Gothic Era

 

Durer's Workshop in Nuremberg, 1495-1505


 

Self-Portrait in a Fur-Collared Robe
1500
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Self-Portrait in a Fur-Collared Robe

Carel von Mander (1617) saw this painting in Nuremberg, and it stayed in the city hall there until 1805, the year it was sold to the gallery (Pinakothek) of Munich. Except for the background, which has been repainted, the painting has been well preserved. Many aspects of this most famous portrait, which has prompted a number of interpretations, are, to say the least, unusual. The first observation concerns the depiction of the front profile: its symmetry, evident not only in his facial features but also in the placement of the curly hair to the sides of the head, recalls the "true icon," the true image of Christ, the model for every image of the blessed face, even in his depiction of the Holy Shroud.
The fact that the portrait is almost life-size is as exceptional, for it is a dimension that artists commonly avoided. The third observation: the vanity and the self-satisfaction that the artist had persisted with in his previous portraits acquires a completely new appearance. He renounces any example of his exploits and cleverness and adopts a classical form, unusual for him. This form presupposes a serious study of proportions.
According to Winzinger's calculations (Zeitschrift fur Kunstwissenschaft 8, 1954), the portrait is constructed according to the dictates of the gold section, or, at the very least, according to precise rules, beginning with the proportions of the dimension of the portrait. The same had already occurred in the representation of the head of Christ. Undoubtedly, the source of this correspondence in Durer's thought could be the biblical affirmation that God created man in His own image. However, this does not necessarily mean that the artist intended to paint an imi-tatio Christi (Barinton, Art Bulletin 29, 1947, pp. 269 ft), even if the year 1500 was also a holy year and that this sort of idea is not to be totally dismissed. We can find a plausible motivation of this autoidentification of Durer and the image of Christ in Saint Bonaventure, who believed that the human being's creative abilities bring him closer to God. This line of thought was subsequently drawn upon by the Neoplatonic school in Florence (which Durer had come into contact with through his friend Pirckheimer). Anzelewsky's thesis is just as convincing (1991). He sustains that the window that is reflected in Durer's eyes—a detail that is frequently found in his portraits and depictions of the Madonna—does not only represent reality, but mirrors Leonardo's thought: oculi fenestrae an-imae. Camerarius's interpretation runs similarly, holding that in Durer's biography (Rupprich, 1956, p. 307), the artist transfers the figures seen internally "with the eye of the soul," in the visible reality of things.
To the reference to christoformitas is added also the allusion to the creative force of the artist.
It must be emphasized that Durer apparently follows another topos in this self-portrait, what Vasari adopts in his Vite to praise the best portraits: to seem truly alive. In fact, the artist's eyes are still moist, the flesh is so bodily it seems palpable, and the fur and the material seem real. At the same time, he was concerned about rendering a spirituality in the facial expression, lengthening the features and making the forehead higher.

Lamentation over the Dead Christ
1500
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Paumgartner Altar
c. 1503
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
 

Paumgartner Altar


Emperor Rudolph II did not manage to acquire the painting, which in 1613-14 was removed from the church of Saint Catherine in Nuremberg, to be given to Maximilian of Bavaria.

