Page 293 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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Albrecht Dtirer
Nuremberg, 1471-1528
ARTIST DRAWING A LUTE

c. 1520-1525
pen and ink on paper
13.2 x 18.2 (y/s x yVs)
references: Bock 1921, 34; Anzelewsky and Mielke
1984, 122-123, no - and fig. nya
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin
This drawing illustrates an apparatus that Diirer
designed in his treatise on perspective, the Unter-
weysung der Messung, published in 1525, to aid
the artist in depicting objects in correct perspec-
tive. Dismissed as a copy after Diirer's woodcut
(Bock 1921, 34), the drawing has only recently
been reinstated as an original (Anzelewsky and
Mielke 1984, 122-123). The composition is essen-
tially that of the woodcut in Diirer's treatise, but
here the figures are sketched over construction
lines drawn with a ruler. That this drawing is not
a copy is indicated by various pentimenti, espe-
cially evident in the hands of the man who is
using two movable strings to fix the exact point of
their intersection with the frame. The modifica-
tions in the position of his hands clearly reflect a
decision to show the strings being held in a dif-
ferent way. The shortcomings of the drawing (for
example, in the position of the right leg of the
seated man), which were thought to cast doubt on
its authenticity, are equally evident in the wood-
cut. Moreover, a copyist who bothered to change
the position of the hands would probably also
have added the lute represented in perspective on
leoni Monument in Venice and more specifically toms which come upon you as in the very gorges the piece of paper attached by hinges to the frame.
to Leonardo da Vinci's studies for the Sforza of Hades must be deemed for naught after the Diirer was obviously more interested in making
equestrian monument in Milan. Leonardo's sculp- example of Virgil's Aeneas." Erwin Panofsky the action clear and comprehensible than in
ture never progressed beyond the stage of the clay believed that the Knight, Death, and Devil repre- adjusting the leg under the table. He may even
model of the horse, but Diirer would have known sented the obverse of Saint Jerome in his Study, have thought that this clumsiness would be cor-
some of the drawings through early engraved the active as opposed to the contemplative life in rected by the artist who transferred the composi-
copies. In a two-sided preparatory drawing for the the service of Christ, with Melencolia i repre- tion to the woodblock.
Knight, Death, and Devil (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, senting a contrast to both, "the tragic unrest of Diirer's Unterweysung der Messung was
Milan), Diirer constructed the horse geometri- human creation." extremely popular, for it was one of the very few
cally on one side of the sheet and then traced the Other scholars have pointed out that in the twi- treatises on linear perspective actually published
image through to the other side of the page to light of feudalism, the image of an armored war- in the Renaissance. Earlier and probably more
complete it. rior was more likely to suggest to a citizen of significant works, such as Leon Battista Alberti's
Diirer called this print simply Renter (Rider) in Nuremberg the robber-knights who terrorized the De pictura or Piero della Francesca's De prospec-
the diary of his Netherlandish trip of 1520-1521. countryside, supporting themselves as highway- tiva pingendi, circulated only in manuscript.
Joachim von Sandrart, the seventeenth-century men. They have proposed that the print should be Diirer's Unterweysung was republished
biographer of the Northern artists, referred to it seen as a warning against lawlessness or in the repeatedly, in German and in a Latin translation
as "the Christian Knight/' a description that led spirit of the memento mori. While this contro- by Joachim Camerarius. Diirer hoped that his
nineteenth-century scholars to connect the print versy is unlikely ever to be resolved definitively, treatise would "benefit not only the painters but
with Erasmus of Rotterdam's Enchiridion militis the visual evidence seems clear. The soldier, also goldsmiths, sculptors, stonemasons, carpen-
Christiani (Handbook of the Christian Soldier) of riding an idealized mount that embodies Diirer's ters and all those who have to rely on measure-
1504 in what has become the canonical interpreta- own belief in the perfection inherent in mathe- ment." To ensure its usefulness he provided in his
tion of its subject. Erasmus' treatise described matical proportions, passes the cadaverous figure book both a theoretical framework on perspective
the virtuous Christian soldier, metaphorically of Death and the bestial Devil with an indiffer- and the kind of practical information previously
enrolled in God's service, who is exhorted in one ence that surely reflects his concentration on found only in pattern books. The treatise is
evocative passage: "All those spooks and phan- eternal goals. J.A.L. divided into four chapters. The first, which

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