Dodgson, Campbell: Catalogue of early German and Flemish woodcuts: preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (Band 1): [German and Flemish woodcuts of the XV century] (London, 1903)

520 Early German ancl Flemish Woodeuts.—Part II.

durch Hieronymu Holtzel.” The whole sheet measures 405 x 260. Ou the other side
is a calendar for 1504, which was evidently used as waste. The broadside itself must
have been printed after the accession of Leo X in 1513.

The drapery of the Yirgin is nearer than any other example than I can name to that
of the Crucifixion of 1509 (H. 1973). For the Yirgin’s eyes, compare the much less
artistic woodcut, no. 11. The character of the foliage has already been noticed (see
p. 367, no. 45). The face of the mocking Jew is almost identical with a face in no. 20
of the cuts in the Legend of St. Francis.

Traut has copied an older woodcut of the same composition, and with the same
inscription (school of Basle or Alsace, c. 1500), of which an impression [261 X 220] is
preserved in the Basle Museum. The Virgin, in the latter, is a copy from Schongauer,
B. 25. Traut has altered the features, while he preserves the attitude. An interesting
detail, to be found in Traut’s woodcut only, was pointed out to me by Mr. S. M.
Peartree. The spear-head is drawn from the lance of St. Maurice, containing a nail
of the true cross, which was one of the relics connected with the insignia of the Holy
Boman Empire. These were kept, in Traut’s time, at Nuremberg. They are now at
Yienna. The lance is figured in Q. von Leitner’s “ Kunstwerke der Schatzkammer des
Osterr. Kaiserhauses,” and in “Fiihrer durch die Schatzkammer... in der K. K.
Hofburg zu Wien,” 1900, p. 31.

f A HERMIT. 1513.

(Reproduction.)

A kerrnit with long hair ancl beard stands on a path in the middle,
oontemplating a crucifix. To r. is a clump of trees, to 1., on a hill, an
enclosure containing a house and a chapel. Triple border, consisting of
two narrow lines witliin a wider one. Within the wide line, under the
feet of the liermit, is the date 1513.

Photograph of the impression [150 x 191] which I found in the university library
at Eriangen, and attributed to Traut, in 1896. Watermark, a pair of scales. The
Germanic Museum at Nuremberg possesses a counterproof.

Ho more characteristic example could be named of Traut’s peculiar methods of
drawing grass and trees.

13. SS. VALENTINE, STEPHEN and MAXIMILIAN. 1514.

B. vii, 138, 109 and 452,1. H. 2233. R.—A 11. Nagl. Mon. iii, no. 896 (1) ;
v, no. 900.

Second state.

St. Stephen stands between the two sainted bishops under a round
arch with child angels standing on the capitals of the columns. Ornaments,
closely resembling those on the back of the Artelshofen altarpiece of the
same year, are slung across in the air from rings. The arms of the see of
Passau and of the bishop, Wigelinus or Wigileus Froscliel, surmounted by
a mitre, stand in the foreground on a lower level. (In the first state two
monograms stand in the lower corners, that of Traut, with the date 1514
r., and P standing on the crossbar of H, the monogram of the woodcutter
1.) Double border, the outer line being the widest.

[252 x 179]. Fair impression. Watermark, imperial eagle.

Iu the inventory of 1837.

This is one of the three woodcuts signed by Traut. In the first state it forms the
frontispiece to the Passau Missal1 printed by Jodocus Gutknecht at Nuremberg,
26 October, 1514, which also contains a Crucifixion by Traut, dated but uot signed, and
numerous initials.

1 Panzer, vii, 455, 108.