Niello
Niello is a black mixture of sulphur, copper and lead, used as an inlay on engraved or etched metal silver. It is added as a powder or paste fired until it melts or at least softens, flows or is pushed into the engraved lines in the metal, it hardens and blackens when cool, the niello on the flat surface is polished off to show the filled lines in black, contrasting with the polished metal around it. It may be used with other metalworking techniques to cover larger areas, as seen in the sky in the diptych illustrated here; the metal where niello is to be placed is roughened to provide a key. In many cases in objects that have been buried underground, where the niello is now lost, the roughened surface indicates that it was once there. Niello was used on a variety of objects including sword hilts, plates, adornment for horses, jewellery such as bracelets, rings and small fittings such as strap-ends, purse-bars, belt buckles and the like, it was used to fill in the letters in inscriptions engraved on metal.
Periods when engraving filled in with niello has been used to make full images with figures have been few, but include some significant achievements. In ornament, it came to have competition from enamel, with far wider colour possibilities, which displaced it in most of Europe; the name derives from the Latin nigellum for the substance, or nigello or neelo, the medieval Latin for black. Though most common in Europe, it is known from many parts of Asia and the Near East. There are a number of claimed uses of niello from the Mediterranean Bronze Age, all of which have been the subjects of disputes as to the actual composition of the materials used, that have not been conclusively settled, despite some decades of debate; the earliest claimed use of niello appears in late Bronze Age Byblos in Syria, around 1800 BC, in inscriptions in hieroglyphs on "scimitars". In Ancient Egypt it appears a little in the tomb of Queen Ahhotep II, who lived about 1550 BC, on a dagger decorated with a lion chasing a calf in a rocky landscape in a style that shows Greek influence, or at least similarity to the contemporary daggers from Mycenae, other objects in the tomb.
At about the same time of c.1550 BC it appears on several bronze daggers from shaft grave royal tombs at Mycenae in long thin scenes running along the centre of the blade. These show the violence typical of the art of Mycenaean Greece, as well as a sophistication in both technique and figurative imagery, startlingly original in a Greek context. There are a number of scenes of attacking men and being attacked; these are in a mixed-media technique called metalmalerei, which involves using gold and silver inlays or applied foils with black niello and the bronze, which would have been brightly polished. As well as providing a black colour, the niello was used as the adhesive to hold the thin gold and silver foils in place. Byblos in Syria, where niello first appears, was something of an Egyptian outpost on the Levant, many scholars think that it was highly-skilled metalworkers from Syria who introduced the technique to both Egypt and Mycenaean Greece; the iconography can most be explained by some combination of influence from the broader traditions of Mesopotamian art where somewhat comparable imagery had been produced for over a thousand years in cylinder seals and the like, some from Minoan art, although no early niello has been found on Crete.
A decorated metal cup, the "Enkomi Cup" from Cyprus has been claimed to use niello decoration. However, controversy has continued since the 1960s as to whether the material used on all these pieces is niello, a succession of sophisticated scientific tests have failed to provide evidence of the presence of the sulpherous compounds which define niello, it has been suggested that these artefacts, or at least the daggers, use in fact a technique of patinated metal that may be the same as the Corinthian bronze known from ancient literature, is similar to the Japanese Shakudō. Niello is hardly found until the Roman period. Pliny the Elder describes the technique as Egyptian, remarks the oddness of decorating silver in this way; some of the earliest uses, from 1-300 AD, seem to be small statuettes and brooches of big cats, where niello is used for the stripes of tigers and the spots on panthers. The animal repertoire of Roman Britain was somewhat different, provides brooches with niello stripes on a hare and a cat.
