LAUTENSACK, Hanns - b. ~1520 Bamberg, d. ~1565 Wien

German printmaker. Often erroneously referred to as Hans Sebald Lautensack, he was the son of Paul Lautensack (1478-1558), a painter and organist from Bamberg. In 1527, the family moved to Nuremberg where he probably studied with a goldsmith. He then began creating topographical views of the city and landscapes that were influenced by the Danube School, in particular by Albrecht Altdorfer’s works. Lautensack also produced portraits of Nuremberg burghers until 1554, when Emperor Ferdinand I summoned him to reproduce his classical coin collection. In portraits of Nuremberg burghers from 1552 and 1553, Lautensack developed a trademark composition that related his sitter to the outdoors by showing a view through a window to a distant landscape.

While in Vienna, Lautensack’s patronage expanded from burghers to humanist and court circles, whose members he portrayed in a new, more mannered style. His landscape etchings from this period became more panoramic as he increased the middle distance and added tiny figures in the foreground.

Although some documents refer to Lautensack as a painter, no paintings by him survive.

View of a Town along the River with a Church on the Right Bank

In the early sixteenth-century several German artists embarked on a sustained investigation of pure landscape in painting, drawing, and printmaking. For the first time in northern Europe, these artists produced landscapes that were not simply the backgrounds for narrative scenes, but were themselves the main or only subject. Because two of the most important practitioners of this landscape art, Albrecht Altdorfer and Wolf Huber, were active in the mountainous region of the Danube River Valley, the general phenomenon of pure landscape in Renaissance Germany became known as the Danube School. One of the most delightful of these artists was Hanns Lautensack.