Theuerdank Received by Ehrenreich, from Teuerdank, plate 22 from Woodcuts from Books of the XVI Century
1517
Medium
Woodcut in black on vellum
Dimensions
Image: 15.8 × 13.9 cm (6 1/4 × 5 1/2 in.); Image/text: 30 × 16.6 cm (11 13/16 × 6 9/16 in.); Sheet: 37.4 × 25.4 cm (14 3/4 × 10 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
132167
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Late in life, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I became nostalgic for his beloved first wife, Mary of Burgundy, and commissioned an illustrated poetic allegory about his youthful feats to deserve her love. This woodcut by Leonhard Beck, one of the Emperor’s many Augsburg-based printmakers, shows Maximilian’s alter ego, Theuerdank (“the knight of adventurous thoughts”) meeting his beloved, Ehrenreich (whose name means “full of honor”). This impression on vellum comes from a limited luxury editio...
Art Historical Context
Created in 1517 by the German artist Leonhard Beck, this woodcut illustrates a scene from *Teuerdank*, an elaborate chivalric romance commissioned by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The book served as a thinly veiled allegory of the emperor’s own life, recounting the heroic adventures of the knight Teuerdank as he journeys to wed his beloved. Beck contributed numerous designs to the project, which was conceived as both literature and imperial propaganda, celebrating Maximilian’s virtues through lavish illustration. Printed in black on vellum—a fine parchment usually reserved for high-status manuscripts—the work highlights the transitional moment when woodcut technology met aristocratic patronage. The crisp lines and narrative clarity typical of early sixteenth-century German book illustration allowed the story to reach a wider audience while still conveying courtly splendor. Measuring just over six inches square, the scene captures the formal meeting between Teuerdank and Ehrenreich, rendered with the economical yet expressive style that made such prints both affordable and visually compelling. Today preserved in the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection of prints and drawings, this sheet offers a vivid glimpse into Renaissance strategies of image-making and self-fashioning at the highest levels of power.
About the Artist
Leonhard Beck · 1480–1542
Leonhard Beck (c. 1480–1542) was a prominent painter, draftsman, and woodcut designer active in Augsburg, Germany, during the early Renaissance. Born into an artistic family, he was the son of the miniaturist Georg Beck, with whom he collaborated on two psalters for an Augsburg monastery around 1495. Beck began his training as an apprentice in the workshop of the esteemed Augsburg painter Hans Hol...