Augustin Hirschvogel

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Self-portrait of Augustin Hirschvogel as a cartographer

Augustin Hirschvogel (* 1503 in Nuremberg ; † March 5, 1553 in Vienna ) was a German artist , geometer and cartographer of the Renaissance .

life and work

Monogram "AH" on an etching from 1546

Hirschvogel was the son of the famous Nuremberg glass painter Veit Hirschvogel the Elder (1461–1525), who in Nuremberg had almost a monopoly on the manufacture of glass windows for churches. Augustin and his brother Veit the Younger learned and worked in their father's workshop.

When the Reformation took hold in Nuremberg and the lucrative stained glass for the Catholic Church ceased to be a source of income, Augustin Hirschvogel must have started his own business and looked for other fields of activity. Around 1530 he owned his own workshop together with the Nuremberg potters Hanns Nickel and Oswald Reinhart, which produced decorated and glazed clay jugs. Jugs made in Nuremberg were called "Hirschvogel Jugs", although they did not necessarily come from Hirschvogel's workshop.

From around 1536 Hirschvogel worked as a geometer. In 1544 he settled in Vienna . As a cartographer he undertook extensive trips for the royal court in Vienna, including for the Roman-German king and later Emperor Ferdinand I. Hirschvogel mapped almost all of Southeast Europe. Among other things, he created the first planimetric and topographical map of the city of Vienna as well as a circular plan that is exhibited today in the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna. It has long been assumed that he was the first to use the triangulation method to measure terrain and that he developed a measuring instrument specifically for this purpose. However, this thesis has recently been refuted ( Lit .: Fischer 1999)

During this time, the versatile artist also created copper engravings and a large number of etchings , including landscape views and portraits , for example by Paracelsus . His landscapes are influenced by the Danube School . As an illustrator, Hirschvogel created a biblical typology , the Concordantz Old and News Testaments (1550).

Hirschvogel has also been identified as the Master of the Windsor Crucifixion , a scene from the Passion of the Christ now in the collection of Windsor Castle in England.

Hirschvogel's contribution to the science of geometry was his textbook An actual and thorough instruction, in which Geometria, however, like all regulated and unregulated corpora, should be placed in the ground and brought into the perspective, should also be drawn with separate lines (1543) .

Hirschvogelgasse in Vienna's Floridsdorf district was named after Augustin Hirschvogel in 1894.

literature

Web links

Commons : Augustin Hirschvogel  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Original works:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Pilz:  Hirschvogel, Augustin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 231 f. ( Digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Hirschvogel, Augustin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hirsvogel, Augustin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist, geometer and cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1503
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1553
Place of death Vienna