1532 Hans Weiditz, noblemen playing ball, sport, master woodcut

Extremely fine and detail woodcut executed by Hans Weiditz.

Original woodcut leaf from Weidlitz's striking series of woodcuts produced for Petrach's Trostspiegel published in 1532. This impression a little later, although still strong.

Text to verso

10 x 15.7 cm

Published in 1560, first published in 1532. 

Weiditz was not only the most versatile but the busiest of the illustrators of his time... and one of the little group of outstanding woodcut designers of the German Renaissance with a highly individualized style and a most personal outlook on life.  

More than any of his fellows he knew how to break up the surfaces of his blocks into rich tapestries... and to keep the notation of fact interesting and piquant. Passing by these more technical and aesthetic aspects of his work, we can find unfailing pleasure in the reports of life and manners. He might almost be claimed as the first of the social caricaturists, the first artist who with full command over his printing surface devoted himself to subject matter which in later years was to be so variously handled by such men as Hogarth, Moreau, Chodowiecki, Daumier, and Gavarni, [HANS WEIDITZ: A STUDY IN PERSONALITY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, W. M. I., JR.]

Even age toning.