Germans, from a set of costume plates of different nations
ca. 1600–40
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet (Trimmed): 3 3/16 × 4 3/8 in. (8.1 × 11.1 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1960
Accession Number
60.627.6
Art Historical Context
Johann Wilhelm Baur’s *Germans* belongs to a series of small etchings depicting the costumes of various nations, created roughly 1600 and 1640. Working in the early Baroque period, Baur specialized in finely detailed prints that captured the distinctive dress, accessories, and postures associated with different European peoples. This particular sheet, measuring just over three by four inches, shows figures in the layered garments and hats typical of German townspeople and soldiers of the time. Costume prints like these were popular in the seventeenth century as portable visual encyclopedias. ...
About the Artist
Johann Wilhelm Baur · 1607–1642
Johann Wilhelm Baur was a German draughtsman, painter, and printmaker who came of age in the early seventeenth century and built his reputation through the production of finely detailed illustrations and miniatures. Though the precise details of his training remain incompletely documented, Baur developed his skills in the tradition of German and Northern European graphic art, showing influences fr...