11. Hanns Sebald Lautensack
(1524-ca. 1560)

Landscape with a Vineyard

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Lautensack, Landscape

Landscape with a Vineyard

Etching, 1559, 203 x 302 mm., Bartsch 53, Schmitt 75 i/ii, Hollstein 10 ii/iv. Fine, early impression on thin laid paper with the watermark BG with a Cross (Briquet 9288), dating from ca. 1560, trimmed on or along the plate mark on three sides with ample white space outside the borderline, a small margin at the right; flattened fold marks and a trace of a printer’s crease in the blank sky. Pure landscape as a fit subject for printmaking began with Altdorfer, thence to Hirschvogel and then Lautensack, and, in each case, the preferred medium was etching rather than engraving. There is, in the etching technique, a freedom of execution that marries well with the freedom of nature and this combination led to the vast flowering of etched landscape in the century to come. This plate is one of Lautensack’s largest landscapes and, with the inclusion of the vineyard and its workers, the hilltop castle, the churches and the village, one of the most interesting. It is also quite rare.