Prints from the German Renaissance have figured strongly in our stock since our founding 55 years ago, and we offer a selection here. A Dürer from the Small Engraved Passion was the first old master print I bought when at 19-years-old I was leading bicycle tours in Europe. My early interest in German prints also led me to astonishing woodcuts by Hans Baldung Grien and Lucas Cranach the Elder, both in the Circle of Dürer.

A strong impression of Cranach’s Adam and Eve in Paradise in this selection is a recent addition to our stock and is the only impression we have ever had. It is rarely on the market in impressions that meet our standards. Cranach served as the court artist to the Electors of Saxony in Wittenberg, and the Adam and Eve shown below was owned by Friedrich August II, King of Saxony, itself a kind of gold standard of excellence.

Also see The Conversion of St. Paul by Baldung, Dürer’s most talented pupil and himself a highly original painter and printmaker. This dramatic, angular, composition with its juxtaposition of horizontal and diagonal lines and frenzied contortions of the human and animal figures seem to anticipate the angst characteristic of twentieth-century German Expressionist printmakers. The impression on view is likely the finest extant, including those in museums.

Soon after I started as a dealer, the generation just after Dürer and strongly influenced by him, followed in entering our inventory – sublimely gifted artists like Sebald Beham, Georg Pencz, and Heinrich Aldegrever. They produced mostly small format engravings, some of them hardly bigger than a postage stamp, hence the name by which they were called then and now, the Kleinmeisters (Little Masters). I remain as captivated by the Kleinmeisters as I was in my youth. One of the two groups shown below has been in our stock for half a century. We have shown it on occasion, but the prints have never been offered for sale prior to this virtual fair. The other group is more recent: it has been with us, but not offered, for more than 35 years.

Before signing off, it would be remiss not to mention two of Dürer’s greatest masterpieces, both on view below, both in brilliant impressions that we have sold before and have acquired back: Knight, Death and the Devil and his Coat of Arms with a Skull, an enigmatic and technically virtuosic memento mori.

I hope you like what you see and come to admire them as much as I have. If any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.