Landscape with the Town on a River and the Cottage between Trees

Landscape with the Town on a River and the Cottage between Trees — Hanns Lautensack. 1551.

Medium: etching. Dimensions: Image: 17 x 23 cm (6 11/16 x 9 1/16 in.); Sheet: 17 x 23 cm (6 11/16 x 9 1/16 in.).

Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

In this work, Hanns Lautensack used two etching plates and printed them side by side on one sheet of paper, though the reason for this is not clear. The print also displays a printing error, namely the presence of “foul biting,” small dots in the sky that indicate failure of the acid-resistant ground. Such mistakes, or experimentations, were not unusual in the early decades of the development of the etching medium, when artists were still refining their formulas and procedures. Happily, perhaps, the errors abide well with the naturalistic landscape scene.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.