From about the 4th century, it was used for ornamental details such as borders and for inscriptions in late Roman silver, such as a dish and bowl in the Mildenhall Treasure and pieces in the Hoxne Hoard, including Christian church plate. It was used on spoons, which were inscribed with the owner's name, or crosses; this type of use continued from where it passed to Russia. It is common in Anglo-Saxon metalwork, with examples including the Tassilo Chalice, Strickland Brooch, the Fuller Brooch forming the background for motifs carried in the metal, but used for rather crude geometric decoration of spots and stripes on small everyday fittings such as strap-ends in base metal. There is similar use in Celtic and other types of Early Medieval jewellery and metalwork in north
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art in which a person uses various drawing instruments to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium. Instruments include graphite pencils and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, charcoal, pastels, various kinds of erasers, markers and various metals. Digital drawing is the act of using a computer to draw. Common methods of digital drawing include a stylus or finger on a touchscreen device, stylus- or finger-to-touchpad, or in some cases, a mouse. There are many digital art devices. A drawing instrument releases a small amount of material onto a surface; the most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials, such as cardboard, plastic, leather and board, may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard or indeed anything; the medium has been a fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. It is one of most efficient means of communicating visual ideas; the wide availability of drawing instruments makes drawing one of the most common artistic activities.
In addition to its more artistic forms, drawing is used in commercial illustration, architecture and technical drawing. A quick, freehand drawing not intended as a finished work, is sometimes called a sketch. An artist who practices or works in technical drawing may be called a drafter, draftsman or a draughtsman. Drawing is one of the oldest forms of human expression within the visual arts, it is concerned with the marking of lines and areas of tone onto paper/other material, where the accurate representation of the visual world is expressed upon a plane surface. Traditional drawings were monochrome, or at least had little colour, while modern colored-pencil drawings may approach or cross a boundary between drawing and painting. In Western terminology, drawing is distinct from painting though similar media are employed in both tasks. Dry media associated with drawing, such as chalk, may be used in pastel paintings. Drawing may be done with a liquid medium, applied with pens. Similar supports can serve both: painting involves the application of liquid paint onto prepared canvas or panels, but sometimes an underdrawing is drawn first on that same support.
Drawing is exploratory, with considerable emphasis on observation, problem-solving and composition. Drawing is regularly used in preparation for a painting, further obfuscating their distinction. Drawings created. There are several categories of drawing, including figure drawing, cartooning and freehand. There are many drawing methods, such as line drawing, shading, the surrealist method of entopic graphomania, tracing. A quick, unrefined drawing may be called a sketch. In fields outside art, technical drawings or plans of buildings, machinery and other things are called "drawings" when they have been transferred to another medium by printing. Drawing is one of the oldest forms of human expression, with evidence for its existence preceding that of written communication, it is believed that drawing was used as a specialised form of communication before the invention of the written language, demonstrated by the production of cave and rock paintings around 30,000 years ago. These drawings, known as pictograms, depicted abstract concepts.
The sketches and paintings produced by Neolithic times were stylised and simplified in to symbol systems and into early writing systems. Before the widespread availability of paper, 12th-century monks in European monasteries used intricate drawings to prepare illustrated, illuminated manuscripts on vellum and parchment. Drawing has been used extensively in the field of science, as a method of discovery and explanation. In 1609, astronomer Galileo Galilei explained the changing phases of the moon through his observational telescopic drawings. In 1924, geophysicist Alfred Wegener used illustrations to visually demonstrate the origin of the continents. Drawing is used to express one's creativity, therefore has been prominent in the world of art. Throughout much of history, drawing was regarded as the foundation for artistic practice. Artists used and reused wooden tablets for the production of their drawings. Following the widespread availability of paper in the 14th century, the use of drawing in the arts increased.
