The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art

"This is a seminal text in art history because it refers not only to Dürer specifically, but to the evolution of the idea of the artist. The Northern Renaissance , you could say, triggered a kind of paradigm shift. Where previously artists were largely anonymous craftsmen, in this period, they moved to becoming very much active protagonists in the Renaissance cultural drama around them. Historiographically, part of that interest in self-fashioning was linked to Lisa Jardine ’s work, which spoke of Erasmus and men of letters at the time. And Stephen Greenblatt ‘s work, too. Koerner’s book took threads from both and applied them to art history by claiming that here we have a kind of antecedent of modernism — there’s a pact between the artist and the beholder. As Koerner puts it in this immensely elegantly written book, it’s almost as if Dürer made sure that one of his self-portraits would be on the cover of every book about the Northern Renaissance. It’s very cleverly unpacking the way in which Dürer used his monogram obsessively to claim authorship. A literal rendering of the famous AD trademark would say that it was because he simply didn’t want to be plagiarised, at a time when the printing press made reproduction easily accessible. It was also clearly a kind of branding strategy, in the sense that it was a way to make money. Koerner, however, turns it into something that’s more than these practical concerns. For him, the monogram reflects Dürer´s impulse to project himself, not just as a craftsman but as an artist. What I find very compelling and still very interesting about the book is also the second part, often a bit neglected in discussions of Dürer. It concerns his disciple and close associate Hans Baldung Grien . We know that they were very close because it’s Baldung Grien who inherits one of Dürer’s locks of hair, still preserved in Vienna, believe it or not. And of course, Dürer was immensely proud of his hair! It’s something that brings out so well Dürer’s extraordinary investment in and awareness of his own body. The Baldung Grien section is very interesting because Koerner claims that Dürer, with his interest in perspective and rather obsessive measurements of proportion, is also interested in a certain idea of order. That is already upended by Baldung, who produced extraordinary woodcuts crammed full of depictions of disorder without a moralising voice — with horses that ejaculate, scenes with little peeping toms in them, where the onlooker becomes complicit through the way in which the visual field is constructed. His prints bring out the wildness of human and animal life while dealing with fantasy. This says something very different about what art can do, how it pleases and unsettles. That is immediately a kind of up-ending of Dürer’s investment in religion and in visual order, including the way that the viewer is implicated in the phenomenon of the artwork itself. I nonetheless don’t agree with all of Koerner’s characterisations of Dürer as a solitary self-fashioning genius. Pamela Smith’s book, for instance, provides a very different view of Dürer in the context of collaboration."

"Joseph Koerner’s book, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (1997) , was a really important book for me as an art historian because it showed me how to think about portraiture not just in terms of who was portrayed, but also how the artistic process works and what a portrait enables the artist to do. There’s a drawing of six pillows that Dürer makes on the verso (or flipside) of one of his early self-portraits that is now in the Met. Koerner asks us to think: did the artist approach his own face in the same, highly objective way as the pillows? There’s something wonderful about that moment when the artist uses his own body as an object, in a world of objects, as a site to study and a form to master. What I took to heart from Koerner’s book is the tenuous line between interiority and exteriority: of how the artist pulls the idea out of his mind’s eye and transcribes this through his hand onto the sheet of paper. That becomes a somewhat existential phenomenon when that object happens to be yourself. Then where do insides and outsides begin and end? Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Dürer was a very self-conscious artist. He consistently signed his prints, watercolours, and paintings with his ‘AD’ monogram. He portrayed himself in numerous self-portraits, and they’re always very chatty self-portraits. There’s often an inscription that identifies him as Albrecht Dürer, lest subsequent generations lose memory of his facial identity. Like a tag or status update on social media, Dürer’s inscription will tell us that this is Albrecht Dürer, that he is a German artist, that he painted himself in 1484, 1493, 1497, 1500, 1506, 1508, 1511, etc. “Dürer, certainly, was one of the earliest artists who really understood the potential power that artists have, as image makers, to create that lasting image for themselves” In the famous self-portrait, which is on the cover of Koerner’s book, you have the monogram on the left, then you have Dürer’s face, and then you have an inscription on the right that announces his name. There’s this remarkable triple inscription of Dürer, a ‘trinity’ if you will, and self-portraiture becomes a highly curated, self-conscious affair. Sometimes Dürer shows up in the background of his own paintings, like the way Hitchcock would appear in his own films, but almost always he’ll be carrying a sign or a tablet that identifies him for the future spectator. That sense of speaking to posterity is very important in the Renaissance. The Italian poet Petrarch wrote a “Letter to Posterity,” addressed to the future with this understanding of his fame as something that would live on beyond himself. Dürer, certainly, was one of the earliest artists who really understood the potential power that artists have, as image makers, to create that lasting image for themselves. People often misconstrue his self-identification with Christ as a form of artistic arrogance. On the one hand, there’s all of the earthly trappings such as the fur collar that he’s wearing – all of the elegant worldly trappings that he can’t help but want to show off. On the other hand, there’s also this quiet, confessional mood. It invokes the well-known classical adage nosce te ipsum (or know thyself). It can therefore be considered as a visual confession about self-knowledge and truth before God. For Dürer, who was profoundly Christian and a man of the Reformation to come, the imitation of Christ was a gesture of piety. It’s a very intimate portrait, emphasized by the darkness of the background and the frontality of his pose. It reads like a man looking into the mirror contemplating the image that looks back at him and reflecting upon who he appears to be as opposed to who he wants to be, the ideal virtuous self that he hopes to find in the traits of his face. Dürer’s direct gaze addresses three unknowns: God, his own reflection in the mirror, and the future viewer of the painting."