Fig. 26.—1530.
Among the work of Dürer’s school the beautiful plates of his pupil Hans Sebald Beham will well repay study for their excellent composition and for their extreme beauty of draughtsmanship and engraving. Beham’s shields were often scrolled at the edge, but not extravagantly so, and he frequently employed plain shields, which, like most others at the time, however plain in outline, were shown more or less concave in some or all directions: a well-known device to obtain relief for the light side of the charges by means of the adjacent shadow that is formed by the concavity of the shield.
The shields that accompany the figures of the Virtues and Vices, engraved by Aldegrever in 1552, are most unusual in their curiously shaped edges, and show very emphatically the complete departure from the character of the defence shield (Figs. 27-30).
Fig. 27.
Fig. 28.
Fig. 29.