Glories of the Hunt

"A nobleman he was; greatly did his hounds love him." So did one medieval minstrel apostrophize his hero, suggesting that a good hunting dog might be a duke's best friend. He was not far off. Hounds were often treated better than serfs. Huge preserves were set aside for game, and poachers were punished with mutilation or death. In fact, "venery" (the kind practiced in the field rather than the bed) even had the approval of the church, which exhorted dukes and princelings to engage in hunting to avoid the sin of indolence. In addition, the clergy often blessed the hounds before the hunt.

The chase reached a peak of sorts on the great estates of 17th century Germany. Johann Casimir, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, was renowned particularly for his great bear and boar hounds, bred to the size of yearling steers. To record his chases, Duke Casimir hired a court painter named Wolfgang Birkner. The result was one of the most complete hunting chronicles ever produced.

The original series of watercolors has since disappeared, but after Casimir's death in 1633, Birkner set about doing another hunting book as a memorial to the duke. He copied many of his own drawings from the first series, added depictions of lark netting, partridge and duck hunting. For years, this second hunting "book" lay quietly in the library of the Friedenstein castle in Gotha, East Germany. Merrill Lindsay, a Manhattan gun collector, heard about its existence while attending a conference in Rome last year. Lindsay launched what proved to be elaborate negotiations to get the book into the hands of competent printers and copied. The result is a superb facsimile edition of 39 prints, published last year in Leipzig and now in New York as The Hunting Book of Wolfgang Birkner (Winchester Press and October House: $175).

Little is known about Birkner other than that he was born in Bayreuth in 1582. He was commissioned by Casimir to do eight designs for the baptismal font at the city church in Bayreuth, and between 1616 and 1630 he completed 24 oils that are now in the Coburg art collection. He painted a portrait of himself as a rifleman, and also one of the duke. But the hunting book was his most important work. He very likely sketched from life, since he often portrays himself sitting in a corner of the picture, sketch pad in hand.

Faithful Eye. The 17th century German hunter was nothing at all like today's typical American sportsman, who tramps through the woods in wool cap and squishy boots, hoping for a lucky shot. Venery was as ritualized as the catechism. A clumsy hunter was publicly chastised by "blading," a ceremony in which he was forced to lie down across a dead stag and receive three swats from the flat of a broad knife. All the hard work was done by the peasants, who erected the high cloth barriers or rope nets into which bear or deer were driven. At dawn, the whole party set off, proceeding according to rank in carriages drawn by four or six horses. Beaters drove the game into the enclosures where the hunters waited in comfort. Nobody got any mud on his elegant boots. If the duke missed killing a boar or a bear, his retainers were at hand to protect him from the wounded quarry.

No hunting diary of Casimir's has been found, but some idea of the number of game taken on such chases can be had from accounts left by two neighboring dukes, Electors Johann George I and II, who together killed no fewer than 228,478 animals, including more than 110,000 deer. Birkner had none of the great compositional powers of Cranach or Velasquez, both of whom painted accounts of the chase. But Casimir could not have wished for a more faithful descriptive artist. Birkner spared no blood or gore, and no detail escaped his eye. At the same time, he had a charming ability to enhance the pageantry and develop from the hunt's complicated rituals a sense of overall design and patterning, that same delicate blend of description and naivete that marks the best of the Currier and Ives illustrations.

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