By 1576 he was living in Nuremberg, where he was mentioned in the records of the town-council meetings as the painter Hans Hoffmann, citizen of the town. He quickly became known for his copies after works by
Albrecht Dürer.
In 1584 he went to Munich to work on behalf of
William V, Duke of Bavaria. In 1585 he was appointed as a court painter by
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, who brought him to the imperial court in Prague. At the imperial court, Hoffmann advised Rudolph on the development of his art collection and acquired for him works by Dürer.[3]
The art collection assembled by the Nuremberg citizen
Paulus Praun [
de] contained more than 100 works by Hans Hoffmann. Because the collection was intact until the beginning of the 19th century, many of these works are documented.
References
^Koreny pp. 132, 144, under no. 47; p. 146, under no. 48; pp. 148–49, no. 49, ill.; p. 150, under no. 50; p. 152, under no. 51; p. 154, under no. 52
^"Oxford Art Online, Hoffmann, Hans". www.oxfordartonline.com. Retrieved 15 October 2014.(subscription may be required or content may be available in libraries)
Further reading
Bodnár, Szilvia.
"Hoffmann, Hans." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, (accessed February 1, 2012; subscription may be required or content may be available in libraries)
Koreny, Fritz. Albrecht Dürer and the Animal and Plant Studies of the Renaissance. Pamela Marwood and Yehuda Shapiro, trans. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1988).
ISBN978-0821216248.