Wednesday, September 21, 2016

German Engraver Sebald Beham (1500-1550)

Sebald Beham
Adam sitting on tree stump
1519
engraving
British Museum

"Every sinner is inexcusable, whether because of the original sin, or because of an additional offense due to his own will, whether he knows or does not know it, whether he condemns or does not condemn it; because in those unwilling to understand, ignorance itself is beyond  doubt a sin; and in those unable to understand, this inability is the penalty of sin."

Sebald Beham
Eve, with the serpent
1523
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Adam, with the serpent
 1524
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Adam & Eve
1536
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Adam & Eve & Death
1543
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Adam & Eve Expelled from the Garden
1543
engraving
British Museum

"All Christians who really hold to the Catholic faith believe that it is not by a law of nature that man is subject to bodily death  since God created for man an immortal nature  but as a just punishment for sin."

Sebald Beham
Woman & Death
1547
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Sleeping Woman & Death
1548
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Night
1548
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Three Women & Death
ca. 1531-50
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
The "Satyr Nessus" & Dejanira
ca. 1531-40
engraving
British Museum

"The quest for a happy life is thus common to the philosophers and the Christians. Tell us, Epicurean, what things make us happy? His answer is: Bodily pleasure. And you, Stoic? Intellectual virtue. And you, Christian? The gift of God."

Sebald Beham
Cleopatra
1529
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Venus & Cupid
ca. 1518-30
engraving
British Museum

Sebald Beham
Woman & Children in Bath-house
1540s
engraving
British Museum

"Do not believe, do not say, do not teach that infants who died before being baptized can attain to forgiveness of original sins."

Quotations are translated from the Latin of St. Augustine (AD 354-430). By the time Sebald Beham became one of Northern Europe's first master-engravers in the mid-16th century, the words of St. Augustine had been circulating for more than a thousand years at the highest possible level of authority. The German artist could have had little idea that this age-old unity of Christian thought was in fact breaking up during his own lifetime, just as Augustine had little notion that the "Roman peace" he actively endorsed  and Roman culture itself  were about to dissolve beyond recovery.

I am grateful to the British Museum for the excellent reproductions.