Hans Schäufelein, the elder
German, c. 1482 - 1539/40
(not assigned)Germany, Europe
BiographyBorn c. 1482; died 1539–40.Painter, designer of woodcuts and stained glass. Nuremberg, Nördlingen and Augsburg have each been proposed as his place of birth, and it has also been suggested that he could have studied in Nördlingen with Friedrich Herlin, leaving for Nuremberg after Herlin died in 1500 (Weih-Kruger, 1986). Schäufelein’s robust figures and the hearty tone of his work suggest that his origins were in Swabia. Yet a close connection with the merchant family Scheufelin, who settled first in Nördlingen and then in Nuremberg and Geneva, has been refuted. Schäufelein was active in Albrecht Dürer’s workshop in Nuremberg from c. 1503 to 1507 and in Hans Holbein the elder’s workshop in Augsburg in 1507–8. He journeyed to southern Tyrol between 1508 and 1510 and was back in Augsburg from 1511 to at least 1514. From 1515 until his death he was the municipal painter of Nördlingen. The middle name Leonhard, often used in the literature, does not appear in the early documents, nor is its use supported by Schäufelein’s monogram, the ligated letters h and s with a small shovel (Ger. kleine Schaufel=Schäufelein). Schäufelein paid taxes in Nördlingen for the last time in 1539; the following year they were paid by his widow.
1. Nuremberg and Augsburg, before 1515.
When Schäufelein entered Dürer’s workshop c. 1503, he was already a highly skilled artist. He worked alongside Hans Baldung and Wolf Traut on the woodcut illustrations of Der beschlossen Gart des Rosenkranz Marie (2 vols, Nuremberg, 1505) by Ulrich Pinder (d 1519), and collaborated again with Baldung on the woodcut illustrations of Pinder’s Speculum passionis domini nostri Ihesu Christi (Nuremberg, 1507). With the woodcuts of the Speculum passionis, Schäufelein assumed an exemplary role, alongside Dürer, for a decade or longer in the representation of Christ’s Passion (Löcher, 1986). As Löcher demonstrated, Schäufelein evaded the virtuosity of Dürer’s graphic language, taking what could be learnt from the master and passing the lessons on to others. Even Dürer used Schäufelein’s woodcuts as a point of departure for compositions in his Small Woodcut Passion series (1510–11; b. 16–52).
Schäufelein was also active as a painter while in Dürer’s workshop. His paintings share the popular narrative style of his woodcut designs and reflect the stylistic advances previously made in his drawings and prints (Weih-Kruger, 1986). Winkler ( Jb. Preuss. Kstsamml., 1941) noted that while content was treated as a compositional problem by Baldung, for Schäufelein it became the starting-point for a narrative scene with attractive, well-observed details. Schäufelein’s earliest paintings include Flight into Egypt (c. 1503; Munich, Alte Pin.), the Penitent St Jerome (1505–6; Berlin, Gemäldegal.) and two small altarpiece wings depicting Christ Taking Leave of his Mother (c. 1506; Berlin, Gemäldegal.). Testimony to the high regard in which Schäufelein was held in Dürer’s workshop is the fact that he was entrusted with the execution of the monumental Passion altarpiece for the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony and his brother Johann the Steadfast for the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg (Vienna, Dom- & Diözmus.). Dürer provided highly finished designs for the wings (Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.), and Schäufelein designed the central panel with the Crucifixion, painting the altarpiece between 1505–6 and 1507–8. Contemporary works include two forcefully modelled male portraits, the Portrait of a Man with a Red Cap (?c. 1505; Basle, Kstmus.) and the Portrait of a Man (c. 1504–7; Warsaw, N. Mus.). Also attributed to Schäufelein is the powerfully characterized, if less typical, Portrait of a Man (1507; Washington, DC, N.G.). Two altarpiece wings depicting male saints (c. 1507; Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.) date from the same period.
