Sammelband containing De Symmetria Partium (1532), De Varietate Figurarum (1534), Etliche underricht zu befestigung der Stett Schloss und Flecke (1527), and Underweysung der Messung (1538)
Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528)
1525–38
- Medium
- Book of letterpress text and woodcut illustrations on cream laid paper, extra-illustrated with a woodcut in black on ivory laid paper, tipped in after the front flyleaf; in full alum-tawed pigskin over beveled wooden boards, sewn on…
- Classification
- Book
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 29.2 × 20 cm (11 1/2 × 7 7/8 in.)
- Culture
- Germany
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
A posthumous impression of Albrecht Dürer’s first Knot has been tipped in opposite the frontispiece of this copy of On Human Proportion, Dürer’s book on anatomy for artists. It is the first element in a collected volume of late editions of several texts by the master (On Human Proportion, 1532–38, On Fortifications, 1527, and The Painter’s Manual, 1538). This second state of the woodcut is the only one to include an ad monogram. Dürer’s fame was already such that his eminently recognizable nested initials had become an ornamental motif in their own right. Annotations on the print’s verso date it to August 14, 1606, about when the sheet was reprinted and probably when it was purchased.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
