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3 Dürer and the High Art of Printmaking Charles Talbot When Dürer was still in his twenties, his contemporaries began to compare him with the great artists of antiquity.1 We no longer take his measure in this way, but the analogy drawn by Erasmus of Rotterdam still serves as a touchstone in modern commentaries on his prints.2 Dürer trumped Apelles, so Erasmus reasoned, because the latter required colors to accomplish what Dürer could do with black lines alone. Evocation of the name Apelles not only invites a question about the standards of great art in the sixteenth century but also, and especially on this occasion, about the capacity of prints to measure up to such standards. Among the qualities possessed by the art of Apelles and other celebrated painters of antiquity, mimesis inspired the most acclaim. Such imitation of appearances pertained both to a picture’s truth to nature and to its persuasiveness that the things shown in it were actually present before a viewer’s eyes. So did Erasmus express his wonder that Dürer could turn black lines into the appearance of fire or lightning as convincingly as could any painter with a brush. Though Dürer seems to have realized early in his adult life that images replicated by the press were his and even society’s way to the future, woodcuts and engravings, being late arrivals to the family of the visual arts, would need to achieve a higher standing as an art form if they were ever to be considered 36 charles talbot in a class with the primary figural arts, painting and sculpture. There is no suspense now about the outcome, but the path of Dürer’s thinking about this challenge remains less obvious. This essay means to glean some of his thoughts, and in so doing examines in particular the question of how he conceived of the print in relation to painting and sculpture. For all his accomplishments in the field of engraving and woodcut, doubts must have lingered in Dürer’s mind about their standing as prints relative to the other arts. When he arrived in Venice for the second time in the latter part of 1505, his reputation, like his prominent monogram, was inseparably attached to prints. Nevertheless, he produced not a single new example during his sojourn of more than a year, forgoing the opportunity to demonstrate in situ his unsurpassed mastery with the burin. Instead he concentrated on painting, his major project being the Feast of the Rose Garlands (A. 93; see Figure 6.3) As it turned out, this painting and the drawings for it were to reshape his thinking about prints after his return to Nuremberg in January 1507, and the remainder of that decade was a period of astonishing productivity in printmaking. But while in Venice, he was preoccupied with opinions regarding his ability as a painter. He peppered his letters to Willibald Pirckheimer , his friend in Nuremberg, with comments about the recognition he had received for painting. On February 7, 1506, he wrote that despite the criticisms of some Italian artists that he lacked a proper understanding of the ‘‘antique’’ manner, they nonetheless copied his work; and that the best among them, Giovanni Bellini, ‘‘came to me and asked me to paint him something and he would pay well for it.’’3 Then on September 8, 1506, upon the completion of the Feast of the Rose Garlands, Dürer wrote, ‘‘I have stopped the mouths of all the painters who used to say that I was good at engraving but, as to painting, I did not know how to handle my colours. Now every one says that better colouring they have never seen.’’4 On September 23, he continued, ‘‘there is no better Madonna picture in the land than mine; for all the painters praise it.’’5 It is understandable that Dürer the painter was keen to demonstrate his prowess with the brush in this city of famous painters, and since Venice was an important distribution point for his graphic work, he reckoned that his new painting in the church of San Bartolommeo would be good publicity for his print business as well as for his reputation overall. But he mentioned nothing to Pirckheimer about prints, and he left it to Vasari to report on his anger over Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraved copies of the woodcuts from the Life of the Virgin (B. 76–95; see...

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