The Blue King's Council to Attack the White King by Surprise, from Der Weisskunig

The Blue King's Council to Attack the White King by Surprise, from Der Weisskunig

Hans Burgkmair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Der Weisskunig (the white king) is a loosely biographical account of the life of Emperor Maximilian I. The text, composed by Maximilian's secretary Marx Treitz-Sauerwein, is accompanied by illustrations by Burgkmair, as well as Leonhard Beck, Hans Schäufelein, and Hans Springinklee, with proofs completed between 1514–16. However, they remained unpublished until the blocks were rediscovered in 1775, at which point they were published as a book in Vienna by Hoffstätter. The first edition was published again in 1799 by S. Edward in London with the French title, "Tableaux des principaux evénemens de la vie et du regne de l'empereur Maximilien I." This edition includes 236 woodcut illustrations.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Blue King's Council to Attack the White King by Surprise, from Der WeisskunigThe Blue King's Council to Attack the White King by Surprise, from Der WeisskunigThe Blue King's Council to Attack the White King by Surprise, from Der WeisskunigThe Blue King's Council to Attack the White King by Surprise, from Der WeisskunigThe Blue King's Council to Attack the White King by Surprise, from Der Weisskunig

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.