Albrecht Durer

A Guide to Research

Jane Campbell Hutchison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135581718
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Théorie et critique de l'art

Hutchison's book is a complete guide on Durer and the research on his work, his historical import and his aesthetic legacy.

Annotated Bibliography

1. Achilles, Katrin. “Naturstudien von Hans Hoffmann in der Kunstsammlung des Nürnberger Kaufmanns Paulus II Praun.” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 82/83 (1986): 243–259.

One of the papers presented at the Albertina symposium (see Koreny 1986/87).Hoffmann's and Georg Hoefnagel's copies after Albrecht Dürer have survived—and, it is to be hoped, have been identified—in fairly large numbers, unlike those by Georg Gärtner, Jobst Harrich, or Paul Juvenal. When the Nuremberg collector Paulus Praun died in Bologna (1591) his younger brother Jakob made an inventory of his collection prior to shipping it home to Nuremberg, where Paulus had planned to create “Museumsräume” in the new house he was having built. (In the event, the works were never unpacked until the collection was sold after its owner's death.) The author, who is the recognized authority on the Praun collection, discusses Paulus Praun's will and Jakob's inventory, which reveal ownership of thirty-five works by Hoffmann. Watercolors included a seated grayhound, lions, and dead blue roller— an album of Hoffmann's work. Achilles traces the subsequent history of the Hoffmann volume, citing von Murr's inventory (1797), made before the collection was consigned to the Nuremberg art dealer Frauenholz (sale closed 1801). After 1804 many of the Praun drawings,including most of the Hoffmanns, were acquired by Prince Miklós Esterházy and are now in the Budapest Museum. Achilles has identified as many of the Hoffmanns as possible (twenty-two) using the descriptions and measurements from the three inventories (including Esterházy's). A useful list of previous literature on Hoffmann appears in Note 1 in this work.

2. Achilles-Syndram, Katrin. Die Kunstsammlung des Paulus Praun. Die Inventare von 1616 und 1719, Quellen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Stadt Nuremberg, 25.Nuremberg: Stadtrat, 1994.

The catalogue of the 1994 exhibition held at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Kunst des Sammelns. Das Praunsche Kabinett. Meisterwerke von Dürer bis Carracci) was to have had a supplement containing the full transcription of the two inventories. Due to lack of funds it could not be printed in that form, but was produced as a cooperative undertaking by the Museum and the Stadtarchiv, which possesses the original inventories. Included also are essays by Kurt Löcher, Rainer Schoch, Christian Kruse, Herman Maué, Silvia Glaser, Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, and Eduard Ispherding, in addition to Achilles-Syndram's commentary on the inventories themselves. (Reviewed by Ulrike Swoboda in Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 83 (1996), 355–357).

3. ——. “Die Zeichnungssammlung des Nürnberger Kaufmanns Paulus II. Praun (1548–1616).” Ph.D. dissertation, Berlin, 1990.

The author's dissertation, dealing only with the drawings and watercolors collected by Paulus II Praun, including important works by both Dürer and the most skillful of his later imitators, Hans Hoffmann, which are found today in the Albertina and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.

4. Achilles-Syndram, Katrin. “‘…und sonderlich von grossen stuckchen nichts bey mir vorhanden ist.” Die Sammlung Praun als kunst- und kulturgeschichtliches Dokument.” Kunst des Sammelns. Das Praunsche Kabinett. Meisterwerke von Dürer bis Carracci, 35–55. Ed. Katrin Achilles-Syndram. Nuremberg: Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums,1994.

Examines the significance of Praun's drawing collection, which, in addition to its prime Northern works, included fine drawings by Bolognese and Emilian artists, in the context of the history of such collections, which are contrasted to the older “kunst- und wunderkammern.” The principles and procedures of Rudolf II, as well as of bourgeois collectors such as Basilius Amerbach (1533–1591), and of the artist/theoretician Giorgio Vasari are discussed in this connection, and original correspondence between Rudolf II and Paulus Praun is cited.

5. Acton, David. “The Northern Masters in Goltzius's Meisterstiche.” Bulletin, Museums of Art and Archaeology, University of Michigan 4 (1981):40–53.

