Hans Brosamer worked in Fulda from c. 1520 to the mid-1540s making paintings and engravings. By 1546, he seems to have moved to Erfut, since he is identified on a woodcut portrait dated 1546 of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse as "Hans Brosamer Formschneider zu Erfut." Over 30 copper engravings reveal "well thought-out technique, which he acquired by studying North German contemporaries such as Heinrich Aldegrever and Jakob Binck, as well as the Mannerists of the Netherlands. He also acquired a characteristic dense texture by very using closely hatched lines. He engraved Christian, mythological, and Classical themes as well as a few genre scenes" (I have taken most of the information above from the article on Hirschvogel in The Grove Encyclopedia of Northern Renaissance Art, ed. Gordon Campbell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3 volumes, here at I, 255-56). His 34 of his etchings (as well as 83 woodcuts, two of which are commonly ascribed to Hans Baldung) are illustrated in The Illustrated Bartsch 17, ed. Robert A. Koch (NY: Abaris Books, 1981), pp. 15-78. 30 of these woodcuts were executed for and printed in various editions of Luther's German Bible (folio editions of 1550, 1551, 1555, 1556, 1557, 1558, 1560, 1567, and 1569; in addition, a series of 26 illustrate the Apocalypse. There are also 23 woodcuts (including one showing "Luther on the pulpit" for the folio Catechismus für die Germeube-Pfarrher und Prediger D. Martine Luther (Frankfurt am Meyn: Weygand Han, 1550)

Hans Brosamer (c. 1500-1554), Lacoön Troia (B. 15) Original etching, 1536. Lacöon was a Trojan priest who warned the Trojans not to take the great wooden horse into their walled city. Because the gods had determined that the horse, packed full of Greek warriors, would be the means of putting an end to the war, Poseidon sends two giant serpents who crushed Lacoön and his young sons (Aeneid, Book II). Here, instead of sea serpents, Lacoön and his sons are killed by what appear to be vipers, who kill by poison, not constriction. The work is dated 1536 bottom center; signed "HB" lower left. It is a very good impression with some abrasions at center across Lacoön's torso and upper left across the wall and the column sitting in a niche. A late classical sculpture of the Lacoön was rediscovered in Rome in the early sixteenth-century and this stirred an interest in the subject and in the contorted poses of the persons of the work. There is a theory–though few art historians have found it persuasive–that Michelangelo had carved an enormous sculpture out of one block of marble, buried it, and waited for its rediscovery). Since Michelangelo had already done this with a sculptire of a Cupid, it is not entirely beyond the realm of possibility, but so it seems unlikely to most Michelangelo scholars. Thread margins. Image size: 91x62mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

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