drawing
- Museum number
- 1949,0411.102
- Description
-
Design for part of a wall-decoration with St Paul in a niche; statue of the saint standing in a niche looking to right, a sword in his right hand, flanked by pillars with floral decoration and trophies of war, a frieze of masks and grotesque animals' heads above, figure of a man standing by a window at r, architrave below. c.1535-45
Pen and brown ink, with black and grey wash
- Production date
- 1535-1545 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 202 millimetres
-
Width: 188 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- Augsburg, c1535-45
Rowlands 1993
This is a fragment of the design for an upper storey on the outside of a house. While the stumpy figure of St Paul is hardly of any artistic distinction, the decoration recalls features of architecture and decorative motifs introduced into Augsburg in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The stonework decoration at the foot of the drawing is like that on the balcony of the façade of the Boeck House in Augsburg, which was constructed in 1544-6 next to the St Annakirche, and is now the Maximilian Museum.
To the right of St Paul is a small part of a trompe-l'oeil balcony with a figure leaning over a balustrade, the sort of detail to be found in earlier decorative schemes for façades that survive, like those produced by the Holbeins in Lucerne, and later by Hans Holbein the Younger in Basel. In this fragment from Augsburg, there is a woman looking down at her dog, lightly sketched with the brush. The woman's hat is a useful pointer to the probable date of the design, for it calls to mind a fashion which is familiar from many of Schäufelein's late woodcuts of the series 'Dancers at a wedding' (Dodgson, ii, p. 50, nos. 221-35). Dodgson stated that these were published in 1535, although he could not recall where he had seen dated impressions. Despite this, there exist other woodcuts of the period which support Dodgson's contention.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1949
- Acquisition notes
- Formerly in the Albertina, Vienna (according to Dodgson's manuscript notes, it came from the Archduke Friedrich's collection)
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1949,0411.102