Center panel

On the left side, Durer invented, with an almost perpendicular perspective with respect to the observer, a complex of ruins made up of huge, partly broken blocks of stone.
A large round arch made of square stones is erected upon these stones and shifted toward the left. The arch, in turn, is surmounted by a large slab in an apparently precarious balance, and by a huge angular rock. From here, rising on a step along the wall beside the arch, you reach another rounded arch. This one is much higher than, and perpendicular to, the first.
It leads to another structure to the right, where two smaller arches, resting on columns with Romanic cubic capitals, delimit the stable of the ox and donkey.
The two facades, on the left and on the right, establish a perspective series toward the landscape passage in the background. This passage is contrasted with the three planks resting on the right wall and on the transversal arch, and, lower down, with the wooden roof that stretches from the right-hand wall toward the center, protecting the Madonna and the infant Jesus. This whole arrangement can be considered proof of the level Durer's abilities had reached in perspectival representation—though as yet imperfect, as far as the rules of central perspective are concerned. It is the setting of the Nativity. The characters are distributed in the open space between the two houses under the shelter of a roof, as the "golden legend" says. The Virgin is in front of the small archways on the right. She stands ahead of Joseph, who remains outside the roof cover; two shepherds appear beyond and behind the Madonna, in the distance, above a hill, is the scene of the angel appearing "in the splendor of the glory of the Lord" to the shepherds grazing their sheep, announcing the "good news." The two shepherds who enter the scene are speaking animatedly, and one of them, in a sign of devotion, has also removed his hat. However, they do not yet realize, emotional as they are, that they are so close to their destination.
The Virgin Mary is depicted on bended knee and in adoration of her son, as her gaze and her folded arms reveal. He is a little baby, held and caressed by a group of playful little angels. Jesus crosses his legs and looks tenderly at his mother, stretching his arms out toward her, a gesture and a gaze that perhaps signifies the acceptance of the task that awaits him.
The shepherds are moving toward the creche, although the panel does not represent the "adoration of the shepherds." They are too immersed in their own con versation. The central theme of the panel is surely the "adoration of Mary." An unusually large Joseph approaches the foreground and emerges from a gap in the stones. Leaning with his right hand on the socle of the roof, he looks to the Madonna. He has a saddlebag hanging from his side, and in his left hand he holds a lamp firmly, which does not, however, emit any light. The blessed night appears illuminated by a great, mysterious round light in the top left. It is, however, a fictive light, since the whole scene of the nativity is illuminated by an invisible source in the bottom left corner. According to Panofsky, Joseph's lantern would have an emblematic value (1955): it would represent the splendor materialis, which, according to Saint Brigid of Sweden, is obscured by the splendor divinus of the newborn Savior.
Joseph, in his role of putative father, is usually represented in Nordic art as a ridiculous figure. Here he enjoys an important position, without taking on a dominant role in the story. After ail, it is true that the pole supporting the roof excludes him from the principal scene. The presence of the two male figures leaning out from the left, from the shadow of the wooden beams inserted below the arch, is curious. The meaning of the plants that sprout from the ruins is obvious: they allude to the coming of the new era that has begun with the birth of Christ. Durer, unlike the other workshops of his day, produced very few altarpieces. In this panel, he apparently demonstrates much less interest for the christological content of the represented theme than for the formal problems: the architecture, light, and perspective. The latter remains his primary concern, even if, objectively, he did not succeed in resolving these problems in a totally satisfying way. But it is still possible that he did want to confront them, through the formal artistic solutions of Hugo von der Goes, who in 1483 was in Florence and whom he likely knew through his drawings (Panofsky). His patron was not a clergy man; neither do we find any reference to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for which occasion he would have commissioned the work.
The small figures of the patrons remain outside the technical and artistic problems of the painting. They were inserted a bit haphazardly wherever there was any space left over. On the left is Martin Paumgartner (died in 1478), his sons Lukas and Stephan, and perhaps Hans Schonbach, the second husband of his widow, Barbara Volkhammer (died in 1494). She is depicted on the right together with her daughters Maria and Barbara. Everyone is depicted with their coat of arms.


Side Panels

The figures of the saints are a completely different artistic matter. They are painted in almost actual size on the side panels representing the portraits of the patrons: Saint George could be Stephan Paumgartner, and Saint Eustace, Lukas They are, according to Anzelewsky (1991), the first full-length portraits known to us, except for those of 1504 of the Stalberg spouses in the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt, by the "Master of the Stalburg portraits." As for the rest, from observing the bearing of the two figures, studied carefully, and their marked plasticity and expressiveness of the physiognomies, one could argue that the side panels were painted after the central one. When the side panels would be turned slightly forward, the figures of the patrons found themselves observing the scene represented on the central panel. The panels were painted even on the back, but of these, only the left one has been preserved. It represents the Madonna of the Annunciation (Strieder, 1933, fig. 463) and comes from a workshop. A copy of the Paumgartner altar is located in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.