Urs Graf

Urs Graf drew soldiers because he was one. A goldsmith by trade in Basel, he kept leaving his workshop to march off as a mercenary in the pay of foreign kings, and his pen drawings are full of the men he served with: swaggering pikemen in slashed sleeves and enormous feathered hats, camp followers, the loose and violent world of the early-16th-century soldier for hire.

He bought citizenship in Basel in 1512 and joined the goldsmiths' guild, but his lasting mark was made on paper. One of his two etchings is dated 1513, the earliest date known on any etching, from the years when biting a design into metal with acid was a brand-new idea. He is also credited with the white-line woodcut, where the block is cut so the lines print white against black, the reverse of the usual method.

Graf's own record was rough. He turns up in Basel court files for brawling and unpaid debts, and more than once he left town to go soldiering again rather than settle up. He seems to have died around 1529, and after that his name drops out of the city's papers.