At this point, drawing was used as a tool for thought and investigation, acting as a study medium whilst artists were preparing for their final pieces of work. The Renaissance brought about a great sophistication in drawing techniques, enabling artists to represent things more realistically than before, revealing an interest in geometry and philosophy; the invention of the first available form of photography led to a shift in the hierarchy of the arts. Photography offered an alternative to drawing as a method for representing visual phenomena, traditional drawing practice was given less emphasis as an essential skill for artists so in Western society. Drawing became significant as an art form around the late 15th century, with artists and master engravers such as Albrecht Dürer and Martin Schongauer, the first Northern engraver known by name. Schongauer came from Alsac
Aztecs
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec peoples included different ethnic groups of central Mexico those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states, some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires; the Aztec empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427, city-state of the Mexica or Tenochca. Although the term Aztecs is narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is broadly used to refer to Nahua polities or peoples of central Mexico in the prehispanic era, as well as the Spanish colonial era; the definitions of Aztec and Aztecs have long been the topic of scholarly discussion since German scientist Alexander von Humboldt established its common usage in the early nineteenth century. Most ethnic groups of central Mexico in the post-classic period shared basic cultural traits of Mesoamerica, so many of the traits that characterize Aztec culture cannot be said to be exclusive to the Aztecs.
For the same reason, the notion of "Aztec civilization" is best understood as a particular horizon of a general Mesoamerican civilization. The culture of central Mexico includes maize cultivation, the social division between nobility and commoners, a pantheon, the calendric system of a xiuhpohualli of 365 days intercalated with a tonalpohualli of 260 days. Particular to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan was the patron God Huitzilopochtli, twin pyramids, the ceramic ware known as Aztec I to IV. From the 13th century, the Valley of Mexico was the heart of dense population and the rise of city-states; the Mexica were late-comers to the Valley of Mexico, founded the city-state of Tenochtitlan on unpromising islets in Lake Texcoco becoming the dominant power of the Aztec Triple Alliance or Aztec Empire. It was a tributary empire that expanded its political hegemony far beyond the Valley of Mexico, conquering other city states throughout Mesoamerica in the late post-classic period, it originated in 1427 as an alliance between the city-states Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan.
Soon Texcoco and Tlacopan were relegated to junior partnership in the alliance, with Tenochtitlan the dominant power. The empire extended its reach by a combination of trade and military conquest, it was never a true territorial empire controlling a territory by large military garrisons in conquered provinces, but rather dominated its client city-states by installing friendly rulers in conquered territories, by constructing marriage alliances between the ruling dynasties, by extending an imperial ideology to its client city-states. Client city-states paid tribute to the Aztec emperor, the Huey Tlatoani, in an economic strategy limiting communication and trade between outlying polities, making them dependent on the imperial center for the acquisition of luxury goods; the political clout of the empire reached far south into Mesoamerica conquering polities as far south as Chiapas and Guatemala and spanning Mesoamerica from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans. The empire reached its maximal extent in 1519, just prior to the arrival of a small group of Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés.
Cortés allied with city-states opposed to the Mexica the Nahuatl-speaking Tlaxcalteca as well as other central Mexican polities, including Texcoco, its former ally in the Triple Alliance. After the fall of Tenochtitlan on August 13, 1521 and the capture of the emperor Cuauhtemoc, the Spanish founded Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. From there they proceeded with the process of conquest and incorporation of Mesoamerican peoples into the Spanish Empire. With the destruction of the superstructure of the Aztec Empire in 1521, the Spanish utilized the city-states on which the Aztec Empire had been built, to rule the indigenous populations via their local nobles; those nobles pledged loyalty to the Spanish crown and converted, at least nominally, to Christianity, in return were recognized as nobles by the Spanish crown. Nobles acted as intermediaries to convey tribute and mobilize labor for their new overlords, facilitating the establishment of Spanish colonial rule. Aztec culture and history is known through archaeological evidence found in excavations such as that of the renowned Templo Mayor in Mexico City.
Important for knowledge of post-conquest Nahuas was the training of indigenous scribes to write alphabetic texts in Nahuatl for local purposes under Spanish colonial rule. At its height, Aztec culture had rich and complex mythological and religious traditions, as well as achieving remarkable architectural and artistic accomplishments; the Nahuatl words and mean "people from Aztlan," a mythical place of origin for several ethnic groups in central Mexico. The term was not used as an endonym by Aztecs themselves, but it is
Ink
Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for writing with a pen, brush, or quill. Thicker inks, in paste form, are used extensively in lithographic printing. Ink can be a complex medium, composed of solvents, dyes, lubricants, surfactants, particulate matter and other materials; the components of inks serve many purposes. In 2011 worldwide consumption of printing inks generated revenues of more than 20 billion US dollars. Demand by traditional print media is shrinking, on the other hand more and more printing inks are consumed for packagings. Many ancient cultures around the world have independently discovered and formulated inks for the purposes of writing and drawing; the knowledge of the inks, their recipes and the techniques for their production comes from archaeological analysis or from written text itself. Ink was used in Ancient Egypt for writing and drawing on papyrus from at least the 26th century BC.
