Saint Eustace
Bartrum, Giulia. Albrecht Dürer and His Legacy: The Graphic Work of a Renaissance Artist. London: British Museum Press, 2002.
Bartrum, Giulia. German Renaissance Prints 1490–1550. Exh. cat. London: British Museum Press, 1995.
Bartsch, Adam, et al. The Illustrated Bartsch. Vol. 10, Sixteenth Century German Artists, Albrecht Dürer. Edited by Walter L. Strauss. New York: Abaris, 1981.
Clifton, James, with David Nirenberg and Linda Elaine Neagley. The Body of Christ: In the Art of Europe and New Spain, 1150–1800. Munich: Prestel, 1998.
Conway, William M., ed. The Writings of Albrecht Dürer. London: Peter Owen, 1958.
Dodgson, Campbell. Albrecht Dürer. London: 1926; New York: Da Capo, 1967. Reprint of the first edition.
Fearing, Kelly, Emma Lea Mayton, and Rebecca Brooks. The Way of Art: Inner Vision, Outer Expression. Austin: W. S. Benson, 1986.
Hollstein, Friedrich Wilhelm, Karel Gerald Boon, and Robert Walter Scheller, eds. German Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1400–1700. Vol. 7, Albrecht and Hans Dürer. Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1962.
Meder, Joseph. Dürer-Katalog: Ein Handbuch uber Albrecht Dürers Stiche, Radierungen, Holzschitte, deren Zustande, Ausgaben und Wasserzeichen. Vienna: Verlag Gilhofer und Ranschburg, 1932. Reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1971.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Catalogue of the Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection,
Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1945.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A Permanent Legacy: 150 Works from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. With an introduction by Peter C. Marzio. New York: Hudson Hills, 1989.
Panofsky, Erwin. “Dürer’s St. Eustace.” Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, 9, no. 1 (1950): 2–10.
Panofsky, Erwin. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer. With introduction by Jeffrey Chipps Smith. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Rowlands, John. The Graphic Work of Albrecht Dürer: An Exhibition of Drawings and Prints in Commemoration of the Quincentenary of His Birth. London: British Museum, 1971.
Rupperich, Hans. Dürer: Schriftlicher Nachlass. 3 vols. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag Fur Kunstwissenschaft, 1956–69.
Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin. Vol. 5, Modern Painters. New York and Chicago: National Library Association, n.d.
Sayre, Eleanor, C., et al. Albrecht Dürer: Master Printmaker. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts; New York: Hacker Art Books, 1971.
Schilling, Edmund. The German Drawings in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle. London: Phaidon, 1971.
Schoch, Rainer, Matthias Mende, and Anna Scherbaum. Albrecht Dürer: Das druckgraphische Werk. Vol. I, Intaglio. Munich: Prestel, 2001–4.
Strauss, Walter L. Albrecht Dürer: Intaglio Prints, Engravings, Etchings & Drypoints. New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1976.
Strauss, Walter L. The Complete Drawings of Albrecht Dürer. 6 vols. New York: Abaris, 1974.
Strauss, Walter L. The Complete Etchings, Engravings and Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer. New York: Dover, 1972.
Syson, Luke, and Dillian Gordon with Susanna Avery-Quash. Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court. London: National Gallery Company, 2001.
Talbot, Charles W., ed. Dürer in America: His Graphic Work. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1971.
Tietze, Hans, and Erika Tietze-Conrat. Kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke Albrecht Dürer. 3 vols. Augsburg: Basel Holbein, 1928–38.
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Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend: Readings of the Saints. Vol. 2. Translated by William Ryan Granger. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
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Wustmann, Rudolf. “Von einigen Tieren und Pflanzen bei Dürer.” Zeitschrift für bildenden Kunst, new series, 22 (1911): 109–16.
