Nuremberg School circa 1506

In the possession of the Holzschuher family since circa 1506

E. Stromer von Reichenbach, Unsere Ahnen in der Reichstadt Nürnberg, 1951, p. 12, plate 2;
E. Buchner, Das Deutsche Bildnis der Spätgotik und der Frühen Dürerzeit, Berlin 1953, pp. 25-6, fig. 3, reproduced

Framed. There is some damage to the upper and lower edges; the lower edge has possibly been cut. The margins and lower left corner are a little rubbed, with some slight losses to the pigment. There are some creases at the upper part of the drawing, where the vellum has distorted slightly. Was previously laid down - the remains of some glue on the verso. Overall, however the condition is absolutely fine.
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In the early 16^th century, the residents of Nuremberg, like those of any other European city of the time, were extremely proud of their "local heroes", the men who in earlier times helped to establish and secure the status of their city as a significant and influential regional centre.  Two of the most important of these figures from local history were the joint military commanders during the 1387/88 War of the Cities, the Nuremberg native Peter Stromaier, and Johann Habvast Ehinger (born in Ulm, but also resident in the city).  The latter is the subject of the present work.

The essential source of information on this portrait, which was executed as one of a pair, together with another depicting Ehinger's fellow hero, Peter Stromaier, is the Stammbuch of Lazarus Holzschuher, a typical gentleman's album of notes, mottoes, drawings and inscriptions, which was begun in 1506.  There we read that Holzschuher had seen painted portraits of Ehinger and Stromaier in the collection of a certain Hartmann Schedel, and had ordered copies of the two paintings to be made for his own collection.  The present portrait, one of those two copies, has remained in the possession of the Holzschuher family ever since.

The prototypes for the two striking gouache copies are unknown, as is the name of the artist responsible for them, which Holzschuher sadly did not record in his Stammbuch.  The present drawing is, however, a rather individual work of considerable quality, and its remarkably fine condition – the result, no doubt, of its having been in the possession of the same family for five hundred years – allows the original colouring and the lively handling to be seen very clearly.  The compositional approach locates the work in the close orbit of Dürer, and Ernst Buchner tentatively suggested that the gouaches might even be the work of the young Schäufelein, who was active in Nürnberg in 1505-07.¹

Around his neck, Ehinger wears the regalia of the Order of the Sword, an order of chivalry established in 1347 by Peter I of Cyprus.

1.  Buchner, loc. cit.