Datei:Print, book-illustration (BM 1906,0704.1-87 46).jpg

Height: 210 millimetres (Average size of plates)

Width: 140 millimetres

These etchings belong to the 'Augsburger Geschlechterbuch' (Augsburg Book of Nobles) a project undertaken 1545-47 by Hans Burgkmair the Younger and Heinrich Vogtherr the Younger to illustrate the coats-of-arms of the patrician families of the city of Augsburg. The armorials of the old nobility of the city are shown in the first series of prints (1906,0704. 2 to 51), the second series shows those of families more recently ennobled (1906,0704.52-87). All etchings are uncoloured, except for nos.12 (Portner), and 3 (Pfister) which have colouring added to the shields. The paper is not uniform throughout, and there are watermarks of a small shield with diagonal stripe and stars in some sheets (eg no 3 Riederer) and a Gothic P watermark in many others, (eg no. 43 Keylen; and no 31, Minner/Vetter), suggesting that many come from a later printing of about 1555/60. A volume containing 44 drawings and 53 prints for the project is in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, and other early prints related to the project are in the Staats-und Staatsbibliothek in Augsburg, the Landesbibliothek in Oldenbourg, the library in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg and the print room in Berlin. The Stuttgart volume and different sets of prints for the project are fully discussed in H-M Kaulbach and H. Zäh (eds.) ' Das Augsburger Geschlechterbuch, Wappenpracht und Figurenkunst: Ein Kriegsverlust kehrt zurück', exhibition catalogue, Stuttgart, 2012. This particular series is not mentioned, but the sequence of the prints corresponds to the order of other early sets (see Kaulbach and Zäh, pp. 262-3, Nr.BV). The project remained unfinished; Burgkmair and Vogtherr completed 88 plates, but the work did not appear as a book until 1618, when it was published in three volumes by the Augsburg etcher, Wilhelm Peter Zimmermann, 'Ernewrtes Geschlechter Buch'. Zimmermann added numbers and names of the families to the plates, supplemented the sequence with etchings of his own, and added a text and index (see Kaulbach and Zäh 2012, pp.236-240, Ausgabe Zi). The attribution of the prints has been much debated, but it is thought that most of the prints were made by Burgkmair the Younger, with a few by Heinrich Vogtherr the Younger. The designs of some of them are derived from Burgkmair the Elder's woodcuts for the Genealogy of Emperor Maximilian I and the Chronicle of Pappenheim (Hollstein 324-415 and 645-723).

See also BM 1848,1209.44-45 and 47-89 for a further set of prints for the series, with colouring added to the shields.