the exhibition le beau Martin in Musée d´Unterlinden in Colmar 1991).

As working in Ulm in the first half of the 1480s, Ludwig Schongauer knew of course Lienhart Holl very well and can hardly have been uninfluenced by Holl’s revival of the art of woodcutting in this city. Still after Holl’s first expulsion from Ulm in 1484 there continued for a short time to be published books in Ulm with somewhat related woodcut illustrations, e g Thomas Lirer’s Schwäbische Chronik and Hans Neidhart’s translation of Terence’s Eunuchus, the first-mentioned printed undated c. 1485 by Conrad Dinckmut and the other by the same publisher in 1486. The woodcuts of these books show in fact so much resemblance to illustrations that can be attributed to the Haintz Narr Master that it seems reasonable to guess that their much discussed but never identified creator in fact may be the in this connection never mentioned Ludwig Schongauer.

As late as in the 1960s S V Lenkey identified a woodcut in the Sermones by Augustinus as a work by Dürer the Younger during his time in Basel. This book was published by J Amerbach in 1494-95. The print shows the praying Augustinus and Dodo, the editor of the text, before a coat of arms with the emblems of Augustinus. Also the woodcutting is of a quality that seems to show the hand of Dürer himself. In another page-size woodcut of the same edition we se the splendid exterior of a church, in the inner of which Augustinus is speaking to a lot of listeners. Also this richly composed woodcut seems to be based on a design by the young Dürer, who however hardly can have been responsible also for the cutting. Maybe he was forced to continue his travels before the work was completed. An interesting detail among the figures seen from the back in the front row is a man wearing the headdress with the Schnürlein that we are used to see in connection with the Dürer family.

On 29 August 1493 the printer Johann Trechsel published in Lyon a Latin edition of Terence’s Comoediae, illustrated with 161 woodcuts representing among else the author at his desk and a contemporary theatre with public, musiciens and actors, thought to be the earliest printed book that shows actors on a scene. To judge from the few reproductions that I have up to now seen of these woodcuts, repeatedly mentioned as the high-watermark of book-illustration at Lyon in the fifteenth century (A M Hind in An Introduction to a History of Woodcut 1935), I find it difficult to accept the opinion of among else Hind that they should show a connection to the main master of the famous Lübeck Bible of 1494 or to the illustrations by Erhard Reuwich in Bernhard of Breydenbach’s Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam of 1486).

Also the learned H Kunze seems, however, to have accepted P Kristeller’s (Kupferstich und Holzschnitt in vier Jahrhunderten 1921) characterisation of these woodcuts as für Lyon zuwenig französisch und für einen deutscher Illustrator zu französisch, when he writes: Sie weisen aber zugleich, um auf den Ausgangspunkt dieser Hypothese zurückzukommen, einen stilistischen Zusammenhang mit dem Lübecker-Bibel-Meister auf. Es wäre denkbar, das der Lübecker zeitweilig in Lyon gearbeitet hat - denkbar als eine von mehreren Varianten, auf die wir nicht weiter eingehen wollen. Es ist aber doch dabei zu bedenken, das Johann Trechsel aus Mainz stammte; so könnten beide von ihrer Mainzer Lehrzeit her miteinander bekannt gewesen sein (in Geschichte der Buchillustration in Deutschland. Das 15. Jahrhundert 1975).

In my opinion it would be easier to understand the originality of these Terence illustrations by presuming that they could be imitations, and not very perfect ones, of the illustrations of some incunabula of which not a single copy has survived after very intense use at the theatres. The style of these illustrations is in fact less German or French than it is Netherlandish. It seems therefore reasonable to guess that these woodcuts might be based on a lost illustrated incunabula from Colard Mansion in Bruges, comparable with the by A Vérard in Paris in 1493/94 published La Bible de poètes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is based on Mansion’s edition in Bruges 1484, however here with the style of the Bruges artist much better copied.

