16th Century Woodcuts - Maximillian's "The Weissking"

[Vermillion]

Anyone else here on the Archive a fan of late 15th century and early 16th century woodcuts?

If so, I have plenty to share.

One of my favorites:

by Hans Burgkmair, 1508, I believe from the "Weissking", done for Maximillian

[Thomas Powers]

There is a couple in the "Illustrated Social History of Prostitution" IIRC.

[Johann ColdIron]

Anyone else here on the Archive a fan of late 15th century and early 16th century woodcuts?

If so, I have plenty to share.

One of my favorites:

by Hans Burgkmair, 1508, I believe from the "Weissking", done for Maximillian

I like that one too. It was the title panel of a Smithsonian exhibit on 16th Cent German woodcuts a couple years ago. Looked nice at 7' tall!

[Vermillion]

7 ft tall?

Wow that would have been impressive !

[woodwose]

Anyone else here on the Archive a fan of late 15th century and early 16th century woodcuts?

If so, I have plenty to share.

One of my favorites:

by Hans Burgkmair, 1508, I believe from the "Weissking", done for Maximillian

Yes, very much so... that particular one was not part of Weisskunig, but is a very cool print in that it was an early example of experimentation that lead to multi-toned prints - not prints that were simply printed in black and white and later illuminated by hand, but prints where several woodcuts were printed over one another in different colors to create a multi-toned sort of effect. It was a new and innovative thing during a couple years around when that one was printed and printmakers Hans Burgkmair and Lucas Cranach were sort of competing with each other to make these fancy colored prints to impress their wealthy patrons... or something like that. I wrote a paper in college on these chiaroscuro woodcuts as part of a project that also involved making a four tone woodcut to be used as my wedding invitations.

[Ernst]

The manuscript's available online.
http://digital.wlb-stuttgart.de/digital ... 5cf63884f9

A sample, folio 15v:
http://digital.wlb-stuttgart.de/filegro ... 000036.jpg

[Jason Grimes]

Hi Vermillion,

Do you have the 4-volume set of the The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1500-1550? Lots and lots of woodcut goodness there (1596 pages). They have gotten a bit more expensive than when I bought my set. In the set are several versions of that particular woodcut that were printed using different colors, gold and purple I think. They also printed them on different colored paper to get more effects as well.

http://www.amazon.com/German-Single-Lea ... 0878171258

[Vermillion]

No, I don't own that one ($750 ouch) but I own about 5 others and have pillage extensively in the online dating museum collections

[coreythompsonhm]

I absolutely love german woodcuts. If I had about 12 more hours available per day, I would be tempted to try my hand at creating my own woodcut images. However, I don't, so I just stare at my favorites.

That four volume set would be great to have, but out of my price range

[Jason Grimes]

Yes, that price is pretty ridiculous (especially the $2000+ ones), I didn't realize that the sets were that rare? Apparently there is a German DVD set that has all the images from this set and the other later sets (1500 - 1700) for 80 Euros (3500+ woodcuts ). But I don't know if it's still available or not.

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15481

If that fails I would be willing to scan a few images in for people. My only requirements is that you know the artist name and can describe the woodcut. As that is how they are organized in the books.

[Thomas Powers]

Close to that range is De Re Metallica with a wealth of information on the technology of the era including how to build your wheelbarrows, building an elevator; the first reported use of Ghoating in a technical drawing; etc.