Art Institute of Chicago

Standard-Bearer and Drummer

Sebald Beham

Date

1544

Medium

Engraving in black on ivory laid paper

Culture

Germany

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Beham’s engraving of two foot soldiers manages to capture the visual bluster and noise of war despite its small size. Both wear mail armor, with the standard bearer also equipped with a cuirass, a kind of breastplate. Yet this piece of armor is an antiquated model, and these figures may in fact be Landsknecht impersonators. The inscriptions identify the drummer as a bumbling “Farmer Conrad” and the standard bearer as “Klaus Swineherd,” a reference to the Bauernkrieg, a major German peasant uprising that mercenaries summarily suppressed in 1525.

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