Allegory of Patience
| Reference: | S44842 |
| Author | Hans Sebald BEHAM |
| Year: | 1540 |
| Measures: | 70 x 105 mm |
| Reference: | S44842 |
| Author | Hans Sebald BEHAM |
| Year: | 1540 |
| Measures: | 70 x 105 mm |
Description
Allegory of Patience depicted with a winged female figure in antique dress and seated with her eyes closed on the base of a column, her legs crossed and holding a sheep in her lap. On the right, we find a demonic creature with a disfigured face looking at the two putti hovering in the clouds and holding a laurel wreath on the head of the female figure.
Engraving, 1540, signed "SEBALDUS BE/ HAM PICTOR/ NORICUS FACI/ EBAT.HSB" and dated in the plate. Also lettered "PACIENTIA" above the female figure's head.
Example in the fourth state of six, with new horizontal strokes on the right shin of the figure but before the hatching on the right side of the column and on the shadow of the signature plate.
Magnificent proof, richly toned, printed on contemporary laid paper, trimmed to copper, in excellent condition.
The work is part of a group of independent engravings of allegorical figures that Beham designed between 1539 and 1541. They are always placed in the foreground, with few attributes surrounding them, and in this sense follow the format of the contemporary bronze plates of similar subject matter and similarly small size made by Peter Flötner of Nuremberg.
The allegory of Patience is a widespread and iconographic theme of sacred allegory, which has left recurrent evidence in the visual arts, particularly in painting and printed illustration. The iconography, from its initial contents of distinctly theological inspiration, has undergone a shift into "profane" territory, which occurred in the time frame around the middle of the 16th century, the results of which lent themselves to use in political key, in the historical climate of the Italian Renaissance courts. The personification of this virtue, as a rule, pursues a moralizing intent, moving, therefore, on a theological ground that reflects the tradition of the Gospel and patristic doctrine, following the Christian philosophy of the early centuries, elaborated by the Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers.
Shortly before 1520, some young artists in Albercht Dürer's circle took to making very small engravings that challenged the viewer with a miniature world of new secular subject matter and unconventional interpretations of traditional themes. Because of the small size of their engravings, these artists have long been affixed with the collective, and unflattering, name of Small Nuremberg Masters. The core of the group consists of three artists from Nuremberg, Hans Sebald & Bartel Beham and Georg Pencz, and in addition Jacob Bink from Cologne and Heinrich Aldegrever from Soest.
Bibliografia
Pauli 1901-11, Hans Sebald Beham: Ein Kritisches Verzeichniss seiner Kupferstiche Radirungen und Holzschnitte (141.IV); Hollstein, German engravings, etchings and woodcuts c.1400-1700 (141.IV); Bartsch, Le Peintre graveur (VIII.168.138); Bartrum 1995, German Renaissance Prints 1490-1550 (99).
Hans Sebald BEHAM Nuremberg 1500 - Frankfurt 1550
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Engraver, etcher, designer of woodcuts and stained glass, painter and illustrator. In contemporary documents and prints he was nearly always identified as Sebald Beham although since the 17th century (Sandrart) and into the early years of the 20th he has mistakenly been called Hans Sebald Beham on the basis of his monogram: HSP or HSB. This reflects S[ebald] Peham/Beham with the P (Nuremberg pronunciation) changing to B c. 1531, when he appears to have moved to Frankfurt. Sandrart’s biography of him is illustrated with a printed portrait similar to Sebald’s painted Self-portrait in his David panel in the Louvre; around the Sandrart portrait is an inscription identifying him as painter and engraver. Only one of Sebald’s panel paintings has survived (the Story of David, 1534; Paris, Louvre), though documents cited by Hampe and Vogler refer to him as a journeyman for painting in 1521 and as having his own journeyman—i.e. running a workshop—in 1525. Sebald is best known to posterity, however, for his prints, of which he produced a prodigious quantity: approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. Biographical information is scanty: Sandrart alleged that he was trained by Barthel and opened a tavern, the bad reputation of which derived from his own dissolute life. Unquestionably, however, he was industrious and meticulous artistically. He began producing prints in quantity in 1519, though a few date to before then: a woodcut of Lust from a series of the Ten Commandments—a youthfully naive work produced in 1512 when Sebald was 12—and a sheet of sometimes awkwardly drawn pen-and-ink studies of male and female heads on red prepared paper (1518; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.). His first engraving, dated 1518, is a diminutive Portrait of a Young Woman.
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Hans Sebald BEHAM Nuremberg 1500 - Frankfurt 1550
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Engraver, etcher, designer of woodcuts and stained glass, painter and illustrator. In contemporary documents and prints he was nearly always identified as Sebald Beham although since the 17th century (Sandrart) and into the early years of the 20th he has mistakenly been called Hans Sebald Beham on the basis of his monogram: HSP or HSB. This reflects S[ebald] Peham/Beham with the P (Nuremberg pronunciation) changing to B c. 1531, when he appears to have moved to Frankfurt. Sandrart’s biography of him is illustrated with a printed portrait similar to Sebald’s painted Self-portrait in his David panel in the Louvre; around the Sandrart portrait is an inscription identifying him as painter and engraver. Only one of Sebald’s panel paintings has survived (the Story of David, 1534; Paris, Louvre), though documents cited by Hampe and Vogler refer to him as a journeyman for painting in 1521 and as having his own journeyman—i.e. running a workshop—in 1525. Sebald is best known to posterity, however, for his prints, of which he produced a prodigious quantity: approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. Biographical information is scanty: Sandrart alleged that he was trained by Barthel and opened a tavern, the bad reputation of which derived from his own dissolute life. Unquestionably, however, he was industrious and meticulous artistically. He began producing prints in quantity in 1519, though a few date to before then: a woodcut of Lust from a series of the Ten Commandments—a youthfully naive work produced in 1512 when Sebald was 12—and a sheet of sometimes awkwardly drawn pen-and-ink studies of male and female heads on red prepared paper (1518; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.). His first engraving, dated 1518, is a diminutive Portrait of a Young Woman.
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