Standard-Bearer

Hans Baldung, also known as “Grien,” created the pen-and-ink drawing Standard-Bearer, dated in his own hand in 1504, shortly after he had entered the workshop of Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg. After his first years of apprenticeship in Strasbourg, he was an assistant in that city from 1503 to 1507–08, mainly creating drafts, which is to say, designs for glass painting and woodcuts. As a motif for the draft of the glass plane featured here, most likely meant to be a design bearing a coat of arms, he used the magnificently attired landsknechts, which King Maximilian I had assembled in the Imperial City for the campaign in the War of the Landshut Succession in 1504. The long, forceful contour lines and the shorter, curved hatchings that imbue the drawing with plasticity and depth bear witness to Baldung Grien’s skill as a draftsman. Because of its high artistic quality, this work was long attributed to Dürer, and another hand designated it as such with the Dürer monogram. Indeed, the influence of the master is visible, but the highly expressive gaze of the standard-bearer, his fear of death frozen into a memento mori, reveals that the drawing is very definitely a work by Baldung Grien.