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Jost Amman | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 17 March 1591 51) | (aged
Nationality | Swiss, German |
Known for | Woodcuts |
Notable work | Das Ständebuch |
Movement | Northern Renaissance |
Jost Amman (June 13, 1539 – March 17, 1591) was a Swiss-German artist, celebrated chiefly for his woodcuts, done mainly for book illustrations.
Amman was born in Zürich, the son of a professor of Classics and Logic. He was himself well-educated. Little of his personal history is known beyond the fact that he moved to Nuremberg in 1560, where he took on citizenship and continued to reside until his death in March 1591. [1] He worked initially with Virgil Solis, then a leading producer of book illustrations.
His productivity was very remarkable, as may be gathered from the statement of one of his pupils, who said that the drawings he made during a period of four years would have filled a hay wagon. A large number of his original drawings are in the Berlin print room. [1] About 1,500 prints are attributed to him. He was one of the last major producers of woodcuts for books, as during his career engravings were gradually taking over that role. Although like most woodcut artists, he normally let a specialist formschneider cut the block to his drawing, he occasionally included both a cutter's knife and a quill pen in his signature on prints, suggesting he sometimes cut his own blocks.
Amman was the artist for Wenzel Jamnitzer's book Perspectiva corporum regularium (1568). [2] A series of engravings by Amman of the kings of France, with short biographies, appeared in Frankfurt in 1576. He also executed many of the woodcut illustrations for the Bible published at Frankfurt by Sigismund Feierabend, and for a topographical survey of Bavaria by Philipp Apian. [3] Another serial work, the Panoplia Omnium Liberalium Mechanicarum et Seden-tariarum Artium Genera Continens, containing 115 plates, is of great value. [4] Amman's drawing is correct and spirited, and his delineation of the details of costume is minute and accurate. Paintings in oil and on glass are attributed to him, but none have been identified. [1]
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that the artist cuts away carry no ink, while characters or images at surface level carry the ink to produce the print. The block is cut along the wood grain. The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink-covered roller (brayer), leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the non-printing areas.
Leonhart Fuchs, sometimes spelled Leonhard Fuchs and cited in Latin as Leonhartus Fuchsius, was a German physician and botanist. His chief notability is as the author of a large book about plants and their uses as medicines, a herbal, which was first published in 1542 in Latin. It has about 500 accurate and detailed drawings of plants, which were printed from woodcuts. The drawings are the book's most notable advance on its predecessors. Although drawings had been used in other herbal books, Fuchs' book proved and emphasized high-quality drawings as the most telling way to specify what a plant name stands for.
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Hans Lützelburger, also known as Hans Franck, was a German blockcutter ("formschneider") for woodcuts, regarded as one of the finest of his day. He cut the blocks but as far as is known was not an artist himself. He is best known for his virtuoso work on 41 of the "superbly cut" series of tiny woodcuts of the Dance of Death, designed by Hans Holbein the Younger, which Lützelburger left unfinished when he died.
Heinrich Khunrath, or Dr. Henricus Khunrath as he was also called, was a German physician, hermetic philosopher, and alchemist. Frances Yates considered him to be a link between the philosophy of John Dee and Rosicrucianism. His name, in the spelling "Henricus Künraht" was used as a pseudonym for the 1670 publisher of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus of Baruch Spinoza.
Wenzel Jamnitzer was a Northern Mannerist goldsmith, artist, and printmaker in etching, who worked in Nuremberg. He was the best known German goldsmith of his era, and court goldsmith to a succession of Holy Roman Emperors.
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Johann Georg Wille, or Jean Georges Wille was a German-born copper engraver, who spent most of his life in France. He also worked as an art dealer.
Hieronymus Andreae, or Andreä, or Hieronymus Formschneider, was a German woodblock cutter ("formschneider"), printer, publisher and typographer closely associated with Albrecht Dürer. Andreae's best known achievements include the enormous, 192-block Triumphal Arch woodcut, designed by Dürer for Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and his design of the characteristic German "blackletter" Fraktur typeface, on which German typefaces were based for several centuries. He was also significant as a printer of music.
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German Schafkopf is an old German, ace–ten card game that is still played regionally in variant form today. It is the forerunner of the popular modern games of Skat, Doppelkopf and Bavarian Schafkopf. It originated in Leipzig in the Electorate of Saxony. Today it is hardly ever played in its original form, but there are a number of important national and regional derivations.
Perspectiva corporum regularium is a book of perspective drawings of polyhedra by German Renaissance goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer, with engravings by Jost Amman, published in 1568.
Media related to Jost Amman at Wikimedia Commons