Minneapolis Institute of Art

Mercury and Venus

Hans Burgkmair

Date

c. 1520

Medium

Etching

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Venus impatiently looks on while Mercury is sleeping on the job. Blindfolded Cupid flutters helplessly above. Venus pokes Mercury with the blunt end of Cupid's arrow, while turning the pointy end to herself. Our suspicions about Mercury are confirmed by the fact that he has laid aside the symbols of his prowess and leans on a wellhead with a flaccid phallic spout. Such mild bawdiness is rampant in German printmaking. Hans Burgkmair was a painter and highly important designer of woodcuts during the German Renaissance. Venus, Mercury, and Cupid is his only known etching. Burgkmair's interest in etching is unsurprising. He had already proven himself a technical innovator, as in his complex chiaroscuro prints. For a woodcut designer it is a much shorter leap to etching than to engraving. His role in woodcut production involved drawing on blocks that had been prepared with a thin coating of gesso or some similar material. He could use quills, reed pens, or brushes, just as he would on sheets of paper. Engraving required the use of considerable force to drive the sharp tool (the burin) through copper. Etching was performed by drawing with a stylus in a thin, waxy film coating the iron. The woodcut designer left the chore of actually cutting the wood to make a printable block to a specialized--well-paid--craftsman. Burgkmair's iron printing plate survives in the British Museum (inv. 1862, 1011.184). The only known impression printed during his lifetime is in the Kunstmuseum, Basel. Impressions taken in the later 1500s and well into the 1600 tend to be hazy because of corrosion to the plate. Sometime before this impression was made in the late 1700s or early 1800s, the plate was polished to recover some of the earlier contrasts. Germany, Europe

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