In 1496 Johann Grüninger published in Strasbourg a version of Terence’s Comoediae with illustrations thought to be based on Trechsels edition of 1493, enriched with additional six very interesting page-size woodcuts opening each play. This new artist, the so-called Master of the Grüninger Terence, introduces here a very characteristic new style, remarkable for the use of tone and dimensionality in the woodcuts. Elégance soutenue du dessin, grâce des attitudes, souplesse du movements, voilà ce que manque à beaucoup de gravures de Trechsel, voici ce que va présenter la Térence de Grüninger en 1496, writes M Chèvre in her article Imitation et originalité. Quelques illustrations de Térence du XVème au XVIème siècle (in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1961), seemingly not suspecting that the thought originality of these illustrations also in fact might be the result of imitation.

The artist of this Terence likes to build up his composition with the help of rich ornamental details and may therefore be supposed to have been educated as a goldsmith. He has obviously knowledge of Albrecht Dürer the Younger’s in Strasbourg never edited Terence illustrations and represents among else a Dürer-like figure and another one with the headdress with Schnürlein that so often seems to be connected with the Dürer family, circumstances that point at the probability that he might be identical with the goldsmith Jörg Schongauer, who in 1494 moved from Basel to Strasbourg where he then worked for several years.

Stylistic correspondences show that Grüninger commissioned the same artist to illustrate also some other books, e g H Brunschwig’s Das Buch der Chirurgia in 1497, the first printed surgical treatise in German, and Bidpai’s Das Buch der Weisheit in 1501, in both of which we find again a Dürer-like figure with a headgear with Schnürlein. Several of this artist’s illustrations are built up with the help of a combination of smaller blocks, often put together rather coarsely. Another characteristic of this artist - as also of the one who in 1493 illustrated the Lyon Terence - is that some of the represented persons seem to be based rather near on parts of Netherlandish paintings, e g by the so-called Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl (Marriage of the Virgin, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and by the so-called Master of the Brunswich Diptych (thought to be identical with Jacob Jansz). Jörg Schongauer had maybe, if identical with the anonymous Master of the Grüninger Terence, got his education in the Netherlands, or, maybe more likely, he had had the possibility to work with in his hand some now lost illustrated publication, because he is a type of artist that all the time repeats the same formula.

In May 1494 Albrecht Dürer the Younger returned to Nuremberg for the by the parents arranged marriage to Agnes Frey. He fulfilled his education with a travel in July to Italy, from where he in spring 1495 returned as one of the most skilful and originally creating artists that the world has ever seen. Quite as had happened when he came to Colmar and had awaited to meet Martin Schongauer, he missed also to meet Andrea Mantegna, who had newly died. Mantegna’s art impressed him however deeply. In 1498 he was ready to publish his first great masterpiece, the Apocalypse, a cycle of large-size woodcuts of outstanding richness and perfection.

We are here at the endpoint of this article, the subject of which has been to try to identify some of the so very long anonymous artists who during the incunabula time have decidedly contributed to the creation of woodcut illustrations of steadily raising artistic quality, at the end quite independent of additional handcolouring. With the exception of a few in the previous mentioned artists, all the names of those who have drawn and cut these illustrations have been missing. Since I have now shown that Lienhart Holl was not only a printer with decidedly artistic interests but most likely also himself a creating artist of importance, it has become possible to enrich the history of woodcut illustrated books by making some significant steps of the progress more visible.

The identification of a portrait in Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid as showing Holl, most likely a proud self-portrait, offers a clou to the understanding of Holl’s obviously very long and important practice as illustrator. At the top of his capacity we see him sign with a small self-portrait the very best of the woodcuts of Revelationes sanctae Birgittae in 1492, the one with a monk climbing a ladder. Comparing the style of the woodcuts of this incunabula with the illustrations of the famous Cologne Bible of 1478/79 we find in e g the woodcut of Daniel in the Lion’s Den so great liknesses with the Lübeck illstrations that we have to conclude that it is most likely the question of works by the same artist, Lienhart Holl.

