Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I

Hans Weiditz the Younger

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A celebrated printmaker, Weiditz was working as a journeyman in Hans Burgkmair’s workshop by 1518. In this year, Augsburg hosted Maximilian’s final imperial diet, at which Dürer sat with the emperor in a small chamber and drew him from life. From this sensitive drawing came a woodcut and two paintings of Maximilian by Dürer. There are also several woodcut variants after Dürer’s original block. Weiditz’s version is the most elaborate, with Maximilian placed below a fully ornamented archway. The columns are topped by griffins that hold symbols of his authority, such as the imperial crown and coat of arms, as well as Burgundian flints that bind his chain with the Order of the Golden Fleece. Created in the wake of the emperor’s death in 1519, Weiditz’s portrait not only celebrates Maximilian’s power as the direct descendant of Imperial Rome, but also his embrace of Renaissance sensibilities.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art