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A confrontation between a man dressed in full armor and a second hairy, nude man twice his size is drawn with delicate black lines and hatching on tan-colored paper. These two men are at the center of this horizontal drawing, and trees, shrubs, rocky formations, and pebbles on the dirt ground create the setting. The armored man is to our left. He lunges forward and holds an oversized broadsword high over his helmeted head. To our right, the larger man is covered with wavy hair from head to foot. A thick, curly beard frames his scowling mouth, and he appears to wear a helmet made of bark or leaves. He also strides forward but holds up a wooden stick, really an almost in-tact trunk of a tree, to block the knight’s blow. The bodies of three people and a broken sword lie behind the wild man.

Hans Burgkmair I

The Fight in the Forest, c. 1500/1503

Not on View

Medium

pen and black ink on laid paper

Dimensions

Overall: 21 x 28.6 cm (8 1/4 x 11 1/4 in.)
support: 26.7 x 35.7 cm (10 1/2 x 14 1/16 in.)

Credit Line

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

Accession Number

1978.77.1

Artists / Makers

Hans Burgkmair I (artist) German, 1473 - 1531

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

in later hand, across bottom on mount: Roland le Furiuex; lower left verso: 326; across bottom verso: Hans Burgmair / Gr. Dessin ... monogramme.; lower right verso: 15 / Urs Graff (crossed out)

Exhibition History

1979: Early German Drawings & Prints: Two Recent Acquisitions and Related Works, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1979, no. 6.

2012: Imperial Augsburg: Renaissance Prints and Drawings, 1475-1540, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, 2012-2014, no. 41, repro. detail, pp.2-3.

Bibliography

1980: Husband, Timothy. The Wild Man: Medieval Myth and Symbolism. Exh. cat., The Cloisters, New York, 1980: 34.

1994: Bartra, Roger. Wild Men in the Looking Glass: The Mythic Origins of European Otherness. Ann Arbor, 1994: fig. 48.