Hans Sebald Beham

1500 Nuremberg - 1550 Frankfurt am Main

Hans Sebald Beham was an engraver, etcher, miniaturist, woodcut designer an one of the most important so-called 'Little Masters'. Together with his brother Barthel Beham and Georg Pencz, he was banished from Nuremberg in January 1525 for making atheistic and anarchistic statements in support of the Peasants' War but was permitted to return in September of the same year. In 1528, after publishing a book on the proportions of the horse, he was accused of plagiarising unpublished work by Dürer and again fled from Nuremberg. In 1530 he was in Munich and from 1532 Beham seems to have lived mostly in Frankfurt. He was one of the most productive graphic artists of his generation, with an output of about 250 engravings and over a thousand woodcuts.