detail from History of David, 1534, oil

The prints of Sebald Beham and his brother Barthel were the subject of a recent exhibition titled Gottlosen Maler at the Albrecht-Dűrer-Haus in Nuremberg (March 3–July 3, 2011), where this essay was included in the exhibition catalogue in German. Revised and expanded for publication in this journal in English, the essay addresses Beham’s biography and historiography and argues that Beham should be viewed as a highly creative and productive entrepreneur and as one of the first “painters ” (to use terminology of the time) to specialize in prints. Between 1520 and 1550, he produced a prodigious number of prints. 10.5092/jhna.2012.4.2.3 Sebald Beham (1500–1550) was a highly creative artist who has recently begun to be appreciated for his contributions in the area of printmaking.1 Until the 1980s, many scholars valued Beham most as a “godless painter,” a term attached to him during his trial before the Nuremberg city council, a sensational event that takes center stage in many accounts of his career. In actuality, he was a prolific and important contributor to the expanding area of printed images (fig. 1).2 Beham is one of many understudied artists of the German Renaissance