21. Hans Sebald Beham
(1500-1550)

Peasant Couple Walking to the Left

(click on image to print)
Beham, Peasant Couple

Peasant Couple Walking to the Left

Engraving, ca. 1537, from Procession of the Newlyweds, 47 x 34 mm. Bartsch 180, Pauli 169 only state, ex collection: Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) (Lugt 2092). Superb impression on laid paper trimmed on, in places barely inside, the platemark, the subject complete. Beham did three sets of prints depicting peasant weddings and the set titles are merely an attempt to organize them separately. Such depictions of peasants would, at the time, have been considered legitimate representations of Germanic culture, worthy to stand beside evocations of Roman heroic tales and mythological subjects in the library of a German humanist.