The German engraver and painter Martin Schongauer (ca. 1435-1491) was the first identifiable maker of fine prints in Germany and the finest master of this medium before Dürer.

Martin Schongauer was the son of Caspar Schongauer, a goldsmith who moved from Augsburg to Colmar, on the upper Rhine, where he became a citizen in 1445. The earliest paintings of Martin have not been identified with certainty, but he apparently worked near Ulm about 1462. He is documented in 1465 as matriculating for a semester at the University of Leipzig, either to study or else to undertake some artistic commission; between that year and his reappearance in the records of Colmar in 1469, art historians have assumed a trip to the Netherlands.

The records show that Schongauer owned a house in Colmar in 1477. After 1488 he was working on the Last Judgment fresco, traces of which were uncovered in 1932, in the church...