Barthel Beham

German, 1502 - 1540

BiographyBorn Nuremberg, 1502; died Italy, 1540.

Painter, engraver, etcher and possibly designer of woodcuts, brother of Sebald Beham. He is best known for his painted portraits and for his superb small engravings of Classical themes. The year of his birth is verified in a portrait of 1531 by Ludwig Neufahrer (d 1563), which gives Barthel’s age as 29. His early works (c. 1520) are engravings obviously influenced in choice of subject, composition and graphic means by Albrecht Dürer and by his brother Sebald, both of whom are considered to have been his teachers. Barthel’s interest in antiquity, as transmitted through the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi, is evident as early as 1524 in subjects that are Classically inspired and erotic (e.g. Cimon and Pero, b. 11; Cleopatra, b. 12) and in figures that, though still in Dürer’s manner, are fuller in form. Barthel’s representations of peasants (1524; b. 46, 47) continued the tradition of small engravings featuring one or two peasants begun by Dürer around 1497 (b. 89–90) and continued by Sebald Beham (b. 191–5). If Röttinger’s attribution to Barthel of a dozen or so woodcuts (Geisberg, nos 251–62) is correct (Stewart, 1993, favours Sebald), then it would seem that in the 1530s the brothers developed this theme into large woodcuts depicting rural festivals, with many peasants celebrating together. These works are uncharacteristically clumsy, perhaps due to lack of skill on the woodcutters’ part. Altogether Barthel created 92 engravings and etchings, the subjects and styles of which often coincide wth Sebald’s, and indeed vice versa, for his elder but longer-lived brother often used Barthel’s designs as models in later years. The intaglio prints are small and finely engraved, but only a few bear his monogram. As with Sebald, the form of this changed from an early BP, reflecting Nuremberg dialect, to bb from 1531. One of the finest products of his years in Nuremberg is a pair of paintings (c. 1525) depicting Hans Urmiller and his Son (Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt Gal.) and Margaret Urmiller and her Daughter (Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.).

After Barthel’s expulsion from Lutheran Nuremberg (by 1527), he moved to Catholic Munich to work for the Bavarian dukes William IV and Ludwig X and remained in their employment until his death. In Munich he produced numerous painted portraits, the earliest known being that of the Chancellor of Bavaria Leonhard von Eck (1527; New York, Met.), of whom there is also an engraving from the same year (b. 64). For this Barthel used the Italianate half-length format of Dürer’s engraved Erasmus of Rotterdam (1524; b. 107), reputedly for the first time in a German painted portrait. The coolly objective, three-dimensional image is typical of Barthel’s portraits of the middle and upper classes (listed by Fudickar), which include a dozen, dating as early as 1530, of members of the Wittelsbach family (see Erichsen), for example Duke William IV of Bavaria with a pendant of his wife Maria Jacobaea of Baden (both Landshut, Staatsgal. Stadtresidenz). Some of these portraits, including his Duke Ludwig X of Bavaria-Landshut (1530) and Count Palatine Otto Henry (1535; both Munich, Alte Pin.), are monumental, impressive portraits comparable to those of Hans Holbein the younger. Around 1530 Barthel sketched Emperor Charles V and his brother King Ferdinand I, then ruler of Hungary and Bohemia, for engravings dated 1531 (b. 60, 61). There are also painted versions, which may, however, be copies (Munich, Alte Pin.; Vienna, Gemäldegal. Akad. Bild. Kst.). There is also a history painting dating from 1530, the Finding of the True Cross (Munich, Alte Pin.), commissioned by Duke William as part of a series of history paintings for the Residenz in Munich.

Barthel’s engravings increasingly drew on Classical subjects and types. At least 11 of his prints were influenced by Marcantonio, according to Oberheide, including the well-known Virgin and Child at the Window (b. 8), after the Italian artist’s Pensive Woman (b. 460). Sandrart alleged that Barthel worked for many years with Marcantonio in Rome and Bologna and that many of his prints were issued under the latter’s name. The tritons and nereids, dolphins and sea gods (b. 23–4, 33–4) and designs for ornaments and daggers (Pauli 1911, nos 30–33, 78–80) used by goldsmiths demonstrate the widespread interest these classicizing subjects held in early 16th-century Germany. Barthel was an early creator of vanitas representations, including sleeping children with skulls (b. 27, 31) and women surprised by death (b. 41, 42). Barthel died in Italy, according to Sandrart, while undertaking a trip sponsored by Duke William.

Alison Stewart. "Beham." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T007324pg2 (accessed April 27, 2012).

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