1st Edition

Reframing Albrecht Dürer The Appropriation of Art, 1528–1700

By Andrea Bubenik Copyright 2013
    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    Focusing on the ways his art and persona were valued and criticized by writers, collectors, and artists subsequent to his death, this book examines the reception of the works of Albrecht Dürer. Andrea Bubenik's analysis highlights the intensive and international interest in Dürer's art and personality, and his developing role as a paragon in art historiography, in conjunction with the proliferation of portraits after his likeness. The author traces carefully how Dürer's paintings, prints, drawings and theoretical writings traveled widely, and were appropriated into new contexts and charged with different meanings. Drawing on inventories and correspondences and taking collecting practices into account, Bubenik establishes who owned what by Dürer in the 16th and 17th centuries, and characterizes the key locations where interest in Dürer peaked (especially the courts of Maximilian I in Munich, and Rudolf II in Prague). Bubenik treats the emergent artistic appropriations of Dürer-borrowings from or transformations of his originals-in conjunction with contemporary sources on art theory. The volume includes illustrations of numerous imitative works after Dürer. As well as being the first book to fully address the early reception of the most important of German Renaissance artists, Reframing Albrecht Dürer shows how appropriation is a crucial concept for understanding artistic practice during the early modern period.

    Contents: Introduction - reframing Dürer; Writing and depicting Dürer; Collecting Dürer; Appropriating Dürer; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

    Biography

    Andrea Bubenik is Lecturer in Art History at The University of Queensland, Australia.

    A Yankee Book Peddler US Core Title for 2013

    '... thoroughly researched, well organized, and performs an important function in incorporating information from the latest publications, as well as from earlier ones by Czech and Polish scholars difficult of access. Bubenik relates the whole to modern reception theory in convincing fashion.' Jane Campbell Hutchison, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Emerita

    '... begins with a rehearsal of Dürer’s historiography, and then reviews the artists, images, and collectors who responded to Dürer in the period immediately following his death. The strength of the book is its codification of Dürer’s reception.' Renaissance Quarterly

    '... this book demonstrates the absolute relevance of contemporary reception theory in our understanding of the early modern, as well as the absolute relevance of Dürer in contemporary debates on the role of the artist as a practitioner and as an authority, at the intersection between the production and reception of images and knowledge.' Parergon

    'It is in regard to the collecting of Dürer’s art, its transference from site to site, and the control of its documentation by its owners that Andrea Bubenik’s book makes an important contribution to the study of the reception of Dürer’s work.' CAA Reviews

    'This book really engages with Dürer’s legacy, what the Germans call Rezeption, or the afterlife of his images, particularly around the turn of the seventeenth century. The author ... has immersed herself in the collecting of the great Nuremberg artist’s work in the century-and-a-half following his death.' The Sixteenth Century Journal

    'Bubenik’s ambitious work is certainly a welcome addition in that it brings together numerous important sources and works of art, thus constituting a valuable starting point for any research on the subject.' Print Quarterly