Paradoxes of the German Small Engraving in the Reformation

The engravings of Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538), Sebald Beham (1500-1550), Barthel Beham (1502-1540), and Georg Pencz (1500-1550) are typically no larger than a playing card and represent diverse biblical, classical, and secular subjects. The Behams and Pencz are famous as the "godless painters" of Nuremberg, for their severe skepticism of authoritative figures and external signs of faith. Their dissent is consistent with the image debate of the Reformation. Yet, it is puzzling therefore why the artists depicted so many sacred and heroic figures in an intimate medium. The iconography, technique, size, and scale of the prints reveal paradoxical and subversive treatments of iconic forms. Because it makes extra demands on perception in the first place, the small format extends the paradox and "image crisis" to the viewer's fundamental relationship with the image. This phenomenon is analyzed through comparisons of small images and compressed literary formats from the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. The small engravings are also distinguished from the important precedents of Albrecht Durer and Hans Baldung Grien (among others), whose prints are typically larger and support strong iconic forms. Although Baldung's art evokes the crisis of the image, only the small engravings undermine the constitution of the image itself. The small engravings are most analogous to the terse paradoxes of Sebastian Franck (1499-1542) that were devised to challenge faith in scripture at an elementary semantic level. Comparison of Franck's paradoxes with milder versions by Nicolas Cusanus, Alberti, and Erasmus reveals a sharp difference that is similar to how the small engravings depart from visual conventions. Humanism and its emphasis on classical style and history provided a crucial platform for the small prints. Still, the engravings are a radical branch of the many small, classicizing devices-including emblems, medals, and nielli-that broke down medieval paradigms by stressing relative meanings and physical contingencies in signs and their perception.