GABRIEL SALMON

active Nancy ca. 1513–32

Hercules Slaying the Hydra ca. 1528

woodcut; sheet 201 x 152 mm (8 x 6 inches)

Bartsch, vol. 9, p. 161, under no. 1; cf. Nagler, Monogrammisten, vol. 3, p. 103, no. 341 (listing only ten of Hercules’ deeds; the Hydra episode is missing)

LITERATURE
cf. The French Renaissance in Prints from the Bibliothèque Nationale, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles/New York/Paris, 1994–95, no. 8

Gabriel Salmon was a Lorraine artist. He started out as a painter. His first exposure to printmaking happened in 1503 when he was commissioned to help Jacquemin Woeiriot with the illustrations for Jean Pélerin’s De artificiali perspectiva in 1503. He is believed to have met the Alsatian engraver Jean Ulrich Waechtlin (ca. 1470–ca. 1530) when the latter visited the court of Lorraine at Nancy. “Salmon’s somewhat harsh and violent graphic style, which owes much to that of Waechtlin, is seen at its height in the woodcuts of the Labors of Hercules.” (The French Renaissance Print, p. 199).