The Letter E, from The Alphabet

Among Master ES’s most remarkable engravings is a delightful series of letters consisting of twenty-three rare individual prints that once formed an alphabet (alphabets of this period normally lack the letters j, v, and w). The artist composed each lower case letter by cleverly interweaving both real and mythical people and animals. Here two dogs fight with a cat and a bird over the head of a man. The cat’s gently curving tail defines the upper portion of the letter. Little is known about the master whose name derives from the initals that appear on later works. Evidence points to Master ES having been trained as a goldsmith, most notably the fact that he used goldsmith punches, tools that are hammered into the metal printing plate, to create patterns such as the small flowers and circles on the figure’s tunic.