WOLGEMUT, MICHAEL. – Painter and sculptor of Nuremberg, born in 1434, died in 1519, also known for having been the master of Albrecht Dürer, who entered his workshop at the age of fifteen.
He was an associate of Hans Pleydenwurff, whose widow, Barbara, he married in 1472, thereby inheriting the workshop; together with Hans’s son, Wilhelm, in 1491 he undertook the task of illustrating Hartman Schadel’s Weltchronik (Latin ed. 1493), whose Schatzbehalter, published in 1491, likewise contains illustrations attributable to W.; drawings and sketches for woodcuts were also supplied for the illustration of the Archetypus triumphantis Romae, which was never subsequently printed. In the engravings, which brought him widespread fame throughout Germany, W. displays the same qualities as in his painting; in the altarpieces of S. Maria in Zwickau (1476–79) and of Straubing (formerly on the high altar of the Augustinian church in Nuremberg), characteristic of him is the use of Netherlandish motifs (Rogier van der Weyden, Memling), already introduced into Nuremberg painting by Pleydenwurff and rendered with a forceful characterization of the figures. Not all the parts of the Zwickau altarpiece and the Straubing altar (datable to the eighth decade of the fifteenth century) are by his hand, just as the presence of two assistants can be recognized in the altarpiece of the Kreuzkirche in Nuremberg (1486), to be identified with the so-called Peringsdörfer Altar: a work of particular importance for the Nuremberg school and for Dürer’s beginnings, since that year he entered W.’s workshop. The altarpiece of the parish church of Schwabach dates from 1506–1508; among the attributed works, mention should also be made of the Memminger Altar in S. Lorenzo in Nuremberg and the two wings of the Martin Altar in S. Jacopo in the same city.
W. was also a powerful portraitist and, in this field, his masterpiece may be considered the portrait of Hans Perchemeister.