Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) enjoyed European-wide fame during his lifetime. Dürer was not only a brilliant painter, but also a pioneering printmaker, experimental draughtsman, book publisher, first German art theoretician and amateur poet. His art was avidly collected, repeatedly copied in diverse media, and often forged. Then, with his death, the posthumous Dürers were born. This book addresses his afterlife or, more correctly, afterlives. Beginning with the heartfelt eulogies of his friends and the creation of contemporary portraits of the Nuremberg master, Dürer’s person, his likenesses, and his art have been celebrated for over five hundred years. Our contemporary Dürer is the subject of intense scholarly discussions on the one hand and of social and commercial popularization on the other hand.

During the early modern period, visual imagery was put to ever new uses as many disciplines adopted visual criteria for testing truth claims, representing knowledge, or conveying information. Religious propagandists, political writers, satirists, cartographers, the scientific community, and others experimented with new uses of visual images. Artists, writers, preachers, musicians, and performers, among others, often employed visual images or conjured mental images to connect with their audiences. Contributors to this interdisciplinary collection creatively explore how the exponential growth in images, especially prints, impacted the intellectual horizons and the visual awareness of viewers in early modern Germany. Each of the chapters serves as a case study for one or more of the volume's sub-themes: art, visual literacy, and strategies of presentation; audience and the art of persuasion; the art of envisioning; the ephemeral arts and theatricality; the built environment and spatial settings; and the history of the visual.

During the early modern period, visual imagery was put to ever new uses as many disciplines adopted visual criteria for testing truth claims, representing knowledge, or conveying information. Religious propagandists, political writers, satirists, cartographers, the scientific community, and others experimented with new uses of visual images. Artists, writers, preachers, musicians, and performers, among others, often employed visual images or conjured mental images to connect with their audiences. Contributors to this interdisciplinary collection creatively explore how the exponential growth in images, especially prints, impacted the intellectual horizons and the visual awareness of viewers in early modern Germany. Each of the chapters serves as a case study for one or more of the volume's sub-themes: art, visual literacy, and strategies of presentation; audience and the art of persuasion; the art of envisioning; the ephemeral arts and theatricality; the built environment and spatial settings; and the history of the visual.

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), perhaps the most famous of all German artists, embodies the modern ideal of the Renaissance man--he was a remarkable painter, printmaker, draftsman, designer, theoretician, and even a poet. More is known about his thoughts and his life than about any other Northern European master of his time, since he wrote extensively about himself, his family's history, his travels, and his friends. His woodcuts and engravings were avidly collected and copied across Europe, and they quickly established his reputation as a master. Praised in life and elegized in death by such thinkers as Martin Luther and Erasmus, he served Emperor Maximilian and other leading church and secular princes in the Holy Roman Empire.Although there is a vast specialized literature on the Nuremberg master, "The Essential Durer" fills the need for a foundational book that covers the major aspects of his career. The essays included in this book, written by leading scholars from the United States and Germany, provide an accessible, up-to-date examination of Durer's art and person as well as his posthumous fame. The essays address an array of topics, from separate and detailed studies of his paintings, drawings, printmaking, and sculpture, to broader concerns such as his visits to and interactions with Venice and the Netherlands, his personal relationships, and his relationships with other artists. Collectively these stimulating essays explore the brilliance of Durer's creativity and the impact he had on his world, exposing him as an artist fully engaged with the tumultuous intellectual and religious challenges of his time.

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) was the greatest artist of the Northern European Renaissance. Durer's virtuoso woodcuts and engravings ensured his fame throughout the Continent during his own lifetime. Yet he also produced an extraordinary output in other media - including painting, watercolour and drawing - which encompasses riveting portraits and self-portraits, grand altarpieces and meticulous studies of animals and nature. In this major new monograph, Jeffrey Chipps Smith examines the myths that have contributed to Durer's legend, considering his life and career within the framework of a tumultuous epoch in European history. Taking account of the extensive scholarship on the artist, Smith provides fresh insights into many of his most notable works, uncovering the creative process behind them and their wealth of meanings and ideas. Central to Smith's focus is the historical and cultural ferment of pre- and post-Reformation Europe, as he traces Durer's formative years in the Imperial free city of Nuremberg and his subsequent travels across Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The result is a vivid picture of the professional activity of a prolific and psychologically complex figure. With its detailed commentary and original research, this is both an authoritive and an approachable monograph - indispensable for the student or scholar, while certain to appeal to anyone interested in this brilliant artist.

