1538
ink
From the collection of National Gallery of Art
Large Wedding Dancers is a 1538 ink by Heinrich Aldegrever, a Northern Renaissance work, held at National Gallery of Art.
This black-and-white image shows a strange, muscular figure with a lion’s front legs and a human torso. The figure holds a spear in one hand and has a crown-like headdress with swirling patterns. Its face looks serious, almost angry, and its body is wrapped in flowing, decorative lines. The image is an engraving, which means the artist carved lines into metal to create the design. The heavy shading comes from cross-hatching—layers of crisscrossed lines that build up dark areas. Look up engraving to see how artists make prints like this.
Heinrich Aldegrever or Aldegraf was a German painter and engraver. He was one of the "Little Masters", the group of German artists making small old master prints in the generation after Albrecht Dürer.
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