Maximilian is a keen supporter of the arts and sciences, and he has surrounded himself with scholars such as Joachim Vadian and Andreas Stoberl (Stiborius), promoting them to important court posts.

Many of them have been commissioned to assist him complete a series of projects, in different art forms, intended to glorify for posterity his life and deeds and those of his Habsburg ancestors.

He refers to these projects as Gedechtnus ("memorial"), and includes a series of stylized autobiographical works: the epic poems Theuerdank and Freydal, and the chivalric novel Weisskunig, both published in editions lavishly illustrated with woodcuts.

In this vein, he has commissioned a series of three monumental woodblock prints—The Triumphal Arch (1512–18, one hundred and ninety-two woodcut panels, two hundred and ninety-two centimeters wide and three hundred and fifty-seven centimeters high—approximately 9'8" by 11'8½"), and a Triumphal Procession (1516–18, one hundred and thirty-seven woodcut panels, fifty-four meters long) which is led by a Large Triumphal Carriage (1522, eight woodcut panels, one and a half inches high and eight feet long), created by artists including Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Altdorfer and Hans Burgkmair.

Burgkmaier has spent much of his time from about 1508 working on the woodcut projects of Maximilian I until the Emperor's death in 1519.

He is responsible for sixty-one of the one hundred and thirty-five prints in the “Triumphal Procession,” a great scroll depicting a magnificent parade in honor of the emperor, which are large and full of character, illustrating the emperor's genealogy and the major events of his reign.

He also did most of the illustrations for the Weiss König (White King), one of three books commissioned by Maximilian, and much of Theurdank, a poetic work composed by Maximilian in German which tells the fictionalized and romanticized story of his journey to marry Mary of Burgundy in 1477.

He works closely with the leading blockcutter Jost de Negker, who becomes in effect his publisher.

Burgkmair also creates many of the woodcuts in Maximilian's great “Triumphal Arch” (a multi-artist project supervised by Albrecht Dürer).

For the prominent merchant banker Jakob Fugger, he decorates the facade of his house in Augsburg, renowned as the first Italian Renaissance palace in Germany (the paintings have since disappeared).