There are no assured facts known about the birthplace and artistic training of Hans Schäufelein (also Schäuffelein or Schäufelin). Around 1503 he was working along with Hans von Kulmbach and Hans Baldung in Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg, where he stayed until 1507. Around 1506 he was entrusted with creating the 'Ober Sankt Veiter Altar' from designs by Dürer. After completing the altarpiece, Schäufelein moved to Augsburg and into the workshop of Hans Holbein the Elder, where he remained until 1508. In 1508/09 he worked as a journeyman in Tirol, painting numerous altarpieces. After 1510 he was again in Augsburg, and worked with Hans Burgkmair, Leonhard Beck and other artists on the major print commissions from Emperor Maximilian I. He designed woodcuts for the 'Weisskunig', 'Theuerdank' and the 'Triumphal Procession'. Perhaps his most spectacular commission was the cycle of the 'Four Temperaments' (1511), the first paintings of the temperaments in Western art. In 1515 Schäufelein was named city painter in Nördlingen. In addition to panel paintings and drawings, he left behind a large number of woodcuts, book illustrations, and single sheets. His oeuvre helped to create and disseminate the South German early Renaissance from its centres in Augsburg and Nuremberg, which provided the main impulses for its formulation of humanistic and Reformist pictorial subject matter.
