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The 2010 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: Albrecht Dürer as Collector*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jeffrey Chipps Smith
Jeffrey Chipps Smith*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
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Abstract

Albrecht Dürer avidly collected for his professional and personal pleasure. Drawing upon textual and artistic evidence, it is possible to assess what sorts of objects he acquired. Through purchases, bartering, and gifts, Dürer amassed an important library with authors ranging from Euclid to Martin Luther. Among his many dealings with contemporary masters, he exchanged drawings with Raphael, swapped prints with Lucas van Leyden, and bought a Salvator Mundi illuminated by Susanna Horenbout. Dürer was fascinated by objects of natural rarity and of exotic, non-European origins. He also self-collected. Some paintings and drawings, occasionally inscribed with biographical or autobiographical information, were intended primarily for his, his family's, and his close friends’ private consumption. The holdings displayed in his Nuremberg house anticipated the art and wonder chambers that became popular later in the sixteenth century. The collection offers new insights into Dürer's conscious efforts of self-fashioning.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 1 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

*

Please see the online version of this article for color illustrations. I first presented this at the American Academy in Berlin and then as the Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture at The Renaissance Society of America's meeting in Venice on 10 April 2010. I wish to thank John Monfasani, Marty Elsky, and Laura Schwartz in New York; Alexia Rostow, Mirka Fetté, and Peter Hess in Austin; Lisa (Miriam) Kirch in Florence, AL, who read my draft; Magdalena Bushart, Hans Dickel, Stephan Kemperdick, Michael Roth, and Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg in Berlin. I am especially grateful to Gary Smith and the staff of the American Academy in Berlin, where I held the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellowship in spring 2010, and to the Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth, which generously supports my research.

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