We see the characteristic features of Holl also in a woodcut in the by J Zainer probably c. 1482 printed Geistliche Auslegung des Lebens Jesu Christi and as late as in a woodcut in the by the same printer in 1499 published edition of A de Villa’s Ain loblicher Tractat von beraytung und brauchung der wein zu gesunthayt der menschen. His style with lively gesticulating and pointing actors is recognizable as long back as in Petrarca’s Griseldis, printed by Zainer in 1473. The face that shows Daniel in the Lion’s Den we see repeated again rather portrait-like e g already on a man in J Zainer’s edition of Leonardo Aretino's Historie der Sigismunda c. 1476. Holl was obviously a very active illustrator and must have had the help of several cutters of different quality. That he was one of the first to recognize outstanding artistic quality we see from his choice of an even better illustrator than himself, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, when he in 1483 published a collection of fables, the Buch der Weisheit der alten Weisen, and from the fact that he may have been one of the first to observe the genius of Albrecht Dürer the Younger, painting a portrait of the 13-year-old Albrecht probably already in 1484.

As decidedly interested in artistic quality Holl met of course the same type of difficulties in a world ruled by commercial realities, that had once met Johannes Gutenberg. He may yet have been active as long as until 1508. A portrait that originally had this date shows an obviously disappointed and maybe sick man with great likeness to the in the previous discussed portrait of Holl, maybe also this a self-portrait. This painting, that from the collection of Schloss Waldenburg in Germany had arrived at a private collection in the USA, was by E Buchner (in Das deutsche Bildnis der Spätgotik und der frühen Dürerzeit 1953) tentatively attributed to a guessed painter from Augsburg, maybe Holl’s birthtown and the place he returned to as an old man. Another portrait with a great likeness to the both other is dated 1492, the same year as Revelationes sanctae Birgittae. This portrait of a proud man, probably a self-portrait, had from a private collection in München arrived at another private collection in Paris, and was by Buchner characterized as Eine der eigenwilligsten und apartesten Bildnisschöpfungen des ausgehenden Jahrhunderts. Its origin troubled this great scholar very much. Zwar habe ich bis jetzt keine einleuchtendere Unterbringung für die eigenwillige Bildnistafel gefunden, doch erscheint es nicht ausgeschlossen, das sie einmal in südwestlicher Richtung an den Oberrhein oder nach Schwaben (Ulm?) abwandern könnte. In this he was probably correct.

No research have yet been able to put more flesh on the interesting skeleton of the work of Erhard Reuwich than what is known from the illustrations of Bernhard of Breydenbach’s Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam of 1486 and from some of the illustrations of J von Cube’s Gart der Gesuntheit from P Schöffer’s offizin in Mainz the year before. Reuwich was obviously one in Mainz during several years very well established master, who as all masters had apprentices and journeymen studying and working in his atelier. None of the paintings on which his high reputation must have built has yet been identified with security. As already mentioned he had in his service at least in 1486 the very talented journeyman Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, who obviously counted on being able to refine his education in this Mainz atelier, probably well-known for among else the printing of woodcuts.

I have in the previous dared to suggest that Erhard Reuwich could have been responsible already for the design of woodcuts in the in 1480 by P Drach in Speyer printed Spiegel menschlicher Behaltnis, earlier for their lively and expresssive style often guessed to have been executed by the then not yet identified ´Housebook Master´ Albrecht Dürer the Elder. The style of these illustrations is in the neighbourhood of both that of the woodcuts that are seemingly signed with Lienhart Holl’s self-portraits and that of some of the illustrations of the Cologne Bible. One is bound to guess on an early connection between Reuwich and Holl, e g that Holl might have studied for Reuwich or that they had both been educated in some Netherlandish atelier.

The marked originality of the woodcuts of Des dodes dantz and of the earliest part of the Lübeck Bible is of a type that has troubled many scholars during the years. Their artist has unfortunately not been surely identified in any other work at all. There is, however, some resemblance to the woodcuts of Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam, documented as executed by Erhard Reuwich. In most of the here discussed illustrations we find expressions for a very serious religiosity, in those from Lübeck, however, told in a sometimes desperately hardened style. As a man of high respectability among his contemporaries and reasonably with a lively intellect, Reuwich can be supposed to have been an unusually talented artist who has been able to change his painting style more or less radically during the years, in line with the different commissions he has got and as a result of what he has experienced during a rather long career. If Reuwich has really designed also the Lübeck woodcuts, he may, as guessed in the previous, at this time have been a sick man. This seems to be readable also in the near death atmosphere and maybe bitterness we find in many of these late woodcuts.

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