ProvenancePrince Waldeck, Germany; [Jacob Hirsch Antiquities & Numismatics, Inc., New York, by 1936]; purchased by Percy S. Straus, New York, April 10, 1936; bequeathed to MFAH, 1944.Born in Nuremberg, Albrecht Dürer trained with his father in the goldsmith profession and continued his instruction under a local painter and designer of woodcuts, Michael Wolgemut (1434–1519). In 1490 he traveled to the Rhineland in hopes of studying with the prominent printmaker Martin Schongauer (c. 1450–53–1491), but when he arrived Schongauer had already died. Dürer ventured to Italy first in 1494–95 and again from 1505 to 1507, where he was exposed to the art of the Italian Renaissance. These journeys increased his visual vocabulary, and the concepts that he learned in Italy spread through his art to Northern Europe. Dürer became official painter to the Emperor Maximilian in 1512. He traveled to the Netherlands for a year beginning in July 1520, and in October, after attending the coronation of Maximilian’s successor and grandson, Charles V, in Aachen, Dürer secured his post with privileges again as official court painter.1 He spent his remaining years in Nuremberg, devoting himself mainly to his scientific and theoretical treaties, though he continued to produce significant engravings, woodcuts, and paintings. Dürer was internationally celebrated in his lifetime and influenced subsequent generations of artists north and south of the Alps, principally through printmaking. In the second edition of Lives of the Artists (1568), the Florentine artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari commented that Dürer was “truly a great painter and creator of the most beautiful copper engravings.”2
Dürer referred frequently to this print as “the Eustace” in his Netherlands diary, having given or sold impressions of it on six occasions during his Netherlandish trip in 1520–21.3 It is a tour de force, being the largest engraving that the artist ever produced and superb in its craftsmanship, richness in detail, and poetic treatment of nature. Emperor Rudolph II supposedly ordered the copper plate that Dürer engraved for the print to be plated in gold.4 The print depicts the legendary Roman general Placidus. While on a hunt with his falcon, Placidus encountered a stag that spoke with the voice of Christ and produced a vision of him on the cross between its antlers, causing the pagan general to fall off his horse. The event inspired him to convert to Christianity and adopt the name Eustace.5 In this engraving, Dürer engages the viewer with an abundance of naturalistic details: a horse, a stag, five greyhounds in diverse poses, stones, foliage from various plant types,6 swans in a river near a bridge, and even a tiny knight on horseback on a road leading through a mountainous terrain to a castle whose turret is encircled by a flock of birds. The artist achieved a lushness of tones and textures while still maintaining linear precision, a hallmark of engraving.
The image was probably inspired by a panel painting of the same subject by the Italian fifteenth-century Italian artist Pisanello, who also treated plants and animals with a high degree of specificity. Dürer probably saw this painting on his Italian travels, perhaps in Verona, in 1495–96.7 Only one existing study made from life by Dürer connects to this print, that of the greyhound that stands closest to the saint (fig. 26.1).8
—Dena M. Woodall
Notes
1. Giulia Bartrum, German Renaissance Prints 1490–1550 (London: British Museum Press, 1995), 23.
2. Giorgio Vasari, Le opera di Giorgio Vasari, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: Samsoni Editore, 1906), 5:403–6; See also Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ piu eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori nelle relazione del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosana Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence: Samsoni Editore, 1966–87). In 1550 Dürer was mentioned twice in “Life of Raphael,” 4:189–90) and in the “Life of Michelangelo” (6:8). In 1568 Vasari mentions Dürer’s prints in the “Life of Marcantonio Bolognese [Raimondi]),” (5:4–8).
3. See Hans Rupperich, Dürer: Schriftlicher Nachlass, vol. 1 (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1956–69), 154, 160, 162, and William M. Conway, ed., The Writings of Albrecht Dürer (London: Peter Owen, 1958), 100.
4. See Adam Bartsch, et. al., The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 10, Sixteenth Century German Artists, Albrecht Dürer, ed. Walter L. Strauss (New York: Abaris, 1981), 57.
5. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings of the Saints, vol. 2, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 266–71. The art critic John Ruskin believed that it was the story of Saint Hubert, the French patron saint of hunters who was widely venerated during the medieval period and whose iconography is often intertwined with the legend of Saint Eustace. When he was hunting, Saint Hubert also envisioned a crucifix between the antlers of a stag, appropriated from the Saint Eustace legend in the fifteenth century. See C. F. Wemyss Brown, “St. Hubert,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), and John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, vol. 5, Modern Painters (New York: T. Y. Crowell, c. 1905), 97, 234.
6. At lower left is the plant called Veronicas officinalis (common gypsyweed), named after Saint Veronica, who is also known for her experience with a miraculous vision of Christ. See Rudolf Wustmann, “Von einigen Tieren und Pflanzen bei Dürer,” Zeitschrift für bildenden Kunst, new series, 22 (1911): 114.
7. Pisanello (possibly about 1394–1455), The Vision of Saint Eustace, c. 1438–42, egg tempera on poplar wood, 21 1/2 x 25 3/4 in. (54.8 x 65.5 cm), National Gallery of Art, London, NG1436. See Walter L. Strauss, Albrecht Dürer: Intaglio Prints, Engravings, Etchings and Drypoints (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1976), cat. 34; Bartsch, et al., The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 10, Sixteenth Century German Artists, Albrecht Dürer, 128–29, cat. 57, and Luke Syson and Dillian Gordon with Susanna Avery-Quash, Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court (London: National Gallery Company, 2001), 156–85.
8. Albrecht Dürer, A Greyhound, c. 1500–1501, brush and ink, the outlines indented with a stylus, 5 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. (14.8 x 19.8 cm), Royal Collection Trust, Windsor, RCIN 912177. See Friedrich Winkler, Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Dürers, vol. 1 (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1909), 167–68, cat. 241, and Edmund Schilling, The German Drawings in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle (London: Phaidon, 1971), S(G) 20.
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