In the Theuerdank of 1517 about twenty cuts are assigned to Schäufelein, some of them bearing his signature. The following year he illustrated Leonrodt’s Himmelwagen for Otmar with twenty cuts, mostly signed, some of which were used afterwards on the titlepages of early Luther tracts. After an interval Schäufelein is found in 1533 working for Heinrich Steyner of Augsburg, who employed him to illustrate his German editions of the classics, Thucydides (1533), Plutarch (1534), Cicero (1534), Apuleius (1538), etc. The blocks for some of his cuts subsequently passed into the possession of Christian Egenolph of Frankfort.

The first native Augsburg artist whom we have to notice is Hans Burgkmair, who was born in 1473, and began bookwork in 1499 by illustrating missals for Erhard Ratdolt with pictures of patron saints and of the Crucifixion. The chief Augsburg publisher for whom he worked in his early days was Johann Otmar, for whom he illustrated several books by the popular preacher, Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (Predigen teutsch, 1508 and 1510, Das Buch Granatapfel, 1510, Nauicula Poenitentiae, 1511), and other devotional and moral works. In 1515 Hans Schoensperger the younger employed him to supply a dedication cut and seven designs of the Passion for a Leiden Christi, and to the Theuerdank published by Schoensperger the elder at Nuremberg in 1517 he contributed thirteen illustrations (only one signed). He had already been employed (1510) on a few of the cuts in the Genealogy of the Emperor Maximilian, which a wholesome fear lest its accuracy should be doubted caused that self-celebrating monarch to withhold from publication, and much more largely (1514-16) on the Weisskunig, which was first printed, from the original blocks, at Vienna in 1775; and he was the chief worker (1516-18) on the woodcuts for the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian printed by order of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1526. While these imperial commissions were in progress Burgkmair designed a few title-cuts for Johann Miller, notably the very fine one (see Plate XXIV) to the De rebus Gothorum of Jornandes (1515), showing kings Alewinus and Athanaricus in conversation, and subsequently worked for Grimm and Wirsung and for H. Steiner, although not nearly to the extent which was at one time supposed, as most of the illustrations supplied to these firms with which he used to be credited are now assigned to Hans Weiditz.

Jörg Breu, who was born and died (1537) some half-dozen years later than Burgkmair, like him illustrated Missals for Ratdolt and contributed Passion-cuts to Mann’s Leiden Christi. His most important piece of bookwork was the redrawing of the cuts in Anton Sorg’s edition of Reichenthal’s Conciliumbuch for a reprint by Steiner in 1536. Illustrations by him also occur in a Melusina (1538), and German versions of Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus and De Casibus Illustrium virorum issued after his death by the same firm. Leonhard Beck contributed largely to the illustration of Maximilian’s literary ventures, especially the Theuerdank, Weisskunig, and Saints of the House of Austria (published at some date between 1522 and 1551).

XXIV. AUGSBURG, J. MILLER, 1515
JORNANDES. DE REBUS GOTHORUM. (TITLE). ATTRIBUTED TO BURGKMAIR

We come now to Hans Weiditz, the immense extension of whose work by the attributions of recent years can only be compared to Mr. Proctor’s raising of Bartolommeo de’ Libri from one of the smallest to one of the most prolific of Florentine printers. Only two or three Augsburg woodcuts bearing his initials are known, while scores and even hundreds are now assigned to him, most of which had previously been credited to Burgkmair.

Weiditz began bookwork in or before 1518, in which year he contributed a title-cut to the Nemo of Ulrich von Hutten, while in 1519 he made twelve illustrations to the same author’s account of Maximilian’s quarrel with the Venetians. In 1518 he had begun working for the firm of Grimm and Wirsung, and this, with a few commissions from other Augsburg publishers, kept him busy till about 1523, when he himself moved to Strassburg, whence his family had come, while in the same year Grimm and Wirsung gave up business and sold their blocks to Steiner. These included not only many title-borders by Weiditz, twenty illustrations to two comedies of Plautus and a set of cuts to the Deuotissime meditationes de vita et passione Christi, and another to a German Celestina, all published in 1520, but a series of some 260 masterly illustrations to a German version of Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae. Steiner used some of these cuts in a Cicero De Officiis of 1531, which has in addition sixty-seven important cuts by Weiditz, presumably of the same period, and also in a Justinus of the same year, but the work for which they were specially designed did not appear until a year later. Needless to say, selections from both the Petrarch and the Cicero sets appear in later work.

After removing to Strassburg, Weiditz copied some Wittenberg Bible cuts and also Holbein’s Apocalypse set for Knoblauch in 1524. In 1530 he illustrated for J. Schott the Herbarium of Brunfels, which went through several editions both in Latin and German, and for this comparatively humble work was praised by name in both editions, so that until 1904 it was only as the illustrator of the Herbal that he was known. Many of his Augsburg woodcuts subsequently passed to that persistent purchaser of old blocks, Christian Egenolph of Frankfort.

Before passing away from the Nuremberg and Augsburg book-illustrators, it seems necessary to describe briefly, but in a more connected form, the literary and artistic enterprises of the Emperor Maximilian, to which so many incidental allusions have been made. The Emperor’s first attempt to glorify himself and his lineage took the form of a Genealogy for which several antiquaries—Mennel, Sunthaim, Tritheim, and Stabius—made researches. Burgkmair made designs of some ninety ancestors and their heraldic coats in 1509-11, and the wood-blocks were cut. It was apparently intended to print them in 1512, but the whole project was abandoned, and the work is now only known from a few sets of proofs, no one of which is quite complete.

After this failure Maximilian planned a Triumphal Arch and Procession, the programme for the Arch being drawn up by Stabius, that of the Procession by Treitzsaurwein. The plan of the Arch was largely worked out by Dürer, with help from Springinklee, Traut, and Altdorfer, whose designs were carried out in 192 woodblocks cut by Hieronymus Andrea and his assistants. When the impressions from these are put together they make a design measuring nearly twelve feet by ten. In the centre is the Gate of Honour, to the left and right the gates of Praise and Nobility. Above the main gate rises a tower on which are displayed the Emperor’s ancestors and their arms, above the other gates a series of incidents of Maximilian’s life, surmounted by busts of his imperial predecessors and of contemporary princes. This was printed in 1517-18 at Nuremberg, and in 1526-8 and 1559 at Vienna. On the Procession or Triumph, Dürer, Springinklee, Schäufelein, Burgkmair, and Beck were all engaged. The 138 blocks composing it were cut by Andrea and Jost de Negker in 1516-18, and it was printed by order of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1526. A Triumphal Car designed by Dürer in 1518, in connection with the same project, was published in eight sheets in 1522.