50 URS GRAF Swiss, circa 1485­1527/29 Dancing Peasant Couple Pen and dark­brown and black ink 20.6 x 14.7 cm (8 x 5 13/16 in.) Cat. Ill, no. 66; 92.GA.72 Graf's drawings are notable for their brilliant, eccentric pen work and their focus on violence and sexual innuendo, qualities that seem to bear a relation to his life. He is documented as having hired himself out as a mercenary soldier on various occasions and as having been banished temporarily from his home city of Basel as a result of a brawl. Graf brought this dark and satiric point of view to a series of nine sheets of unknown purpose (now scattered in various museums), showing differently configured dancing peasant couples. All bear his monogram, VG with the Dolch (the Swiss dagger), and the date of 1525. The drawing in the Getty Museum depicts an interlocking couple, with the male obscuring his partner's head and pinching her buttock. The dagger and ax he carries heighten the lascivious and violent overtones. This notion of the peasantry—brutal, fertile, and full of vital energy—is bolstered by Graf's swift and incisive pen work. GERMAN AND SWISS SCHOOLS 63