WOHLGEMUTH, Michael (1434-1519), an able painter of the school of Franconia, of which Nuremberg, where he was born in 1434, was the chief artistic centre. Little is known of his private life beyond the fact that in 1472 he married the widow of the painter Hans Pleyden-wurff, whose son Wilhelm worked as an assistant to his stepfather. The importance of Wohlgemuth as an artist rests, not only on his own individual paintings, but also on the fact that he was the head of a large workshop, in which many different branches of the fine arts were carried on by a great number of pupil-assistants, including Albert Dürer (see vol. vii. pp. 555-56). In this atelier not only large altar-pieces and other sacred paintings were executed, but also elaborate retables in carved wood, consisting of crowded subjects in high relief, richly decorated with gold and colour, such as pleased the rather doubtful Teutonic taste of that time (see p. 648 infra). Wood-engraving was also carried on in the same workshop, the blocks being cut from Wohlgemuth’s designs, many of which are remarkable for their vigour and clever adaptation to the special necessities of the technique of woodcutting. Two large and copiously illustrated books have woodcuts supplied by Wohlgemuth and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff. The first is the Schatzkammer der wahren Reichthümer des Heils, printed by Koberger in 1491; the other is the Historia Mundi, by Schedel, 1493-94, a sort of encyclopaedia, usually known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, which attained a very high degree of popularity at the time, and is now highly valued, not for the text, but· for its remarkable collection of spirited engravings....