Hans Schäufelein

Although his precise place of birth remains unknown, Schäufelein was active from 1502/3 until 1507 in the Nuremberg workshop of Albrecht Dürer, alongside Hans Baldung and Hans von Kulmbach. Thereafter, he passed by way of Merano to Augsburg, where he worked under Hans Holbein the Elder, apparently remaining there until 1515. Following this remarkable combination of apprenticeships, the rest of his life was spent in Nördlingen, where he was the city’s municipal painter, painting altarpieces and portraits, and designing woodcuts. 

Schäufelein was less prolific as a designer of stained glass, but did, in 1510, design a series of extremely refined quatrefoil roundels for the bishop of Augsburg, panels that are now in Berlin and Bamberg.¹ There are, however, hardly any other examples of single-scene glass roundel design by Schäufelein.

In his catalogue entry for a rectangular drawing by the artist of the same subject, in the British Museum, John Rowlands described this roundel design as 'a fine example of Schäufelein's mature style' (see Literature). He goes on to compare the figures of apostles to the left of the composition with the British Museum's drawing of the Penitent St. Peter, which is dated 1523. The London Christ Taking Leave of His Mother he dates rather earlier, to around 1513-14, and the third known drawing of this subject by Schäufelein, formerly in the Tobias Christ collection and now at the Getty Museum, is dated 1510.²  

Some ninety drawings by Schäufelein are known, but almost all of these have long been in the collections of major museums, chiefly in Europe; only four others have appeared at auction in the last quarter century.  

1.  B. Butts and L. Hendrix, Painting on Light. Drawings and Stained Glass in the Age of Dürer and Holbein, exh. cat., Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, and St. Louis Museum of Art, 2000-2001, pp.194-200, cats.71-76

2. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 85.GA.438