Albrecht Dürer’s Material Renaissance
exhibition labels
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HOUSEHOLD AND BODY
Dürer appreciated the body’s expressive potential. He rendered the harmonious proportions of the human form with mathematical precision and produced Four Books on Human Proportion (published posthumously in 1528). He employed these techniques in his mythological, allegorical, and religious subjects. He channelled the same studious energy into genre scenes in which the stout, work-worn body of the humblest peasant was worthy of careful attention. The grotesque body could also serve a purpose – comical, satirical, cautionary, or all three.
Dürer’s bodies are embedded in a material world that was familiar to the inhabitants of Renaissance Nuremberg. He populated his artworks with objects commonly found in his own household and those of his neighbors: furnishings, metal vessels, ceramics, candlesticks, and woven baskets. Objects came to embody relationships, emotions, and the body itself: keys, purses, bellows, cookware, and hourglasses were imbued with meaning and served to define the bodies they surrounded and adorned.
Prints themselves were found in the home. They featured in the private collections of urban merchants and elites, while religious subjects served as foci of private devotion or as edifying models for burghers and their families. Dürer’s prints even came to be reproduced on objects intended for household use, such as ceramics.
Albrecht Dürer
Germany, 1471-1528
The temptation of the idler / The dream of the doctor c.1498
engraving
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.2092.000.000
Wrapped in a fur-lined house cloak, lulled by soft pillows and a hot Kachelofen (ceramic stove), this man falls asleep on the ‘hell bench’, the warmest site of a household. His vision of Venus and Cupid is powered by heat, the devil’s bellows – which pump lustful thoughts into his ear – and the scent of the warmed aphrodisiacal mandrake fruit. Kachelöfen and their tiles (manufactured in Nuremberg) were both prized consumer items and morally ‘perilous possessions’, as new research shows.
after Albrecht Dürer (artist)
Germany, 1471-1528
Charles Amand-Durand (publisher)
France, 1831-1905
The cook and his wife (c.1496), copy printed c.1869
photogravure
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.2073.000.000
This print draws on a popular tale in which a magpie reveals to a husband that his wife has deceived him by surreptitiously eating his eel. The man is left holding an empty frying pan. His bulging stomach and tightly fitted shirt suggest gluttony and slovenliness, while the wife’s stately figure establishes her commanding presence. A purse and keys – typical accessories of women in southern Germany – hang from her belt and confirm her role as a housewife.
Lucas van Leyden
Netherlands, c.1494-1533
The dentist 1523
engraving
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.3194.000.000
In the Renaissance, dentists had reputations as charlatans who took advantage of the uneducated lower classes. Here, a dentist at a fair has lured a gullible peasant to his booth, where his female assistant pilfers coins from the patient’s purse. The quack healer employs an array of objects to craft a convincing veneer as a capable medical practitioner: teeth are affixed to his hat, and a prominently displayed diploma, ointments, and dentistry tools adorn his booth.
Albrecht Dürer
Germany, 1471-1528
The death of the Virgin 1510 from The Life of the Virgin, 1511
woodcut
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.2097.000.000
Dürer follows tradition in surrounding Mary’s deathbed with the Apostles but follows Martin Schongauer in depicting the scene from the foot of the bed. Religious rituals have now begun – prayers are being read, the funeral candle removed, holy water sprinkled, thurible and cross made ready for the funeral. Yet the everyday domestic objects – pillow, headboard and drapes of the canopy bed, candlesticks and tankard, a shoe under the chest – also project an atmosphere of quiet intimacy and care.
Hans Sebald Beham
Germany, 1500-1550
Prudence 1539
engraving
Purchased 1988.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1988.2015.000.000
Hans Sebald Beham
Germany, 1500-1550
Justice 1539
engraving
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.2264.000.000
Hans Sebald Beham
Germany, 1500-1550
Faith 1539
engraving
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections. University of Melbourne. 1959.2265.000.000
Hans Sebald Beham
Germany, 1500-1550
Hope 1539
engraving
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.2266.000.000
Hans Sebald Beham was part of a younger generation of German artists known as the ‘Little Masters,’ who specialised in miniature engravings intended for intimate, close viewing. Beham’s four figures offer evidence of his probable apprenticeship with Dürer, whose early studies of the female nude set him apart from Northern Renaissance artists. These prints were part of a series that depicted the virtues with their associated objects. Justice’s scales and sword symbolise fair judgment when meting out proper punishment. Faith bears a cross and chalice with a communion wafer above it. Prudence gazes into a mirror, representing her capacity to see into the past and future. The snake represents wisdom, and the compass, measured judgement. Beham’s representation of Hope, however, veers from conventional depictions through the insertion of a genre scene behind the allegorical figure: a man in the stocks follows the upturned gaze of Spes (Hope) as he hopes for liberation.
Hans Sebald Beham
Germany, 1500-1550
Melencholy 1539
engraving
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.2252.000.000
Sebald Beham’s Melencholy clearly engages with, and modifies, Dürer’s famous image. This depiction leans even more towards judging the slothful Melancholy, whose closed book and wood-working tools lie abandoned. Even the hourglass seems more useless, lurking in the shadows behind Melancholy’s monumental body. The viewer is perhaps made to reflect on whether their own body shows the imbalance of humours – the excess of cold and dry black bile – that leads to this torpid state.