This classic text presents the life, times, and works of Albrecht Durer. Through the skill and immense knowledge of Erwin Panofsky, the reader is dazzled not only by Durer the artist but also Durer in a wide array of other roles, including mathematician and scientific thinker. Originally published in 1943 in two volumes, "The Life and Art of Albrecht Durer" met with such wide popular and scholarly acclaim that it led to three editions and then, in 1955, to the first one-volume edition. Without sacrifice of text or illustrations, the book was reduced to this single volume by the omission of the "Handlist" and "Concordance." The new introduction by Jeffrey Chipps Smith reflects upon Panofsky the man, the tumultuous circumstances surrounding the creation of his masterful monograph, its innovative contents, and its early critical reception. Erwin Panofsky was one of the most important art historians of the twentieth century. Panofsky taught for many years at Hamburg University but was forced by the Nazis to leave Germany. He joined the faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1935, where he spent the remainder of his career and wrote The "Life and Art of Albrecht Durer." He developed an iconographic approach to art and interpreted works through an analysis of symbolism, history, and social factors.

This book, one of his most important, is a comprehensive study of painter and printmaker Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), the greatest exponent of northern European Renaissance art. Although an important painter, Durer was most renowned for his graphic works. Artists across Europe admired and copied his innovative and powerful prints, ranging from religious and mythological scenes to maps and exotic animals. The book covers Durer's entire career in exacting detail. With multiple indexes and more than three hundred illustrations, it has served as an indispensable reference, remaining crucial to an understanding of the work of the great artist and printmaker. Subsequent Durer studies have necessarily made reference to Panofsky's masterpiece. Panofsky's work continues to be admired for the author's immense erudition, subtlety of appreciation, technical knowledge, and profound analyses."

During the nineteenth century, Albrecht Durer's art, piety, and personal character were held up as models to inspire contemporary artists and-it was hoped-to return Germany to international artistic eminence. In this book, Jeffrey Chipps Smith explores Durer's complex posthumous reception during the great century of museum building in Europe, with a particular focus on the artist's role as a creative and moral exemplar for German artists and museum visitors. In an era when museums were emerging as symbols of civic, regional, and national identity, dozens of new national, princely, and civic museums began to feature portraits of Durer in their elaborate decorative programs embellishing the facades, grand staircases, galleries, and ceremonial spaces. Most of these arose in Germany and Austria, though examples can be seen as far away as St. Petersburg, Stockholm, London, and New York City. Probing the cultural, political, and educational aspirations and rivalries of these museums and their patrons, Smith traces how Durer was painted, sculpted, and prominently placed to accommodate the era's diverse needs and aspirations. He investigates what these portraits can tell us about the rise of a distinct canon of famous Renaissance and Baroque artists-addressing the question of why Durer was so often paired with Raphael, who was considered to embody the greatness of Italian art-and why, with the rise of German nationalism, Hans Holbein the Younger often replaced Raphael as Durer's partner. Accessibly written and comprehensive in scope, this book sheds new light on museum building in the nineteenth century and the rise of art history as a discipline. It will appeal to specialists in nineteenth-century and early modern art, the history of museums and collecting, and art historiography.

This book comprises a rigorous and enchanting exploration of a highly innovative and exciting period of art following the careers of artists such as Van Eyck, Durer and Holbein. Jeffrey Chipps Smith analyses key conceptual aspects of that period, such as the Protestant Reformation and the discovery of the Americas, offering the reader a penetrative insight into domestic, civic and court life as illustrated by some of the most exquisite artworks ever created. In the years from 1380 to 1580, northern Europe witnessed a period of artistic innovation as dynamic as contemporary developments in Italy. Stimulated by the atmosphere of intellectual curiosity about the individual and the natural world, Northern Renaissance artists mastered the new techniques of oil painting and printmaking to produce some of the most exquisite art of all time. It was also a period of political, religious and social turmoil, which profoundly changed the patronage, production and subject matter of art. At all levels of society art was a part of everyday life. Chipps Smith writes with tireless lucidity about these changes and the objects themselves. The works range from tapestries, altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts to churches, palaces and civic architecture. He discusses the audiences and functions of art from across nothern Europe, including not only Germany, France and the Low Countries, but also Britain and Austria. He explores major cultural and historic events such as the Protestant Reformation and the discovery of the Americas, to consider how they widened intellectual and religious horizons. The result is a book that reveals, with passion and erudition, how the Northern Renaissance masters laid the foundations for the art of succeeding centuries.