Dürer's Lost Masterpiece: Art and Society at the Dawn of a Global World

“Many people come to Dürer early in life as children. He had such a wonderfully engaging way of observing nature — just think of the famous image of the hare, for example, which has become very familiar. Growing up in Germany, Dürer was extremely prominent. As a child I was taken to see his house in Nuremberg, I collected postcards by him. And yet, I only discovered much later that he had written a lot, and that we could actually find out a great deal about him as a person from his writings as much as his art. For me, this was a discovery that demystified him in certain ways. It became possible to know Dürer as an individual…Firstly, I was very intrigued by him as a person, with the way he dealt with the very real commercial pressures of his time, a period of rapid economic and social transformation. Secondly, in a very Renaissance way, he felt pressure to project himself and fashion himself, something we will discuss later. Thirdly, on my reading of the many texts he left behind, I wanted to show that he was actually a challenging and contradictory character. “ Read more...

The best books on Albrecht Dürer

Ulinka Rublack, Art Historians, Critics & Curator