Albrecht Durer's Painting Bacchanal With Silenus

When one thinks of Renaissance artists, they’d likely think of the Italian Big Three of Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Raphael. And for good reason; their works are timeless and iconic, masterpieces that have inspired artists and intrigued scholars, but not all the artistic genius of the Renaissance resided in Italy. Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), a German artist, engraver, and Protestant, is one very prominent example. He is, quite definitively, the most famous artist of the Northern Renaissance, and is just as masterful as any Italian artist. Albrecht Durer was a magnificent artist of the Renaissance whose paintings, drawings, engravings, technique, and books on art theory have earned him a relatively permanent place in history.

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The drawing Bacchanal with Silenus (after Mantegna) is a precise example of this. To elaborate on the cultural relevance of these works; Praying Hands, an intended work for the Heller Altarpiece, a wonderfully complex and detailed image of the relatively simple “prayer hands” pose. It has been copied and emblemized throughout history, and is likely easily recognizable. Another culturally relevant piece of work is one of Durer’s most famous (oil) paintings, Self-Portrait at the Age of Twenty Eight; his last self-portrait out of three. This self-portrait is notable for its (at the time) unique portrayal of the artist as well as its similarity to the religious artwork of the time (Open Culture, The Genius of Albrecht Durer Revealed in Four Self-Portraits, openculture.com, http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/the_genius_of_albrecht_durer_revealed_in_four_self-portraits.html, June 2007). One last major and prominent painting of Durer’s is his The Four Apostles, a depiction of the Saints John, Peter, Mark, and Paul, which is important to the Protestant Reformation in Germany, as the bareboned Protestant churches lacked any true religious art (Pitkin, Barbara. Artway, When a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Luther, Durer, and the Living Word of God, artway.eu, http://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=1038&lang=en&action=show,October 2011). Durer’s paintings and

Take, for example, the famous Adam and Eve. classic its premise, revolutionary in its portrayal. Durer’s so-called master prints (Meisterstiche) displayed his legendary engraving technique, which consisted of tonality, texture, and complex shading (crosshatching). His Meisterstiche, the three engravings Melancholia I, Knight, Death, and The Devil, and St. Jerome in His Study are wondrous,well-thought, and simply beautiful works which display the philosophies, religious beliefs, and ideals of the time as well as Durer himself. The, perhaps, most famous of the three is Melancholia I, which displays Melancholy herself, slumped over in, well, melancholy, surrounded by the geometric tools one Renaissance artists and mathematicians would typically use. It is believed that this engraving is quite complex, symbolizing the Medieval proto-psychologic theory of temperaments (in this case, melancholic), and the two-edged intellectualistic dilemma geniuses such as Durer experienced (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Melancholia I, metmuseum.org, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/336228) . Just as popular, the Knight, Death, and The Devil portrays a knight on a steed being followed by the devil. With the added appearance of an hourglass, it is quite clear that this engraving is a memento mori, a clear and ominous reminder of death. It is heavily tied into Christianity and its philosophies