Unknown (printmaker)
after Jacopo de’ Barbari (artist)
Italy, c.1460-1516
The sacrifice to Priapus (large plate) (c.1499-1501), copy printed c.19th century
photogravure
Purchased 1979.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1979.2010.000.000
Jacopo de’ Barbari was in Nuremberg from 1500 to c.1503 to work for Emperor Maximilian I. The Venetian artist shared figure studies with Dürer but purportedly refused to divulge the secret to accurately rendering human proportions. De’ Barbari’s skill in depicting the idealised nude can be found in the two female devotees to the Roman god of fertility, Priapus. The lamp burning on the altar conceals and simultaneously suggests the god’s erotic attribute of an enlarged phallus.
after Albrecht Dürer (artist)
Germany, 1471-1528
Charles Amand-Durand (publisher)
France, 1831-1905
Witch riding backwards on a goat (c.1500), copy printed c.1869
photogravure
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.2088.000.000
This influential print takes its meanings from the witch’s body and the goat as a figure of lust. The unusually muscular torso and distaff as appropriated phallus reference powers beyond those of women; the backward ride and flying hair an inversion of natural order; the grasping of the goat’s horn the subversion of sexual norms through cuckoldry. The putti are also attendants of Venus, their playthings possibly signalling the turn of seasons. Witches control weather and upturn sexual order.
after Albrecht Dürer (artist)
Germany, 1471-1528
Charles Amand-Durand (publisher)
France, 1831-1905
The Little Fortune (c.1495), copy printed c.1869
photogravure
Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Prints and Drawings Collection, Archives and Special Collections.
University of Melbourne.
1959.2101.000.000
Fortune balances on a topsy-turvy ball conveying life’s unpredictability in this talismanic early image. She holds a plant known as Sternkraut (starwort), named for its spiky shape and brightness in the dark, and signifying the power of the stars to govern destiny. The plant was used for multiple ailments – especially, as some said, if plucked with the left hand. In 1501, Dürer would engrave Nemesis (The Great Fortune), a tour de force print that similarly personified the vicissitudes of fate.
Unknown artist
Health care consultations
in Hortus sanitatis (Garden of Health) (Mainz: Jacob Meydenbach,1491)
hand-coloured woodcut
George McArthur Bequest, 1903.
Rare Books, Archives and Special Collections.
UniM Bail SpC/RB MTC/20 Incunabula
The Hortus Sanitatis was one of the first printed natural history encyclopaedias. It draws on earlier works by Dioscorides and Albertus Magnus, and lists common and exotic plants, animals, and minerals with their properties and uses. The woodcut depicts medical consultations, including doctors deliberating over urine samples,
an important basis of early medicine. While these works were practical handbooks, complete with index, they were also intended to excite wonder and curiosity.
Page opening on display from 22 July to 9 September 2024
Unknown artist
Copper, Draconite, Deimonis, Dyacodos
in Hortus sanitatis (Garden of Health) (Mainz: Jacob Meydenbach,1491)
hand-coloured woodcuts
George McArthur Bequest, 1903.
Rare Books, Archives and Special Collections.
UniM Bail SpC/RB MTC/20 Incunabula
The Hortus Sanitatis details plants, animals, and minerals used for decoration, healing, and magic. Copper (at left) was valued for its sweet and lasting sound as well as its shine. Other stones’ wonderful properties, related in older works such as Albertus Magnus’ De Mineralibus, were included for curiosity. Draconite, taken from the heads of live dragons (probably snakes) was an antivenene and also sharpened vision. Dyacodos, at far right, is pictured being used for summoning demons to appear in water.
Page opening on display from 9 September to 21 October 2024
Unknown artist
Iuncus, Iudaica, Incense, Indigo
in Hortus sanitatis (Garden of Health) (Mainz: Jacob Meydenbach, 1491)
hand-coloured woodcuts
George McArthur Bequest, 1903.
Rare Books, Archives and Special Collections.
UniM Bail SpC/RB MTC/20 Incunabula
Like this copy, many early herbals were annotated by later owners with alternative or local names. Before Carl Linnaeus developed his classification system in the eighteenth century, the names of plants conveyed ideas about their properties and significance, as well as being important for practical identification. At right, incense – carefully distinguished from frankincense – is depicted alongside indigo. From the early sixteenth century, imports of indigo from Portuguese traders in India led to its increased use in Europe.
Page opening on display from 21 October to 29 November 2024
Master of the Haintz Narr
Switzerland, active 1490s
Christ teaching the prodigal son; butchering a fattened calf
in Johann Meder, Quadragesimale...de filio prodigo (Lenten Sermons on the Prodigal Son)
(Basel: Michael Furter,1495), sig. t vii verso
woodcut
Purchased with funds donated to The Friends of the Baillieu Library by the George Shaw Trust, 2015.
Rare Books, Archives and Special Collections.
UniM Bail SpC/RB MTB/4 Incunabula
Everyday tasks signify spiritual realities in this illustrated sermon collection by Basel Franciscan Johann Meder. Meder’s innovation was to insert a guardian angel and Christ into his version of the parable. In this illustration for the Palm Sunday sermon 41, the artist depicts Christ teaching the penitent son (with father behind) how to meditate on Christ’s passion, while a servant butchers a fattened calf for the feast celebrating the son’s return – thereby also referencing Christ’s death and Christian Communion.