The Bagpiper and his Mistress

Compared to the hundreds of engravings made by the Nuremberg master, Sebald Beham only made approximately eighteen etchings. A relatively new technique, etching was also exploited in a limited way by Albrecht Dürer among others. Beham's etchings are all small in size and of uneven quality, and the large majority of them date from the early part of his career and a group of them, along with this print, date to 1520. The most important technical influence was Dürer's large-scale etching of Landscape with a Cannon of 1518, which, like many of Sebald's etchings, was drawn onto an iron plate. Sebald's etchings, like Dürer's, have not survived in large numbers.
This etching demonstrates the freedom of the new printmaking technique; and, despite the familiar subject in Beham's oeuvre of a couple dancing, this small-scale work in some ways shows Sebald at his most inspired. The sexual reference of the bagpipe seen here was firmly based in sixteenth-century folklore, but the spontaneity of the couple's embrace is emphasized by the lack of inscription or moralising undertone which appeared in his later works.