Lovers Surprised by Death
Chiaroscuro woodcut from three blocks, with some pen additions, 1510, state III/III
Size of original & reproduction 212 x 151 mm, 8 6/16 x 5 15/16 inches
Chiaroscuro, or colour, woodcuts were an invention only two years old when this print was created. Yet this is arguably the most beautiful example to be produced, at least in Germany.
The figure of Death moving among the living is a common theme in early German prints, but he is usually shown mixing suavely with his victims, before the moment when he pounces. Here he already has the soldier pinned to the floor with a foot on his chest. Whilst Death holds the soldier's mouth open with both hands, he has the girl's dress held firmly between his teeth as she tries to flee.
The humans wear classical dress, and Death has wings, which is in the Italian rather than German iconographic tradition. The setting is clearly intended to be Venice, as the steps to the right lead down to a canal with a gondola-like boat passing. The chimney-pots to the left of the arcade column have the distinctively Venetian large size and flared shape.
Burgkmair had probably travelled to Italy three years before and his home town of Augsberg had close trade links with Italy, and Venice in particular.
The print is made up from three separate woodblocks, and was put through the press three times. Two of the blocks are tone blocks, in salmon-pink and light grey, which give the large areas of flat colour. They also give some of the detail, both by the presence of colour, and by its absence to give a white highlight, or a pink one through the grey - as in the windows of the last palace before the canal.
The third block, and the last to be printed, is a line block which is in dark grey in this impression. In most impressions this was in black which harmonises less well with the tone block colours. The final stage was for the printer or artist to reinforce some of the lines in brown ink on the helmet, shield and figures.
Many impressions of the print have quite different colours for the tone blocks, but the combination in this example is the most successful.
It should be pointed out for those who know colour reproductions of this impression in books - for example The Renaissance Print by David Landau & Peter Parshall (Yale, fig 209, p199) or German Renaissance Prints 1490-1550 by Gulia Bartrum (British Museum Press, front cover) - that the very different ochre-ish colour they have for the pink tone block does not reflect the colour of the original, which is far closer to that in our reproduction.
We have also digitally removed or reduced some unintended dark grey marks down the wide column on the left of the image, and an orange stain on the girl's knee.
This print appears to be the first ever produced with three blocks, and the alignment of the line block in particular gave great trouble, which was only solved in the third state of the print. This state removes the date of 1510 under Burgkmair's name, and also adds the name of Jost de Negker the block-cutter, printer, and publisher. His name was in plain letters below the image, but in this impression it has been cut off when the print was trimmed to the edge of the image by a collector, as was the usual custom.
It appears that de Negker may have taken possession of this and other Burgkmair blocks after some initial impressions were taken, and made the alterations in the third state. This may have been a few years after the first state of 1510, which is the earliest chiaroscuro woodcut which can be securely dated.
Chiaroscuro woodcuts were then the latest thing in both Germany and Italy. Their invention was claimed by Lucas Cranach, who can be shown to have put a false date of 1506 on two prints to boost his claim, and by the Italian Ugo da Carpi, who applied in 1516 to the Venetian Senate for, in effect, a patent on the process. Jost de Negker also appears to claim the invention as his own in a letter of 1512 to the Emperor Maximilian.
In fact it seems most likely that the crucial breakthrough of the tone block was first made by Burgkmair, possibly in collaboration with de Negker, in 1508, with two equestrian figures of St George and the newly-elected Emperor Maximilian. The tone block mechanised the earlier, very luxurious, techniques of drawing or printing a black line image on coloured paper, to which white or gold highlights could then be applied by hand.
The immediate stimulus seems to have been demand for showy images of0 heroic figures as a phase in Maximilian's lifelong campaign of self-advertisement through art. Maximilian had been voted Holy Roman Emperor Elect but his coronation could only take place by the Pope, and the hostility of the Venetians prevented him travelling to Rome. In fact he never would be crowned, which must partly account for the stream of images of Imperial glory he was to commission, of which these were early examples.
These images drew from traditions of illuminated manuscripts with text and illustration on dark backgrounds, which themselves looked back (via Carolingian imitations) to Roman Imperial manuscripts written in gold on a purple background.
Burgkmair's Lovers Surprised by Death takes these traditions forward by lightening the colours of the tone blocks and conveying much more of the detail of the image through them rather than the line block. By doing so it anticipates techniques of printing in colour that would be significant in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
See also the Witches Sabbath LINK by Baldung
Click image to enlarge
Size of reproduction:
212 x 151 mm, 8 6/16 x 5 15/16 inches
Print price:
£30 €44 $50
£ and € print prices include UK VAT at 17.5%. No UK VAT on Books.
© The Trustees of the British Museum 2006 PD 1895-1-22-379 Bartsch 40
