Albrecht Durer: Paintings, Prints, Drawings. by Peter Strieder; Nancy M. Gordon; Walter L.StraussReview by: Charles TalbotThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 153-154Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2542081 .

Accessed: 17/06/2014 04:38

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheSixteenth Century Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.251 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 04:38:05 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Book Reviews 153

The fifth section illustrates the "Power of Women" topos, designed to "demonstrate men's vision of women's power, whether it is a power used for good or for evil" (147). Included in this group are such characters as Salome and Delilah, who used their feminine wiles to triumph over men, as well as the more terrifying stereotypes of witches. While there is a touch of humor in topsy-turvy images like that of Phyllis riding Aristotle, other representations point toward more disturbing, misogynist readings; scenes ofJael killing Sisera, for example, portray not only aJewish heroine but a deceptive, murderous woman.

More pleasant images greet us in the following section on "Lovers, and Lovers with Death," which focuses on the intimate, amorous ways women and men relate to each other. These prints range widely, from depictions of tender young love to ridiculous "ill-paired" couples to horrifying scenes of Death devouring lovers. Female personifications of Fortune and Prudence form the final group of prints. Strongly gendered images of Fortune, like Durer's Nemesis, were highly significant representations for actual women, since contemporary writers often identified the capriciousness of Fortune with women's supposed fickleness and irrationality. Even the more positive figure of Prudence was subject to equivocal readings and profound tensions when represented as a female nude.

Despite its many strong features, the catalogue is not without its problems. One questions the particular arrangement of categories, especially the decision to begin with heroines rather than with representations of the Virgin, which are the most numerous, tenacious, and exemplary of one pole of female conduct. The core sections on the Virgin and Eve are also unfortunately the weakest; here the selection of images and accompanying text are not always tied explicitly to the show's stated themes. A conclusion mapping out discernible patterns and still open questions would have been useful. Nevertheless, this catalogue offers a valuable survey of some of the powerful images that shaped the experiences of women and men in early modern Europe, images that continue to guide our own assumptions today. Sharon T. Strocchia ....................... Emory University

Albrecht Direr: Paintings, Prints, Drawings. Peter Strieder. rev. ed., trans. Nancy M. Gordon and Walter L. Strauss. New York: Abaris Books, 1989. $95

This book, first published in English in 1982, will already be known to most students of Germany's greatest artist. It is an omnibus Durer, whose usefulness derives in large part not only from Strieder's informative text, but also from the illustrations he has chosen to accompany his commentary. The number, quality and extended captions of the illustrations provide a vivid, coherent and visually comprehensive portrayal of Durer's achievements as a draftsman, printmaker and painter. Additional contributions are provided by three of Strieder's colleagues: Gisela Goldberg, whose section on the "Four Apostles" puts to rest the theory that the two panels were altered in mid-course to salvage an interrupted commission for an altarpiece; Joseph Harnest, whose clear diagrams provide the most comprehensible

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.251 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 04:38:05 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

154 The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIII/1 (1992)

instruction yet on Durer's use of perspective; and Matthias Mende, who offers a selection of writings by and on Durer.

The high quality of the illustrations (some 133 in color and twice as many in black and white) will come as a welcome surprise to anyone who has grown accustomed to the fuzzy half-tones in most books produced by this publisher. The plates for this book had been made for the original German edition and were printed in Belgium, at least according to the 1982 English edition. The occasion for this review is that the book was reissued 1989 in a so called "Revised Edition". No one who has the earlier edition needs to trade it in. The revisions are limited to minor changes or additions in a half-dozen of the 455 captions and in two places of the text. In his discussion of the "Feast of the Rose Garlands", the picture Durer made in Venice in 1506 to silence his Italian critics who said that he well could draw but understood nothing of color, Strieder (120) has now added identifications for some of the figures who were associated with the Brotherhood of the Rosary and who may be shown assembled around the Virgin Mary. Strieder acknowledges that this information comes from Gilles Gerary Meerssemann but neglects to provide the bibliographical reference (Le origini della Confraternita del Rosario e della sua iconografia in Italia, Atti et memorie dell' Accademia patavina di scienze, lettere ed arti 76, 1963/64). The bibliography, by the way, is too brief and quirky for a serious monograph on Durer. One suspects it may be as much the product of the publisher and translator as of Strieder himself. In the revised edition the bibliography differs from that of the 1982 English edition by the addition of only five titles. The second textual revision amounts to no more than a sentence (p. 218), namely mention of the recovery of an important landscape watercolor, "View from Trent", one of the many drawings by Durer missing from the Kunsthalle in Bremen since the end of World War II. There was even better news about the missing drawings a year or so ago. A cache of 362 sheets from Bremen, including twenty-eight by Durer, had been found near Berlin in 1945 and hidden in Moscow since then by a Russian soldier and architect who now was returning them to the Kunsthalle.

However limited the revisions of the 1989 edition, this remains a good book to keep in print. Strieder, director emeritus of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, organized the major exhibition there in 1971, commemorating the 500th anniversary of Durer's birth. This book generally follows the plan of that exhibition. It places Durer's art within chapters on historical place, cultural context and theme. What we learn from this is enlightening and helpful to our understanding of the circumstances in which Durer developed his thinking about art. But such an organization also results in occasional difficulty in finding the right place to discuss certain works, such as the placement of "Melencolia I" in a chapter on religious art. Also, it should be noted that the emphasis on circumstances tends to displace analysis and sustained discussion of individual works. This is not the book, for example, from which to learn why Direr's woodcuts of the Apocalypse constitute such a revolutionary achievement. But for that we still have the earlier and still indispensable monographs by Panofsky and Wolfflin, which Strieder complements but has no intention to supersede. Charles Talbot .................... . Trinity University

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.251 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 04:38:05 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions