Artwork · 15th century · Martin Schongauer

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Bust of a Man in a Hat Gazing Upward

Martin Schongauerca. 1480–90Pen and carbon black ink, over pen and brown ink, on paper prepared with sanguine wash.13 × 9.6 cm

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At a glance

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An older man in a big round-brimmed hat tips his head back, mouth open, eyes rolled upward.
The German painter and printmaker Martin Schongauer drew him around 1480–90 in pen and ink on paper washed a reddish tone.
The sheet is only 13 cm tall, yet it is packed with pen lines as dense as an engraving.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on the eyes. The pupils are pushed right up under the upper lids, leaving a wide band of white below. Under each eye, sagging skin is drawn in several layered curves. We cannot tell what he is looking at, but we can tell it has seized his attention.
Look at the open mouth. Inside it, a jagged zigzag line shows uneven teeth. Around the mouth and chin, short pen strokes pile up like rough stubble. It looks like a mouth that stopped in the middle of a word.
Move up to the top of the hat. Dozens of fine pen lines run side by side, bending with the curve of the crown. Where they crowd together the hat goes dark, and where they spread apart it lightens. The direction of the lines alone makes the hat swell into a dome.
Look at the fur collar around his neck. Here Schongauer stacked short strokes with slightly hooked ends, so the fur seems to bristle. Compare them with the long smooth lines of the hat: the hand moves in a completely different way.
Go down to the shadowed folds of the coat at the lower right. They are filled with lines crossing like a net. The more the lines overlap, the darker the shadow gets. The habits of a printmaker who cut lines into copper plates show up here in pen.

When it was painted

When Schongauer made this drawing, he was already a well-known man in Colmar, a town in Alsace. His copper engravings traveled all over Europe, each one marked with his initials, an M and an S side by side. People even gave him a nickname meaning Handsome Martin.

He was born into a family of goldsmiths in Colmar. Engraving grew out of the goldsmith's craft of cutting fine lines into metal. It was exactly this art that made Schongauer's name.

His prints crossed the mountains. According to Vasari, the boy Michelangelo copied Schongauer's engraving The Temptation of Saint Anthony in paint. Workshops in many parts of Europe also borrowed his designs.

Late in life he moved to Breisach, a town on the Rhine. There he painted a huge Last Judgment on the west wall of the church, and he died there in 1491. The next year a young Albrecht Dürer, about twenty, came to Colmar hoping to meet him. Schongauer's brothers were the ones who welcomed him.

Centuries later this small sheet belonged to the New York banker Robert Lehman. In 1975 it came to the Metropolitan Museum with the rest of his collection.

Look again at the man's round hat. It was drawn with a pen, yet the lines are as even and tightly packed as lines cut into copper. This is the hand of a goldsmith's son, building up a shape one line at a time.

The painter

Martin Schongauer

1435–1491

All paintings by Martin Schongauer →

More by the same painter

Christ Carrying the Crossca. 1475–80

The Censer1470–91

Questions to think about

Look for itCan you find a spot on the face where lines cross like a net, and another where they all run in one direction?
Why?Why do you think Schongauer showed this man with his head tipped back, looking up, rather than facing us?
What about you?What could he be looking at to make a face like this? When was the last time you stared up at something, completely absorbed?

Same period