Mair von Landshut

Mair von Landshut (active c. 1485–1504 or later) was a German engraver, painter, and designer of woodcuts, who worked in Bavaria. He probably came from Freising near Munich, and worked in both towns, as well as Landshut.^[1]

Twenty-five of his prints are known: three woodcuts and 22 engravings, most signed "MAIR". Ten of them are dated 1499. What his prints lack in terms of drawing and technique, compared to Martin Schongauer or Israhel van Meckenem further north and some years earlier, they often make up for in being "imaginative and charming".^[2]

While his images, produced over the period when the young Albrecht Dürer was revolutionizing German graphic style, essentially look back to the late Gothic world of the Master of the Housebook, his innovative experiments with colouring prints were followed up by many German printmakers in the next century. He is most unusual in adding colour to some prints, apparently by his own hand. Many 15th-century prints were coloured (often removed by 19th-century collectors or dealers) but this is normally regarded as something done later by other hands. He aimed to achieve the effect of drawings heightened with colour, and like many of these, he used "prepared" coloured paper. Later, the chiaroscuro woodcut would achieve very similar effects by using multiple blocks.^[3]

No paintings by him can be documented, but a small number (about 13) are attributed to him based on similarities with the style of the prints. There are also some drawings attributed on the same basis,^[4] and two signed.