Lorenz Stöer was a German printmaker and painter active in the late 16th Century. His wonderfully idiosyncratic visions of geometric forms in landscapes of imagined architecture have recently been brought to light for us by that master discoverer of the idiosyncratic and arcane, peacay, whose ever-fascinating blog BibliOdyssey is a treasure trove (and dangerously fascinating rabbit-hole) of the strange and wonderful. (See my previous posts on BibliOdyssey here and here.)
Stöer seems to be obscure except for a published folio of 11 woodcuts titled Geometria et Perspectiva, of which the image above is an example. But an unpublished portfolio of color drawings discovered at the Munich Library has in recent years been attributed to him.
Peacay has provided not only examples from both on the BibliOdyssey page, but a Flickr set which features the images in high resolution.
There is also a reproduction of the folio here, but peacay’s sets are much better quality. You may want to supplement your enjoyment of the woodcuts with some background about polyhedra here and here (for some reason, I just love this stuff).
Stöer’s fascination with geometric solids was apparently the inspiration for other artists, like the creator of the intricate marquetery on this Collector’s Cabinet from the same time.
I would also have to assume that his polyhedral fantasias, oddly arranged architectural facades and stacked stairways were a direct influence on the fantastic geometry and math inspired works of M.C. Escher.
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