Discusses Goltzius's motivation in engraving the Circumcision in the style of Dürer and the Adoration of the Magi in the style of Lucas van Leyden—two of his so-called Meisterstiche from the series done in 1594, suggesting that together the two prints illustrate “the sensibilities of self-appraisal and artistic proclamation” that were the inspiration for the series. Examines the Dutch artist's response to Dürer and Lucas in the context of his knowledge of the Italian masters, arguing that in imitating Dürer and Lucas, Goltzius was transferring behavior that he had observed as part of the Mannerist movement during his travels in Italy to the north.

6. Ahlborn, Joachim. Die Familie Landauer, Vom Maler zum Montanherrn, Nürnberger Forschungen, Einzelarbeiten zur Nürnberger Geschichte, 11. Nuremberg: 1969.

A detailed and excellent study of the family of Matthias Landauer, the patron of Dürer's Adoration of the Trinity altarpiece of 1511, and founder of the retirement home and chapel for which the work was designed. The Landauers had progressed from the craftsman class in the early decades of the fifteenth century (Berthold, Matthäus’ grandfather, the first Landauer mentioned in Nuremberg archives was a painter), to the patrician (ehrbar) class within one generation. His sons Matthäus and Markus engaged in international trade—the prereqisite for elevation to the ruling class—and Matthäus the Younger, Dürer's client was the owner of a metal refinery in Thuringia. His establishment of a retirement home for twelve elderly, unmarried men carried certain less than altruistic restrictions: no blind, lame, bedridden or mentally disturbed old men were allowed, and no beggars or property less need apply; those fortunate enough to be admitted must bathe every three weeks. Also discussed in this volume are other Landauer commissions, including Adam Kraft's Schreyer-Landauer monument in St. Sebald's church.

7. Akinsha, Konstantin, and Grigorii Koslov. Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder ofEurope's Art Treasures, New York: Random House, 1995.

Akinsha is a Ukrainian art historian formerly on the staff of the Museum of Western and Oriental Art in Kiev; Kozlov was an official in the Department of Museums of the Ministry of Culture of the former USSR. Although there are many published accounts of the rape of western European collections of old master artworks by agents of the Third Reich, this important piece of investigative journalism published with the aid of Sylvia Hochfeld, an editor at large for ARTnews is the only reliable account of the secret Soviet “trophy brigades” (operative from 1945 to 1948) acting under specific instructions from Stalin to remove artworks from Germany for shipment to the USSR. The looted works include the collection of Dürer watercolors and the Salvator Mundi painting from the Bremen Kunsthalle. The drawings have been returned to the German Embassy in Moscow, but at the time of writing have still been barred by the Russian government from leaving the country.

8. Allihn, Max. “Dürer-Studien. Versuch einer Erklärung schwer zu deutender Kupferstiche Albrecht Dürers von culturhistorischem Standpunkte.” Leipzig: Rudolf Weigel, 1871.

An early iconographic study of a selection of the artist's prints which the author deemed most difficult to understand: that is, The Large Fortune (pp. 9–38); the Four Nude Women and the Witches (pp. 39–56); the Offer of Love, the Woman on Horseback, and Envy (pp. 57–78); the prints dealing with peasants, including the Dancing Peasants and Bagpiper (pp. 79–94); and Melencolia I (95–115).

9. Amsterdam: Museum “het Rembrandthuis.” Rembrandt en zijn Voorbeelden, Text Ben Broos. 1986.

Catalogue of the exhibition “Rembrandt and his Sources,” held at the Rembrandt House from November 2, 1985–January 5, 1986, comprising sixty-eight objects. Prints and drawings by Rembrandt were paired with the prints from which he drew his inspiration, including works by Dürer. Catalogue entries with commentaries and illustrations of all exhibited works.

10. Amt für Schrifttumspflege (Reichsstelle zur Förderung des deutschen Schrifttums).Nürnberg, die deutsche Stadt. Von Stadt der Reichstage zum Stadt der Reichsparteitage, Eine Schau in Schriften, Urkunden, Bildern und Kunstwerken, Nuremberg: 1937.

