Hans Weiditz (1495–1536)
Born 1495 CE, died 1536 CE.
Hans Weiditz the Younger, Hans Weiditz der Jüngere, Hans Weiditz II (1495 Freiburg im Breisgau – c. 1537 Bern), was a German Renaissance artist, also known as The Petrarch Master for his woodcuts illustrating Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae, or Remedies for Both Good and Bad Fortune, or Phisicke Against Fortune. He is best known today for his very lively scenes and caricatures of working life and people, many created to illustrate the abstract philosophical maxims of Cicero and Petrarch. Like most artists in woodcut he only designed the woodcuts, leaving the block-cutting to a specialist "Formschneider" (sometimes Jost de Negker in his Augsburg period) who pasted the design to the wood and chiselled the white areas away. The quality of the final woodcuts, which varies considerably, depended on the skill of the cutter as well as the artist. Weiditz was unfortunate in that his publishers went bankrupt part way through the production of his two longest series of woodcuts, and the cutting was later completed by cutters of lower skill.
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