Introduction

Despite Albrecht Durer’s enormous artistic output, immediate success in various media, and more than five centuries of scholarship devoted to his work, current research continues to reveal information related to his choice of materials and techniques. Given their wide distribution as prints, Durer’s three meisterstiche impressions – Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513) (Figures 4.1 and 4.2) St. Jerome in His Study (1514) (Figure 4.3); and Melencolia I (1514) (Figures 4.4 and 4.5) – have been admired and closely studied, perhaps even more than his paintings and drawings. Of the hundreds of known extant impressions of these works, many were cataloged by Bartsch (1803–1821), Meder (1932), and Hollstein (1954). These and other studies variously describe Durer’s impressions as rich, clean, with burr, excellent, poor, lighter, darker, silvery, brownish, and/or tonal. In light of the inherent subjectivity in judgments of impression quality, this essay outlines the author’s in-depth comparative study across and between impressions carried out using a modified digital camera and modern imaging technology.

As a copperplate such as those produced for the meisterstiche is inked for printing, the hard and sharp fragments of microscopic burr residue left by the burin and inclusions in the carbon-based ink pigment are repeatedly rubbed into its lines for hundreds of impressions, and the condition of the metal matrix gradually declines.