Catalogue of an exhibition held in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum celebrating Nuremberg's role as the quintessential German city, from its onetime role as meeting place of the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire to its position during the Third Reich as locus of the annual rallies of the Nazi Party. Items by Dürer that were high-lighted included the artist's idealized portraits of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, and of subsequent emperors Sigismund and Maximilian I; his portrait of his teacher, the Nuremberg artist/ entrepreneur, Michael Wolgemut, and his drawings for a pokal and a chandelier in the form of a dragon. The point of all this was, of course, an attempt to legitimize the Nazi regime by portraying it as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire. The exhibition was scheduled in order to coincide with the Nazi rally of 1937. (It should be recalled that the “Nuremberg Laws” calling for racial purity had been officially announced by Julius Streicher in the previous year, and that this exhibition coincides with the 1937 cleansing of German museums of all works of so-called degenerate art).

11. Andersson, Christiane. “The censorship of images in Nuremberg 1521–1527.” Dürer and His Culture, 164–178. Eds. Dagmar Eichberger and Charles Zika. Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press,

Andersson is the Samuel H.Kress Professor of Art History at Bucknell University. Although she does not deal directly with Dürer, this essay is of interest as general background for the last years of the artist's life, as the Imperial Free City of Nuremberg attempted to deal with rising sympathies for Luther's reforms without giving unnecessary offense to Charles V after the Edict of Worms. Under the terms of the Edict, all antipapal texts and images were to be burned, holding author, artist, and printer equally guilty. In Nuremberg, the City Council also decreed that the of-fending woodblocks would be confiscated, and the guilty were to be penalized either by heavy fines, or, in some cases, exclusion from the printing profession. Andersson shows that these punish-ments were often either commuted or ameliorated in some way. Among the items banned by the Edict were all likenesses of Luther; in Nuremberg this was moderated simply to forbid sale of portraits of Luther “with the Holy Spirit” (March 3, 1521), a stric-ture that was apparently ignored after 1525 in Nuremberg, where Lazarus Spengler is presumed to have been the local censor. Discusses works by Hans Sebald Beham, and Erhard Schön. Corrects a mistake in Parshall and Landau arising from mistranslation of the early sixteenth-century usage of the German word “Gemäl” as paintings (p. 175), when the true meaning was “pictures.”

12. ——. “Polemical Prints in Reformation Nuremberg.” New Perspectives on the Art of Renaissance Nuremberg: Five Essays, 40–62. Ed. Jeffrey Chipps Smith.Austin, TX: University of Texas— Archer M.Huntington Art Gallery, 1985.

Discusses the proliferation of popular woodcuts and broadsheets in early sixteenth-century Nuremberg as a function of the lack of restrictive guild regulations. Includes interesting archival references to the refusal of the City Council to issue such regulations, despite the petitions of numerous local Briefmaler and Kartenmaler, many of whom were forced to take on second jobs, such as dealing in rags (presumably for sale to paper mills). Generously illustrated with examples of popular imagery, including Siamese twins, natural disasters, defamatory cartoons of both Lutheran and Catholic origin, such as the Monk Calf and Papal Ass (both 1523) from the Cranach workshop, based on Wenzel von Olmütz's Roma Caput Mundi of 1496; Hans Brosamer's (attributed) Seven-Headed Martin Luther, Hans Rudolph Manuel Deutsch's trick woodcut showing a monk robbing a widow, devouring a lamb, and devouring the widow's house; Erhard Schoen's Twelve Pure and Twelve Sinful Birds and Devil Playing a Bagpipe; and many anonymous works.

13. Andrews, Keith. The Nazarenes, A Brotherhood of German Painters in Rome, 13, 15,25, 31. Oxford: 1964.

Discusses Dürer's impact on the Romantic writers Tieck and Wackenroder, and on the Nazarene painters Peter Cornelius and Franz Pforr.

14. Anonymous.“Dürers Säkularfeier in Nürnberg.” Kunstblatt 31, 32, 34, 35, 37 (April 1828).

Contemporary descriptions of the festivities held in Nuremberg honoring Dürer's three hundredth death anniversary in 1828 were reported in series: vol. 31, pp. 121–123 (April 17—contains Ernst Förster's lyrics for the “hymn” to Dürer sung at his grave at sunrise on Easter morning); vol. 32, pp. 125–129 (April 21—a list of the fourteen items inserted in the cornerstone of the Dürer monument); vol. 34, pp. 133–135 (April 28—describes the arrival in Nuremberg of the Munich artists with their cartoons for the transparencies relating an idealization of Dürer's life); vol. 35, pp. 137–140 (May 1); vol. 37, pp. 145–147 (May 8).

15. Anzelewsky, F...