Dagger Sheath with a Young Couple Above
Medium
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate/sheet: 15.8 × 3.4 cm (6 1/4 × 1 3/8 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
214017
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The Westphalian painter and printmaker Heinrich Aldegrever styled his nested AG monogram after the famed Albrecht Dürer, and often adopted the compact scale of the Little Masters of Nuremberg. Aldegrever produced some 100 of his 300 prints in similarly elaborate detail. His Dagger Sheath is one of the rarest and most classicizing Renaissance ornament prints, with its acanthus-leaf foliage and comparatively large figures. The specific dagger shape implies the print’s intended use as a pattern to ...
About the Artist
Heinrich Aldegrever · 1502–1561
Heinrich Aldegrever, born in 1502 in Paderborn, Westphalia, to parents Herman and Katherine Trippenmeker—a family of clog-makers known by the dialect name Trippenmecker—emerged as a multifaceted artist in the German Renaissance. His early training remains undocumented, though he likely apprenticed in a Soest goldsmith's workshop after relocating there around 1525, where he joined the painters' gui...