Hanns Lautensack

He may have been summoned to Vienna by the Emperor, Ferdinand I, to make pictures of his collection of coins from antiquity.

[1] The Nuremberg etchings include several portraits of burghers of the city portrayed by a window opening on to a distant landscape.

In his treatment of the subject matter, Lautensack here displays influences from the Little Masters and the Danube school; as for individual artistic links, Barthel Beham, Sebald Beham, Georg Pencz, Albrecht Altdorfer and Wolfgang Huber can be mentioned.

His style of portraits became more mannered, similar to that of the School of Fontainebleau, while his landscapes drew more inspiration from Netherlandish printmaking, notably Hieronymus Cock.

Arthur Mayger Hind points to similarities with the etchings made by Augustin Hirschvogel and Albrecht Altdorfer, but notes that "the usual charm of this school of landscape is in Lautensack somewhat marred by the overcrowding of detail, and in the attempt at working more in a painter's manner the value of line is lost.