Adam and Eve, 1543, 84 x 58 mm Fogg Art Museum.

Hans Sebald Beham ( 1500 - 1550) was a German printmaker who did his best work as an engraver,and was also a designer of woodcuts and a painter and miniaturist. He is one of the most important of the "Little Masters", the group of German artists making old master prints in the generation after Dürer. The Fogg Art Museum is the oldest of Harvard Universitys art museums. ... 1500 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Events February 7 - Julius III becomes Pope. ... Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. ... Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. ... Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The term Old Master Print is used to describe works of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition (European or New World). ...

Life

The older brother of Barthel Beham by two years, he was born into a family of artists in Nuremberg. In 1525, along with his brother and Georg Pencz, the so-called "godless painters", he was banished from Nuremberg, accused of heresy (against Lutheranism), blasphemy and not recognising the authority of the City council. Within months the three were allowed to return to the city, but Beham was exiled again in 1528 for publishing a book regarded, rather unfairly, as plagiarised from an unpublished manuscript by Albrecht Dürer, who had recently died. After a period spent working in various German cities, from 1532 he lived mostly in Frankfurt until his death in 1550. Portrait of Ottheinrich, Prince of Pfalz, 1535, Alte Pinakothek, Germany. ... Look up artist in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Nuremberg (German: Nürnberg) is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. ... Events January 21 - The Swiss Anabaptist Movement was born when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and about a dozen others baptized each other in the home of Manzs mother on Neustadt-Gasse, Zürich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union. ... Portrait of a Seated Youth, 1544, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. ... Heresy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the Catholic or Orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. ... Look up blasphemy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Events June 19 - Battle of Landriano - A French army in Italy under Marshal St. ... A manuscript (Latin manu scriptus, written by hand), strictly speaking, is any written document that is put down by hand, in contrast to being printed or reproduced some other way. ... Self-Portrait (1500) by Albrecht Dürer, oil on canvas, Alte Pinakothek, Munich Albrecht Dürer (älbrekht dürur) (May 21, 1471 – April 6, 1528) [1] was a German painter, printmaker, mathematician, and, with Rembrandt and Goya, the greatest creator of old master prints. ... Events May 16 - Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England. ... Main Station Frankfurt Frankfurt International Airport For other uses, see Frankfurt (disambiguation). ...

He is increasingly known just as "Sebald Beham", as this how he usually signed his name in full. The "Hans" seems to derive from the first letter of his monogram only.

Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, 1544, 81 x 56 mm

Work

Beham is best known as a prolific printmaker, producing approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. He worked extensively on tiny, highly detailed, engravings, many as small as postage stamps, placing him in the German printmaking school known as the "Little Masters" from the size of their prints. These works he produced and published himself, whilst his much larger woodcuts were mostly commissioned work. The engravings found a ready market among German bourgeois collectors, but were not much seen in Italy. He also made prints for use as playing cards, wallpaper, coats of arms, and designs for other artists, including many designs for stained or painted glass. He also illuminated two prayer books and painted a table top (now in the Louvre ) for Cardinal Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz. He used the monogram HSP until about 1532, and HSB thereafter. Some typical Anglo-American playing cards from the Bicycle brand Set of 52 playing cards A playing card is a typically hand-sized piece of heavy paper or thin plastic. ... Mary Cassatts painting of two ladies drinking tea in a room with red-blue striped wallpapers. ... A modern coat of arms is derived from the medi val practice of painting designs onto the shield and outer clothing of knights to enable them to be identified in battle, and later in tournaments. ... The Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre) in Paris, France, is the largest, oldest, most important and famous art gallery and museum in the world. ... Cardinal Albert of Hohenzollern, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg: engraved portrait by Albrecht Dürer, 1519 Cardinal Albert of Hohenzollern (German: Albrecht; June 28, 1490 in Cölln – September 24, 1545 in Aschaffenburg), Elector and Archbishop of Mainz and Archbishop of Magdeburg, was the younger son of John Cicero, Elector... Between 780/82 AD and 1802 AD the Archbishop of Mainz, was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince of the middle ages. ...

His engravings cover a range of subjects, but he is especially known for scenes of peasant life, and scenes from classical myth or history, both often with an erotic element. His early work was done under the shadow of Dürer, who was still working in Nuremburg, and one early wooodcut "Head of Christ", to which the AD monogram was added in the 2nd state (probably not by Beham), was long believed to be a work by Dürer by Adam Bartsch and others. He also borrowed from his brother Barthel's rather more original works. In his later work he boldly re-interpreted many of Dürer's most famous prints in works like his Melancholia of 1539 that exploit the difference in scale between his work and the original. The Three Crosses, etching by Rembrandt. ...

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sebald Beham

• Barthel Beham

Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... Wikimedia Commons logo by Reid Beels The Wikimedia Commons (also called Commons or Wikicommons) is a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files. ... Portrait of Ottheinrich, Prince of Pfalz, 1535, Alte Pinakothek, Germany. ...

External links

• hsbeham.org - 41 prints by subject
• Links to online images of prints by Beham
• Hans Sebald Beham at Artcyclopedia