page_title: Michael Wolgemut
section_title: Woodcuts
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Wolgemut / Woodcuts
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustrations from the Nuremberg Chronicle, by Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514)
context_page_description: Michael Wolgemut was a German painter and printmaker, who ran a workshop in Nuremberg. He is best known as having taught the young Albrecht Dürer.
  The importance of Wolgemut as an artist rests not only on his own individual works, but also on the fact that he was the head of a large workshop, in which many different branches of the fine arts were carried on by a great number of pupil-assistants, including Albrecht Dürer, who completed an apprenticeship with him between 1486-9. In his atelier large altar-pieces and other sacred paintings were executed, and also elaborate carved painted wood retables, consisting of crowded subjects in high relief, richly decorated with gold and colour.
  Wolgemut was a leader among the artists reviving the standards of German woodcut at this time. The production of woodcuts was a large part of the work of the workshop, the blocks being cut from Wolgemut's designs. They were mostly made to supply the many publishers in Nuremberg with book illustrations, with the most attractive also being sold separately. Wolgemut's woodcuts followed the advances in engraving, depicting volume and shading to a much greater extent than before.
context_section_description: Two large and copiously illustrated books have woodcuts supplied by Wolgemut and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff; both were printed and published by Germany's largest publisher, the Nuremberger Anton Koberger, who was also Dürer's godfather. The first is the Schatzbehalter der wahren Reichthumer des Heils (1491); the other is the Historia mundi, by Schedel (1493), usually known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, which is highly valued, not for the text, but for its remarkable collection of 1,809 spirited illustrations. Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff were first commissioned to provide the illustrations in 1487-1488, and a further contract of 29 December 1491 commissioned manuscript layouts of the text and illustrations. A further contact of 1492 stipulated that Koberger should provide a locked room for the blocks to be kept safely.  A drawing by Wolgemut for the elaborate frontispiece, dated 1490, is in the British Museum. As with other books of the period, many of the woodcuts, showing towns, battles or kings were used more than once in the book, with the text labels merely changed. The book is large, with a double-page woodcut measuring about 342x500mm.
caption: Michael Wolgemut, Danse Macabre, 1493
exif: {}