Master with the grasshopper (copperplate engraver)

A copper engraver from the 15th century was suspected to be under the name of Master with the Locust ( French Maître à la sauterelle ) . A grasshopper was depicted on some engravings, including a depiction of the Holy Family, and was seen as the artist's trademark. Art historians first suspected that Albrecht Dürer used the master's works as templates for some early works around 1495. However, further research then showed that many of the works assigned to the master were in all probability by Dürer himself. Furthermore, a locust, the animal of the seven Egyptian plagues, symbolizing the victory of Christianity over the invading pagans, was a popular motif in the visual arts towards the end of the 15th century. It is therefore in principle not clearly to be seen as a trademark of an engraver. Some of the works assigned to the master could also be by other engravers such as Israhel van Meckenem or Marcantonio Raimondi .

The depiction of the grasshopper assigned to Dürer is so accurate that its animal can be identified as Stenobothrus rubicundus , a species that occurs in the Alps and Greece.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Norbert Elsner: The power of the feminine and its consequences . In: Norbert Elsner, Gerd Lüer (ed.): “… Everything is human”. Behavior between coercion, freedom and responsibility . Göttingen 2005, pp. 81-110.

literature

• Franz Brulliot : Dictionnaire des monogrammes, marques figurées, lettres initiales, noms abrégés etc. avec lesquels les peintres, dessinateurs, graveurs et sculpteurs ont désigné leurs noms . Munich 1832.
• Georg Kaspar Nagler : Albrecht Dürer and his art . 1837.
• Georg Kaspar Nagler: New general artist lexicon . Second volume. Munich 1839.