The history of Chinese inks can be traced to the 23rd century BC, with the utilization of natural plant and mineral inks based on such materials as graphite that were ground with water and applied with ink brushes. Evidence for the earliest Chinese inks, similar to modern inksticks, is around 256 BC in the end of the Warring States period and produced from soot and animal glue; the best inks for drawing or painting on paper or silk are produced from the resin of the pine tree. They must be between 100 years old; the Chinese inkstick is produced with a fish glue, whereas Japanese glue is from stag. The process of making India ink was known in China as early as the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, during Neolithic China. India ink was first invented in China, although the source of materials to make the carbon pigment in India ink was often traded from India, thus the term India ink was coined; the traditional Chinese method of making the ink was to grind a mixture of hide glue, carbon black and bone black pigment with a pestle and mortar pouring it into a ceramic dish where it could dry.
To use the dry mixture, a wet brush would be applied. The manufacture of India ink was well-established by the Cao Wei Dynasty. Indian documents written in Kharosthi with ink have been unearthed in Chinese Turkestan; the practice of writing with ink and a sharp pointed needle was common in early South India. Several Buddhist and Jain sutras in India were compiled in ink. In ancient Rome, atramentum was used; the recipe was used for centuries. Iron salts, such as ferrous sulfate, were mixed with tannin from a thickener; when first put to paper, this ink is bluish-black. Over time it fades to a dull brown. Scribes in medieval Europe wrote principally on vellum. One 12th century ink recipe called for hawthorn branches to be left to dry; the bark was pounded from the branches and soaked in water for eight days. The water was boiled until it turned black. Wine was added during boiling; the ink was hung in the sun. Once dried, the mixture was mixed with iron salt over a fire to make the final ink; the reservoir pen, which may have been the first fountain pen, dates back to 953, when Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen that would not stain his hands or clothes, was provided with a pen that held ink in a reservoir.
In the 15th century, a new type of ink had to be developed in Europe for the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. According to Martyn Lyons in his book Books: A Living History, Gutenberg's dye was indelible, oil-based, made from the soot of lamps mixed with varnish and egg white. Two types of ink were prevalent at the time: the Greek and Roman writing ink and the 12th century variety composed of ferrous sulfate, gall and water. Neither of these handwriting inks could adhere to printing surfaces without creating blurs. An oily, varnish-like ink made of soot and walnut oil was created for the printing press. Ink formulas vary, but involve two components: Colorants Vehicles Inks fall into four classes: Aqueous Liquid Paste Powder Pigment inks are used more than dyes because they are more color-fast, but they are more expensive, less consistent in color, have less of a color range than dyes. Pigments are solid, opaque particles suspended in ink to provide color. Pigment molecules link together in crystalline structures that are 0.1–2 µm in size and comprise 5–30 percent of the ink volume.
Qualities such as hue and lightness vary depending on the source and type of pigment. Dye-based inks are much stronger than pigment-based inks and can produce much more color of a given density per unit of mass. However, because dyes are dissolved in the liquid phase, they have a tendency to soak into paper, making the ink less efficient and allowing the ink to bleed at the edges of an image. To circumvent this problem, dye-based inks are made with solvents that dry or are used with quick-drying methods of printing, such as blowing hot air on the fresh print. Other methods include more specialized paper coatings; the latter is suited to inks us
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Magazine
A magazine is a publication a periodical publication, printed or electronically published. Magazines are published on a regular schedule and contain a variety of content, they are financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by prepaid subscriptions, or a combination of the three. At its root, the word "magazine" refers to a storage location. In the case of written publication, it is a collection of written articles; this explains why magazine publications share the word root with gunpowder magazines, artillery magazines, firearms magazines, and, in French, retail stores such as department stores. By definition, a magazine paginates with each issue starting at page three, with the standard sizing being 8 3⁄8 in × 10 7⁄8 in. However, in the technical sense a journal has continuous pagination throughout a volume, thus Business Week, which starts each issue anew with page one, is a magazine, but the Journal of Business Communication, which starts each volume with the winter issue and continues the same sequence of pagination throughout the coterminous year, is a journal.
