A genius on a globe flying above a landscape.

Barthel Beham probably learned how to make prints from his elder brother Sebald Beham and from Albrecht Dürer. During the 1520s Beham was especially active as an engraver, creating tiny technical masterpieces of marvellous detail. He also was interested in antiquity and may have worked with the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi in Bologna and Rome.

In 1525, along with the other "godless painters" Sebald Beham and Georg Pencz, Barthel was banished from Lutheran Nuremberg for asserting that he did not believe in baptism, Christ, or transubstantiation. Although soon pardoned, Barthel moved to Catholic Munich to work for the Bavarian dukes William IV and Ludwig X. There his outstanding skill distinguished him as one of Germany's principal portrait painters, sought out by such luminaries as Emperor Charles V. His portrayals were coolly objective, with a strong sense of three-dimensionality. Beham also was an early creator of vanitas representations, including sleeping children with skulls and women surprised by death. According to Joachim von Sandrart, he died in Italy on a trip sponsored by Duke William.

This print has a power, charm and whimsicality that belies its tiny scale. Its tininess is appropriate for the main subject, a baby/toddler 'genius', not the intellectual brilliance commonly associated with the term, but genius in the sense of being the guiding spirit of a person. The comedy of scale is emphasised by the walking stick, almost as tall as the figure. Defying gravity, he moves over some rather humble looking German buildings, in a landscape setting.

See: http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/281/barthel-beham-german-1502-1540/

Dr Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art                         January 2017