Hans Krafft the Elder

Medal (1520–1521)

Hans Krafft the Elder (* before 1500; † 1542/1543) was a Nuremberg mint master, goldsmith and medalist .

From 1509 to 1512 he was a stamp cutter in the imperial city . As the successor to Hans Krug d. From 1510 to 1523 he supplied coins and medals to Frederick the Wise . According to a document from August 1513, he had to cut his likeness of Lucas Cranach in stone. Various portrait medals are ascribed to him “on an experimental basis”

Friedrich III. has, among other things, minted the Locumtenenstaler , the so-called counterfeit coins, according to his personal ideas. After he had received the title of governor from the emperor, he commissioned Lucas Cranach the Elder to design models in the same year. Until 1519 he had four die cutters work with his likeness to produce the stamps for the coins and medals, and from 1513 to 1519 Hans Krafft the elder, who made die cuts for governor medals with high relief on the basis of the various pairs of dies.

See here the auction catalog for the auctioning of Renaissance medals from the collection of the New York coin dealer and collector Lawrence R. Stack on December 10, 2009 by Morton & Eden, London, at Sotheby's. This silver medal was commissioned in 1521 by the Council of the Imperial City of Nuremberg in preparation for a planned Imperial Diet in the city. To the front it shows a picture of Emperor Charles V surrounded by coats of arms, based on a design by Albrecht Dürer. Verso the city coat of arms of Nuremberg is shown as a border with other coats of arms.

In the production of around 100 medals, Krafft used a new process: In the first step, the piece was cast, then the middle picture was embossed on both sides and finally the surrounding rings of the pictures were embossed with coats of arms. There are also photographs and an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on December 6, 2009, page 65.

His son Hans Krafft the Younger († 1521) also became a goldsmith.

literature

Kraft (Krafft), Hans, d. Elder In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 21 : Knip – Kruger . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1927, p. 391 .

Web links

Commons : Hans Krafft the Elder - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

^ Johann David Koeler: Historical Coin Amusement. Nuremberg 1730, p. 246.
^ District Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archeology in Saxony-Anhalt ...: Martin Luther, Schätze der Reformation. Sandsteinverlag 2015, p. 62.
↑ Illustration and description in the National Galleries Scotland: Hans Krafft, the Elder - accession number: NG 2566 , English, accessed on September 25, 2019.

personal data
SURNAME	Krafft, Hans the Elder
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Nuremberg goldsmith and medalist
DATE OF BIRTH	before 1500
DATE OF DEATH	1542 or 1543

[1] Johann David Koeler: Historical Coin Amusement. Nuremberg 1730, p. 246.

[2] District Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archeology in Saxony-Anhalt ...: Martin Luther, Schätze der Reformation. Sandsteinverlag 2015, p. 62.

[3] Illustration and description in the National Galleries Scotland: Hans Krafft, the Elder - accession number: NG 2566 , English, accessed on September 25, 2019.