WOHLGEMUT Michael
(Nuremberg 1434 – 1519)
Little is known about the life of this painter and woodcut engraver from Nuremberg. In 1472 he married the widow of the painter Hans Pleydenwurff whose son Wilhelm was first assistant and then collaborator of the stepfather.
The importance of Wohlgemut in the second half of the 15th century in Germany is not only given by his individual works, but also by the fact that he founded a large workshop in which young apprentices practiced different types of figurative arts. Among them were great artists, the most famous of whom was Albrecht Dürer, who completed his apprenticeship at the Wohlgemut art workshop from 1486 to 1489.
Wohlgemut perfected the canons of woodcutting art in Germany to provide publishers with richer and more elaborate illustrations for their books, many of which could also be sold individually. Dürer helped to further improve the master’s art by raising it in the production of real masterpieces of art.
In Wohlgemut’s shop many xylograph works were produced to illustrate two of the most important illustrated books of 15th century: the ‘Schatzkammer der wahren Reichthumer des Heils’ (1491) by the Franciscan Stephan Fridolin and the ‘Historia Mundi’ (1493) by Hartmann Schelde, best known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, famous not only for the text, but also for the remarkable series of woodcuts illustrating it.
In his studio, large altarpieces, retables, portraits of important figures of the time were painted, and cartoons for polychrome stained glass were made.
