Dürer's Lost Masterpiece tracks the history of a turning point in the career of the celebrated German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528),when he stopped painting altarpieces after arguing with a merchant patron over payment. As an eloquent homage to Dürer life,it brings us closer to the creation and meaning of his paintings than ever before.Dürer's Lost Masterpiece considers the celebrated German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528),his time and his legacy. It tracks the history of a crucial,and often overlooked,turning point in his career,when Dürer stopped painting altarpieces after falling out with the Frankfurt merchant Jacob Heller over a commission. The story of this painting,as Dürer lost masterpiece,functions as a lens through which to view the new relationship developing between art,collecting and commerce in Europe up to the Thirty YearsWar (1618-1648) when global trade and cultural exchanges were increasing. At the heart of the book is the argument that merchants,and their mentalities,were crucial for the making of Renaissance art and its legacy for modern art. The book draws on a decade of research,and uniquely draws the reader into the rich emotional worlds of three merchants each of whom typified the evolving relationship between art and commerce in that entrepreneurial,and often ruthless,age. It brings to life Dürer determined fight for creative makers to be adequately paid and explores the big questions about how European societies came to value the arts and crafts that remain relevant to our time.
MEDIA REVIEWS
Publisher: Oxford University PressISBN: 9780198873105Weight: 1218 gDimensions: 254 x 197 x 26 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Ulinka Rublack's new book successfully combines a close reading of the sources for the life and work of Albrecht D"urer with a wide-ranging account of art as a luxury commodity at a time when the trade in luxuries was going global.Ulinka Rublack masterfully recontextualizes Albrecht D"urer's lost Heller Altarpiece,it production,and its fate. Yet her fascinating account is equally about German material culture,the rise of artistic advisors and agents,notably Hans Fugger and Philipp Hainhofer,the emerging global marketplace,and discerning collectors in Bavaria and England. Rublack recenters German creativity and tastes within the broader movement of art,ideas,and individuals across Europe.A stunning achievement by a historian at the pinnacle of her craft-at once a sensitive portrait of D"urer's emotional life that allows us to understand as a whole his desire to show what he could do with and for art at a time of transformative change and conflict in German society,and a vivid depiction of the merchants and nobles locked in fateful embrace who fueled the burgeoning world of global commerce,awash in material things and exotica,and who made D"urer who he was both in his day and in ours. Quite simply a tour de force.Ulinka Rublack's fascinating study reminds us of this rich interconnectedness of people,ideas,and the material world during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.Ambitious and impressive... a remarkable story.(D"urer's Lost Masterpiece) lays out methodically,with academic brilliance,the marketplace,techno-aware basis of the'D"urer Renaissance'and the artist's rise to immortal fame. With a glorious accumulation of detail,assiduous research...a deluxe book.Illuminating... In (Rublack's) hands,the narrative of D"urer's success...becomes something far more nuanced... A novel biography of an artist.
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