Sebald Beham

He worked extensively on tiny, highly detailed, engravings, many as small as postage stamps, placing him in the German printmaking school known as the "Little Masters" from the size of their prints.

[2] In January 1525, along with his brother and Georg Pencz, he was banished from Nuremberg, accused of heresy, blasphemy and not recognising the authority of the City council.

[2] The three artists were soon allowed to return to Nuremberg, but in 1528 Beham hurriedly left the city once more, following the threat of legal action over his treatise on the proportions of the horse[2] which was regarded as having been plagiarised from an unpublished manuscript by Albrecht Dürer, who had recently died.

A pair of models for medals, designed by Matthes Gebel and dating from 1540, shows Beham and his wife Anna.

[4] Beham is best known as a prolific printmaker, but also painted, designed stained glass, and wrote two successful illustrated books, manuals for artists.

[2] Some coats of arms, painted on vellum for newly ennobled patrons, survive in the city archives in Frankfurt.

[2] The book on the proportions of the horse, for which he was briefly exiled in 1528 following accusations of plagiarism,[5] was an artists' manual, which he later followed with one on the human figure.

These publications were simplified borrowings of Dürer's works on the subjects, but rather easier to use (and cheaper), and thus had a long-lasting success.