Some professional or trade publications are peer-reviewed, an example being the Journal of Accountancy. Academic or professional publications that are not peer-reviewed are professional magazines; that a publication calls itself a journal does not make it a journal in the technical sense. Magazines can be distributed through the mail, through sales by newsstands, bookstores, or other vendors, or through free distribution at selected pick-up locations; the subscription business models for distribution fall into three main categories. In this model, the magazine is sold to readers for a price, either on a per-issue basis or by subscription, where an annual fee or monthly price is paid and issues are sent by post to readers. Paid circulation allows for defined readership statistics; this means that there is no cover price and issues are given away, for example in street dispensers, airline, or included with other products or publications. Because this model involves giving issues away to unspecific populations, the statistics only entail the number of issues distributed, not who reads them.
This is the model used by many trade magazines distributed only to qualifying readers for free and determined by some form of survey. Because of costs associated with the medium of print, publishers may not distribute free copies to everyone who requests one; this allows a high level of certainty that advertisements will be received by the advertiser's target audience, it avoids wasted printing and distribution expenses. This latter model was used before the rise of the World Wide Web and is still employed by some titles. For example, in the United Kingdom, a number of computer-industry magazines use this model, including Computer Weekly and Computing, in finance, Waters Magazine. For the global media industry, an example would be VideoAge International; the earliest example of magazines was Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen, a literary and philosophy magazine, launched in 1663 in Germany. The Gentleman's Magazine, first published in 1731, in London was the first general-interest magazine. Edward Cave, who edited The Gentleman's Magazine under the pen name "Sylvanus Urban", was the first to use the term "magazine," on the analogy of a military storehouse.
Founded by Herbert Ingram in 1842, The Illustrated London News was the first illustrated magazine. The oldest consumer magazine still in print is The Scots Magazine, first published in 1739, though multiple changes in ownership and gaps in publication totalling over 90 years weaken that claim. Lloyd's List was founded in Edward Lloyd's England coffee shop in 1734. Under the ancient regime, the most prominent magazines were Mercure de France, Journal des sçavans, founded in 1665 for scientists, Gazette de France, founded in 1631. Jean Loret was one of France's first journalists, he disseminated the weekly news of music and Parisian society from 1650 until 1665 in verse, in what he called a gazette burlesque, assembled in three volumes of La Muse historique. The French press lagged a generation behind the British, for they catered to the needs the aristocracy, while the newer British counterparts were oriented toward the middle and working classes. Periodicals were censored by the central government in Paris.
They were not quiescent politically—often they criticized Church abuses and bureaucratic ineptitude. They supported the monarchy and they played at most a small role in stimulating the revolution. During the Revolution, new periodicals played central roles as propaganda organs for various factions. Jean-Paul Marat was the most prominent editor, his L'Ami du peuple advocated vigorously for the rights of the lower classes against the enemies of the people Marat hated. After 1800 Napoleon reimposed strict censorship. Magazines flourished after Napoleon left in 1815. Most were based in Paris and most emphasized literature and stories, they served religious and political communities. In times of political crisis they expressed and helped shape the views of their readership and thereby were major
Martin Schongauer
Martin Schongauer known as Martin Schön or Hübsch Martin by his contemporaries, was an Alsatian engraver and painter. He was the most important printmaker north of the Alps before Albrecht Dürer, who collected his work, he is the first painter to be a significant engraver, although he seems to have had the family background and training in goldsmithing, usual for early engravers. The bulk of Schongauer's surviving production is 116 engravings, all with his monogram but none dated, which were well known not only in Germany, but in Italy and made their way to England and Spain. Vasari says, his style shows no trace of Italian influence, but a clear and organised Gothic, which draws from both German and Early Netherlandish painting. Recent scholarship, building on the work of Max Lehrs, attributes 116 engravings to him, with many being copied by other artists, as was common in the period, his prolific contemporary Israhel van Meckenem did close copies of 58 engravings half of Schongauer's output, took motifs or figures from more, as well as engraving some drawings that are now lost.
