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
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 ...
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...