Hans Hoffmann (painter)

Hans Hoffmann (also Hofmann , * around 1530 in Nuremberg ; † 1591/2 in Prague ) was a German painter and draftsman of Mannerism .

Hare, inscribed with Dürer's monogram and the year 1528 (Dürer's year of death)

It is believed that Hoffmann studied and worked in the Netherlands for a while. In 1576 he can be traced back to Nuremberg, where he quickly became famous for his copies of works by Albrecht Dürer . The copies are so deceptively real that some have been mistaken for works by Dürer up to the present day. In Praun's cabinet there are said to have been 159 Hoffmann drawings of flowers, herbs and animals.

1584 he went to Munich to there on behalf of Duke Wilhelm V to work. In 1585 Emperor Rudolf II appointed him court painter and brought him to the imperial court in Prague. Hoffmann, who is considered to be the head of the Dürer Renaissance at the imperial court, advised Rudolf on building up his art collection and acquired works for him from Dürer's estate through his friend from Nuremberg patrician and collector Willibald Imhoff .

Works

In addition to the Dürer copies, Hoffmann also created works in which he z. B. embedded the Dürer's field hare in a forest landscape and thus laid the basis of the animal piece genus .

• Hase (copy after Dürer, inscribed 1528 , which is Dürer's year of death, not the year of the copy), Berlin
• Dürer as a child (copy after Dürer, 1576), British Museum , London
• Squirrel (1578), National Gallery of Art , Washington, DC
• Flowers and Beetles (1582), Getty Museum , Los Angeles
• Hare in the forest (around 1585); Acquired in 2001 for $ 2,645,750 from the Getty Museum, Los Angeles

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Hoffmann, Johann (I.) . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 9th part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing House, Vienna 1863, p. 170 ( digital copy ).
• Rudolf Bergau:  Hoffmann, Hans . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, p. 629.
• Hans Tietze: Critical directory of the works of Albrecht Dürer. Augsburg 1928-34
• W. Pilz: Hans Hoffmann: A Nuremberg Dürer imitator from the second half of the 16th century. In: Communications from the Association for the History of the City of Nuremberg. LI (1962), p. 254.
• Kurt Pilz:  Hoffmann, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 418 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Works by Hans Hoffmann  - collection of images, videos and audio files