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 print shows three muscular men playing wind instruments. Their faces are serious, almost angry, with wavy hair and tight clothes. One man holds a long horn, another a curved trumpet, and the third blows into a recorder-like pipe. Their hands and feet are big, and the lines on their bodies look carved into the paper. The artist used tiny crisscrossed lines to build up shadows and shapes—this is called cross-hatching. It makes the figures look solid even though there’s no color. Look up technique: engraving to see how artists like this made prints before photography.
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.
See the richer artist page
