Books by Mitchell B. Merback

Albrecht Dürer was the archetype of the Renaissance man, but also the prototypical artist-merchant, and very much a man of the world, says historian Ulinka Rublack. Dürer’s self-portraits, particularly the Christ-like image from 1500, have branded him as art history’s ultimate narcissist, but this is a view that does justice to neither his work nor to the complex and conflicted creative individual that he was, she says. She recommends books on Dürer’s Renaissance that reveal a much more nuanced artist and a richer sense of the times in which he lived and created.