Sebald Beham, Prodigal Son and Rebellious Printer
Sebald Beham (German, 1500 - 1550), Three Engravings on Laid Paper
Available for purchase on iGavelAuctions.com until January 14, 2021
Hans Sebald Beham (1500-1550) printer and artist found himself in a mess in 1525 while working in his home city of Nuremberg, where he dared to embrace Lutheranism in opposition to the Catholic authorities. He was banished and later returned only to be banished again in 1528 for plagiarism over an instructional manuscript on proportions of the horse for artists that was a simplified version of a work by Albrecht Durer. A prolific printmaker, primarily working in minuscule scale, he followed the pattern established by Durer who preceded him by a generation. Beham’s works are detailed and depict biblical and popular subjects and his monogram, HSP changed to HSB after around 1532 at the same time he settled in Frankfurt where he remained until his death around 1550. His scale is impossibly small, with many works the size of postage stamps. Beham’s prints were widely collected and are represented in Bartsch, and the Departure of the Prodigal Son is the first of four prints of the series, The History of the Prodigal Son, produced in five states which are represented in many collections including:
The Prodigal Son is a parable of a man with two sons, one who itched to get away from home and the other who obeyed, stayed home and did what was expected. In the Bible the story is told by Luke in chapter 15, verses 11-32. The rebellious son asked for and received his inheritance from his father, left home, blew the money, eventually saw the mess he made of his life and returned home and was shocked when his father enthusiastically greeted him. The stay at home brother was not pleased to see his father lavishing attention on the nee’r-do-well brother and protested to his father that the attention given to the returning son was unfair. The father explained that he valued the stay at home son and loved him but also the son that left, who had effectively returned from a hopeless state and back to ‘life' accounting for the father’s welcoming embrace. The parable is about God’s love for all humans and all humanity who have been given freedom to choose to believe or not and to accept God’s love and forgiveness.
In analyzing the images of the Departure of the Prodigal Son, we see an image and subject that had been explored by Albrecht Durer (The Prodigal Son c. 1496) forty years prior to Beham. Durer shows the son as a middle-aged man hands clasped in prayer leaning on a wood staff as he kneels surrounded by rooting swine in a beaten down neighborhood. Like Beham’s later interpretation, the son is placed in what was then a contemporary setting of a medieval German town. Beham’s version is in four parts and the departure is set outside a prosperous fortified castle with the stay at home son visibly upset and the nee’r-do-well finely dressed with sword in contemporary clothing holding the hands of his father as he prepares to leave on the road behind. Unlike Durer with his Prodigal experiencing a spiritual epiphany, Beham’s is in a mountain landscape standing over his swine, his fine clothes ragged and shoeless and without any of the jaunty confidence of his departure but a sad, contemplative expression of regret. The next plate shows the son in exactly the same location of his departure with the well-tended fields and prosperous crenelated castle and the stay-at-home son holding new clothes for the returning brother who embraces the Prodigal.
Beham visited the story earlier in 1538 when his Prodigal Son Tending the Swine shows the son less ragged than the same scene shown as part of the series in 1540. (National Gallery of Victoria, Australia) Contemporary settings for this parable were the norm for Beham and Durer as well as later artists. The story was not seen as anachronistic without application to current events, but a feature of human nature to itch for independence and our own way, often to our detriment. Beham’s works are rarely exhibited but are in most comprehensive public art collections.