In 1508 Schäufelein was active in the workshop of Hans Holbein the elder in Augsburg, where he assisted in the completion of an altarpiece with scenes from the Passion and Marian themes based partly on Holbein’s and partly on his own designs (the Nativity and Agony in the Garden, both Hamburg, Ksthalle; Christ among the Doctors and the Mocking of Christ, both Gateshead, Shipley A.G.; Adoration of the Magi and Flagellation, Stuttgart, Staatsgal.; Death of the Virgin and Christ Carrying the Cross, Bad Godesberg, priv. col.; see 1988 symposium, pp. 268–9). By now Schäufelein had forged a personal style characterized, as Rettich noted, by large-scale, relief-like compositions, restrained expression and soft, painterly modelling. From the same year is the Crucifixion with St John the Baptist and King David (1508; Munich, Bayer. Staatsgemäldesammlungen, on dep. Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.). Between 1508 and 1510 Schäufelein travelled to southern Tyrol, where he painted four scenes from the Passion on the outer wings of a sculpted altarpiece by Hans Schnatterpeck ( fl 1478–1540) for the church in Niederlana (nr Meran). Also from this period is a painting on canvas of a Tournament (Schloss Tratzberg, Tyrol), which combines motifs common to Dürer and his school in a narrative teeming with anecdotal detail. A series of 14 prints of scenes from the Passion was completed in 1510.
By 1511 Schäufelein was back in Augsburg, where he illustrated a number of books published between 1511 and 1513. A prolific printmaker, he contributed 20 of the 118 woodcut illustrations to the Theuerdank (Nuremberg, 1517) by Melchior Pfinzing (1481–1521), a largely fictitious story of Emperor Maximilian I’s adventures on his journey to his bride, Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, to which Leonhard Beck and Hans Burgkmair I have been credited with contributing designs (27 and 13 respectively). Schäufelein also designed two images for the Weisskunig (first pubd Vienna, 1775) by Marx Treitzsauerwein (d 1527) and collaborated with Dürer, Burgkmair, Beck, Huber, Albrecht Altdorfer and perhaps Hans Springinklee on the Emperor’s eight-sheet woodcut known as the Large Triumphal Chariot (1522, Lat. edn 1523; b. 139), for which he provided two designs.
Four heads painted by Schäufelein in Augsburg in 1511, the Head of a Bearded Man and the Head of a Beardless Man (both Kreuzlingen, Heinz Kisters priv. col.; 1961 exh. cat., figs 60, 61) and the Head of a Youth and the Head of a Woman (both Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), have been interpreted as representing the four human temperaments (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic). Dated the same year is Schäufelein’s Last Supper (1511; Berlin, Bodemus.). In 1513 Schäufelein completed the high altarpiece for the former Benedictine abbey of Auhausen near Oettingen (now parish church of St Maria) with scenes from the Apocalypse and the Passion (in situ); Schäufelein was apparently assisted by his son-in-law Sebastian Daig in the execution of this, his most monumental altarpiece. By 1513 Schäufelein’s mature style was fully in evidence: always a fertile story teller, the artist conceived his narratives in a tone more tender than that of Dürer; this gentler tone is reinforced by his execution, which was softer and more painterly than Dürer’s; and the bright palette betrays the lingering influence of Hans Holbein the elder. The beautifully balanced colours of Schäufelein’s gently falling draperies form a pleasing decorative unity against the bright blue backgrounds on both the interior and exterior of the altarpiece. On the left interior wing is a self-portrait among the worshippers who witness the Coronation of the Virgin and adore the image of the Lamb of God.
Schäufelein was most prolific as a draughtsman during the first 15 years of the 16th century. Besides his many designs for woodcuts, he made designs for stained glass, such as the pen-and-ink drawings for quatrefoils with scenes from the Life of St John the Baptist (Florence, Uffizi; quatrefoil, Berlin, Tiergarten, Kstgewmus., with arms of the bishopric of Augsburg), celebrating Emperor Maximilian I (London, BM; quatrefoil, 1510, Berlin, Tiergarten, Kstgewmus.) and a design (untraced) for a stained-glass quatrefoil depicting four of the Labours of Hercules (Berlin, Tiergarten, Kstgewmus., with arms of the Augsburg bishop Henry of Lichtenau).
