Art Institute of Chicago

Coat of Arms of Rohrbach and Eilge von Holzhausen

Monagrammist b. g. (German, active c. 1470–90)

Date

after 1470

Medium

Engraving in black on buff laid paper

Culture

Bavaria

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

This unidentified German artist signed his prints with a monogram. Here he may have copied a coat of arms designed by the more famous, yet equally mysterious Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet. Originally this work was interpreted as commemorating the 1466 marriage of Bernhard von Rohrbach and Adelgunde von Holzhausen. However, this Frankfurt family adopted the helmet on their crest in 1470; the couple’s son likely commissioned the sheet as a bookplate. When the engraving plate was rediscovered in the Holzhausen family archives in Frankfurt in 1856, a large edition was printed, of which this impression is one example.

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