Peasants' Feast from The Peasants' Feast or the Twelve Months
1546–47
Medium
Engraving; third state of three (Pauli)
Dimensions
sheet: 1 15/16 x 3 1/16 in. (5 x 7.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of J. Rockman, 1942
Accession Number
42.109
Tags
Art Historical Context
Sebald Beham’s *Peasants’ Feast* belongs to a series of twelve small engravings that pair lively scenes of rural merrymaking with the cycle of the months. Created in Nuremberg between 1546 and 1547, the print captures villagers gathered around a laden table, eating, drinking, and enjoying one another’s company. At just under two by three inches, the work exemplifies the refined technique of the so-called “Little Masters,” printmakers who specialized in minute yet richly detailed compositions intended for private collectors and albums. Beham, trained in the orbit of Dürer, helped popularize ge...
About the Artist
Sebald Beham · 1500–1550
Sebald Beham (1500–1550), a pioneering German printmaker and painter born in Nuremberg, emerged as one of the most prolific artists of the Northern Renaissance. The elder brother of fellow artist Barthel Beham, he grew up in a milieu steeped in artistic tradition, though details of his early training remain sparsely documented. Recorded as a journeyman painter (Malergeselle) by 1521 and a master w...