2. Nördlingen, 1515 and after.
In 1515 Schäufelein settled in Nördlingen, of which he became a citizen the same year. The city had not had a resident painter of such importance since the death of Herlin, and Schäufelein immediately received important commissions for panel paintings, including the Last Supper (1515; Ulm Minster), in which the spacious Renaissance architecture recalls the influence of the time spent in Augsburg. From this point onwards, painting came to the fore of Schäufelein’s oeuvre. Among his masterpieces is his only extant wall painting, the Defence of the City of Bethulia against Holofernes, in the assembly room of the Swabian league of princes, cities and knights in the town hall of Nördlingen (1515; in situ). This scene, taken from the story of Judith in the Old Testament Apocrypha, reflects the determination of the league to defend the public peace (Kindler). The lively sequential narrative is skilfully arranged in an extensive, broadly conceived landscape. Lovingly executed passages, such as the pretty heads and luxurious hair of Judith and her attendants, and acutely observed details, such as the corpse of a soldier at the lower left, indicate the care that Schäufelein expended on such an important commission. The wall painting was acclaimed by Sandrart in 1675. Around 1530 Schäufelein returned to the subject of the Battle of Bethulia, designing a monumental woodcut.
Among Schäufelein’s most interesting works is a large painting on canvas of the Ecce homo (1517; Munich, Bayer. Staatsgemäldesamml., on loan to Stadtmus., Nördlingen), probably originally a Lenten cloth in the church of St Alban in Wallerstein (nr Nördlingen). Also from the first years in Nördlingen are the Epitaph for Emmeram Wager with the Lamentation (1516); the Epitaph for Jörg [Georg] Prigl with the Coronation of the Virgin (1517), based on a woodcut from Dürer’s Life of the Virgin (b. 77–92); and the Epitaph for Anna Prigl with Christ Taking Leave of his Mother (1521; all Nördlingen, Stadtmus.). From the same year as the latter is the altarpiece with the Lamentation for Nikolaus Ziegler (d 1526), a vice-chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V (1521; Nördlingen, St Georgskirche). The standing saints on the movable wings (Nördlingen, Stadtmus.), sensitively painted in luminous colours, are among Schaüfelein’s finest inventions and call to mind the noble figures of Burgkmair of Augsburg. The following year he painted an alms chest with the Man of Sorrows (1522; Nördlingen, Stadtmus.).
Schäufelein remained in continuous contact with Nuremberg in the 1520s and 1530s. Two notations in the Nuremberg Ratsverlässe of 1523 indicate a longer stay in Nuremberg in that year, undoubtedly in connection with the decoration of the town hall, and in Dürer’s diary of his trip to the Netherlands (1520–21), he noted on 12 February 1521 that he sold two sketches and four books by Schäufelein. In 1534 Schäufelein painted the portraits of prominent Nuremberg citizens, Lorenz II Tucher (d 1554) and his wife Katharina Straub (both Nuremberg, Tucher Schlossen), and most of his later prints were published in Nuremberg.
The dating of the so-called Christgärtneraltar (Munich, Bayer. Staatsgemäldesamml.; six panels on loan to Schaezlerpal., Augsburg) to 1525–30 (Buchner in Thieme– Becker) has been generally accepted. More problematic is the argument (Rudolf) that the panels belonged to two altarpieces, one with four conventional scenes of the Passion on the outer wings and four scenes from the Life of St Peter on the inner wings, the other depicting the seven times that Christ fell during his Passion (see Goldberg in Vorträge des Nördlinger Symposiums: 1988). Schäufelein’s late oeuvre also includes the Epitaph for Abbot Alexander Hummel (d 1535) (1531; Munich, Staatsgemäldesammlungen, on dep. Augsburg, Schaezlerpal.).
In 1536 Schäufelein designed a nine-sheet woodcut representing the Triumphal Procession of Emperor Charles V (1537), which recalls the 137 woodcuts that make up the Triumphal Procession of Emperor Maximilian I (1526). Schäufelein’s last dated painting is the Adoration of the Lamb (1538; ex-Dt. Mus. Berlin; destr.), a fragment of a Coronation of the Virgin comparable to the central panel at Auhausen and for the same patron, Abbot Georg Truchsess of Wetzenhausen. Three wings executed with assistants (Donaueschingen, Fürstenberg-Samml.) have been considered to be part of the same altarpiece (Buchner in Thieme–Becker).
Barbara Butts. "Schäufelein." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T076426pg1 (accessed April 27, 2012).
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