There are some fine drawings, including ones dated and signed with his monogram, a surviving few paintings in oil and fresco. Schongauer was born about 1450–53 in Colmar, the third of four or five sons of Caspar Schongauer, a goldsmith and patrician from Augsburg who moved to Colmar about 1440, he taught his son the art of engraving, a distinct and difficult skill that goldsmiths had long used on metal vessels. Two of his brothers worked as goldsmiths in Colmar, while another became a painter. Colmar is now in France but was part of the Holy Roman Empire and German-speaking. Most unusually for a Gothic or Renaissance artist, he was sent to university with the intention of turning him into a priest or lawyer, matriculated at the University of Leipzig in 1465, but seems to have left after a year. At this time university students began at the age of twelve or thirteen, he was traditionally thought to have been trained as an engraver by Master E. S. but scholars now doubt this because Schongauer's prints took some time to develop the technical advances that a pupil of Master E. S. would have been taught.
He is thought to have trained as a painter with Colmar's main local master Caspar Isenmann, a neighbour of his parents, influenced by the Early Netherlandish painting of Rogier van der Weyden and others, had studied in the Netherlands, Schongauer's few surviving pictures reflect this. This was around 1466 and 1469, his older brother Ludwig Schongauer had preceded him in the workshop. His earlier engravings show clear influences from several Early Netherlandish painters, suggesting that he followed the traditional pattern of a wanderjahre travelling at the end of his training. One drawing, dated 1469, is a copy of the figure of Christ in Rogier van der Weyden's Beaune Altarpiece made in front of the painting. Various details of costume, the exotic plants in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, have suggested to some scholars that he visited Spain, Portugal, he returned to Colmar and had established a workshop by 1471, when payments were made for an altarpiece for the Dominican church there, now in the museum and regarded as a workshop production.
His Madonna in the Rose Garden, long displayed in the church in Colmar it was made for, but moved to the Dominican church nearby in 1973, is dated 1473. Its style corresponds with the earliest of his engravings, which have been placed in a broadly agreed sequence based on their technique and style, both of which show considerable development. In some cases a terminus ante quem is provided by copies in various media; the economics of fifteenth-century printmaking are unclear, though his prints spread his fame across Europe, he may have relied more on the income from his "major vocation" of painting. He died in Breisach in 1491 before reaching the age of forty, he had been engaged since 1488 in painting a large Last Judgment in the cathedral there, was recorded as a citizen there in June 1489. This was the largest mural painting north of the Alps, was incomplete at his death; the following year Dürer, on his wanderjahre, travelled to Colmar not meet him, only to find he had died. Dürer was an admirer.
His own print of the Flight into Egypt, in his Life of the Virgin series, includes the same two exotic trees as Schongauer's, as a hommage. In Germany Dürer, whose prints became known over the decade following, was seen as the next leader of the tradition Schongauer had dominated for twenty years, his pupils included Hans Burgkmair the Elder, the Augsburg-based painter and designer of woodcuts, with him from 1488 to 1490. The painted portrait of Schongauer, with his coat of arms at top left, is unusual for a fifteenth-century artist, but the panel now in Munich appears to be made well after his death, is a copy of a drawing or painting made at the date on the painting, 1483, it is attributed to Hans Burgkmair the Elder, the lost original may have been by his father, Thoman Burgkmair, who plausibly met Schongauer in Augsburg, where Schongauer is recorded as at least visiting. Another of Schongauer's pupils, the painter Urbain Huter
