Hans Lützelburger

He is best known for his virtuoso work on 41 of the "superbly cut" series of tiny woodcuts of the Dance of Death,[2] designed by Hans Holbein the Younger,[1] which Lützelburger left unfinished when he died.

He is known to have been active, and already well-established, in Augsburg from c. 1516, where he was working, and signing the reverse of blocks,[3] under Jost de Negker, the other great blockcutter of the period, on the print projects for Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor involving Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair and other artists.

In 1522 his "first undoubted masterpiece", the Battle of Naked Men and Peasants by Master NH (possibly Nicholaus Hogenberg),[4] was published, which in at least one edition carried an extra block in the margin below with his name as "FURMSCHNIDER" and the date in a tablet - a very unusual feature.

[1] He and Holbein were contracted by the publisher Jakob Faber for more than one series of Bible illustrations (for editions of Martin Luther's translation), as well as the Dance of Death.

These were issued as prints in the early 1520s, sometimes wrongly called "proofs", and when they were published in book form in 1538, with added verses, they referred only to Lützelburger, it having apparently been forgotten that Holbein was involved.