Workshop of Hans Baldung Grien

Acquired with the Baldung studio estate by Nikolaus Kremer (circa 1500-1553), Strasbourg;

from whom acquired by his brother-in-law, Sebald Büheler (1529-1595), Strasbourg;

Eugène Rodrigues (1853-1928), Paris,

his sale, Amsterdam, F. Muller, 12 July 1921, lot 37, reprod. pl. XIV (as Hans Baldung Grien, purchased, together with lot 36, by Colnaghi);

Henry Oppenheimer (1859-1932), London,

his sale, London, Christie’s, 14 July 1936, lot 353 (together with the following lot, as Hans Baldung)

We are most grateful to Dr. Christof Metzger of the Albertina Museum, Vienna, for kindly informing us that this depiction of a coat of arms, and also the following lot, belong to a group of similar stained glass window designs with heraldic motifs, mostly made for Alsatian families, which were produced in the workshop of Hans Baldung, called Grien (1484/5-1545), in the first decades of the 16^th century. They are all drawn in pen and brown-black ink, with some letters as colour indications (e.g. b for ‘blau‘) and red chalk lines drawn by the glazier, who marked the relevant lead bars. They are often, as here, cut out and inserted into, or glued to, a backing paper.

The Baldung monograms and the inscriptions were, it seems, added to these drawings by the Strasbourg collector Sebald Büheler (1529-1595), who acquired the estate of Hans Baldung through his brother-in-law Nikolaus Kremer (around 1500-1553).¹ Baldung was Kremer's teacher. The largest group of these drawings is today in the collection at the Veste Coburg. A further 19, originating from an English collection, were acquired by the Albertina in 1873.

Despite the fact that these drawings originate from the workshop of one of the most important German artists of the beginning of the 16^th century, they have, as a group, featured rather erratically in the Baldung literature. Most publications on the artist have included only the most elaborate of these designs, and only Gabriel von Térey, writing as long ago as 1894-96, included all the drawings known at the time in his monograph on the artist.² The two drawings now offered for sale were not, however, amongst those known to Von Térey. 

See also the following lot.

^1.For more information on the Kremer-Büheler provenance, see From a Mighty Fortress. Prints, Drawings, and Books in the Age of Luther 1483-1546, exhib. cat., The Detroit Institute of Arts 1983, pp. 51-52

^2.Gabriel von Térey, Die Handzeichnungen des Hans Baldung gen. Grien, 3 vols., Strasbourg 1894–96