Page 303 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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Albrecht Diirer as drinking horns, or simply to keep as raw mate- The inscription on the preparatory drawing (cat.
209)
states that Diirer designed this chandelier,
rial.
By the time of his death, Diirer also owned
Nuremberg, 1471-1528 a collection of antlers. In a letter to Johann which was made by "Old Stoss/ who has been
DESIGN FOR A CHANDELIER Tschertte written in November 1530, Willibald correctly identified as Willibald Stoss, son of the
Pirckheimer observed that he would have liked to famous Veit Stoss. Willibald carefully followed
c. 1521-1522 have obtained these, especially one that was quite Diirer's design: his three-headed dragon has long,
pen and watercolor on paper beautiful, but that Diirer's widow Agnes had se- twisted necks and two tails curled around the ant-
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3
16.8x21.3 (6 /8x8 / 8) cretly sold them for a pittance, along with other lers. The chandelier was in fact commissioned by
references: Kohlhaussen 1939; Heikamp 1960, choice items. Pirckheimer, too, had a large collec- Anton Tucher n (1457-1524), chief treasurer of
44-46, 48-51, fig. 3; Strauss 1974,3:1378-1379, tion of antlers, which were displayed around Nuremberg. From his account book we learn that
3:1350-1351, no. 1513/29; New York and
Nuremberg 1986, 332, no. and fig. 149 his house (for the inventory of this collection at it was intended to be hung in the Town Hall:
Pirckheimer's death, see Heikamp 1960, 48-51). "Item, on March i [1522] I presented the city
Stddtische Museen Konstanz, Wessenberg- Another design for a chandelier by Diirer, prob- fathers with an elk horn of thirty-four points with
Gemaldegalerie, Constance ably executed in 1513, shows a chandelier made of a carved, gilded dragon holding seven lights and
antlers along with a siren that holds Pirckheimer's costing twenty-four guilders, for their newly built
The chandelier depicted in the present drawing coat of arms; the siren may have been a tribute upstairs chamber/' This room, the governing
was executed by the sculptor Willibald Stoss to Crescentia Rieter, Pirckheimer's wife, who chamber, was the meeting place of the septemviri,
(cat. 210). An inscription on the sheet by either had died in 1504 and whose coat of arms in- the executive committee of the council.
Anton or Johann Neudorfer, grandsons of Johann cluded a mermaid (Strauss 1974 3:1378-1379, The great antlers, with a total of thirty-four
Neudorfer (1497-1563), the famous calligrapher no. 1513/28). J.M.M. points, are not those of the elk (elch) mentioned
who wrote biographies of Nuremberg artists, pro- in Tucher's account book, but rather of a reindeer
vides some details on the commission: "This (Rangifer tarandus L.), an animal that is found in
design was made by Albrecht Diirer himself, and 21O Europe only in Scandinavia. Diirer's fascination
old Stoss, who was a carver, the father of Veit and Willibald Stoss, after Albrecht Diirer with antlers and horns is well known: in 1520
Phillip Stoss (who were my grandfather's pupils he asked Georg Spalatin to remind his master,
and later assistants and were subsequently Nuremberg, c. 1500-1573 Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, to send
ennobled on account of their writings), actually CHANDELIER IN THE FORM Diirer the antlers he had promised him, "as he
carved it, and you can still see it at the Rathaus OF A DRAGON wanted to make two chandeliers with them."
here, in the governing chamber/' From another 1522 Frederick the Wise was one of the most powerful
document we know that the chandelier made gilded limeivood and reindeer antlers of German princes, and it may have been from
by Stoss after Diirer's design was commissioned 48 x 125 x 153 (i8 /s x 49^/4 x 6o/4) him that Diirer obtained the exceptionally large
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by Anton Tucher for the governing chamber of references: Kohlhaussen 1939, 135-141, figs. 1-3; antlers used for the Nuremberg chandelier. The
the Nuremberg Town Hall. Heikamp 1960, 42-55, fig. 4; Grote 1961, 76-77, governing chamber of the Nuremberg Town Hall
One of the many objects recorded with interest fig. 36; Nuremberg 1983, 172-175, no. 13, was, after all, the private meeting room for the
in Diirer's Netherlandish diary is the buffalo figs. 112-113; Kahsnitz 1984, 48-49; New York and seven electors —of whom Frederick the Wise
horn. He bought a number of them, perhaps for Nuremberg 1986, 332-333, no. and fig. 150 was one —when the imperial Diet was in session
their sheer rarity, possibly to have them mounted Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg in the city. J.M.M.

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