Portrait of Onophrius Scheit

Barthel Beham painted this portrait of Onophrius Scheit in 1528, a companion to his portrait of Scheit's wife Anna. The paired husband-and-wife portraits follow Nuremberg conventions. Beham served as court painter in Munich. The painting is in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge Portraiture flourished during the Renaissance as humanism elevated the individual, with wealthy merchants, rulers, and churchmen commissioning likenesses as symbols of status, piety, and dynastic continuity.

The portrait demonstrates Beham's precise, small-scale technique. The careful characterization and meticulous costume rendering are characteristic of the Nuremberg tradition he brought to his Munich court career.