Albrech Dürer is said to have brought the Renaissance north of the Alps and perfected the mass production and distribution of images.
In the summer of 2023, I had the chance to visit the former imperial free city of Nuremberg in Germany. Though it is not one of Germany’s largest cities, Nuremberg remains a prime tourist destination, as it managed to survive World War II with its medieval walls and imperial castle largely intact. For this reason, and because it was located near the Nazi party rally grounds, it was selected by the victorious Allied powers as the best site for the trials of Nazi war criminals. Tourists come to see that vast sweep of history but also to celebrate the city’s reputation as a workshop for toys, jewelry, and home goods. Its annual Christmas market is still an occasion for purchasing the best handicrafts the city has to offer.
But for all the people who have passed through its gates in search of commerce, justice, or simple pleasures, the number one attraction in Nuremberg remains a man who was born and died there and whose influence has likely ensured that Nuremberg’s art museum remains among the world’s greatest. Albrech Dürer is said to have brought the Renaissance north of the Alps and perfected the mass production and distribution of images. Therefore, when I arrived in Nuremberg, it was to Dürer’s house that I went first, still standing at the base of the castle hill and looking roughly as it did at the time of Dürer’s death on April 6, 1528.
The world into which Albrecht Dürer was born in 1471 was very different from the one he helped to create by 1528. I cannot help but wonder what he must have been thinking as he lay dying. He had witnessed a revolution not only in art, but also in religion, politics, and social norms. He watched Nuremberg become the richest city in the German-speaking lands, with all the potentially darker aspects that entail. Many years earlier, his famed woodcuts like Knight, Death, and the Devil and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse suggested a life lived in the constant shadow of death. Dürer was a deep analytical thinker who pondered life’s immensities frequently—perhaps too frequently if his work Melancholia is in any way a self-portrait.
For all we know about Dürer through his surviving artworks and letters, the question remains: Did he see himself as a Lutheran?
Engaging with the Reformation
Dürer was already rich and famous when Martin Luther rose to fame in 1517. Not only was Dürer considered the greatest living German artist, but he was likely also the best-selling artist in Europe because of his mass-produced woodcut images featuring biblical stories, moral representations, and Greek myths. Nuremberg stood at the center of a vast trading network that advanced up to the Hanseatic League cities on the Baltic Sea and down through the mountain passes into the banking centers of Italy. He was also part of the printing network that stretched through the southern German lands, carrying books up and down the Rhine and Danube Rivers. Thus, if there was any news to be heard, Dürer was sure to receive it immediately.
This was never truer than in the case of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. The Castle Church of All Saints to which Luther nailed his words of protest had been decorated partially by Dürer and his mentor, Michael Wolgemut, both Nuremberg artists. The Theses became widely known after someone carried it down to Nuremberg and had it mass produced in the city’s print houses. That is surely when Dürer read it and began to form his impression of the protesting friar.
Dürer was very much a man of the world, having been employed by many of the leading politicians of the day—including Emperor Maximilian I, whose portrait he produced. Thus, Dürer had plenty of financial incentive to keep his head down and not meddle in controversies, whether religious or political. Yet, Dürer was also an artist, and artists are known to be agitators. As a sixteenth century equivalent of Silicon Valley, Nuremberg attracted free thinkers who were open to new ideas. The Ninety-Five Theses and Luther’s other early works found a receptive audience among Nuremberg’s merchant class.
In 1520, Dürer wrote in his diary, “God help me that I may go to Doctor Martin Luther; thus, I intend to make a portrait of him with great care and engrave him on a copper plate to create a lasting memorial of the Christian man who helped me overcome so many difficulties.” [1] This suggests not only that he was receptive to Luther’s theological propositions but that he considered them to be of personal spiritual benefit.
It is thought that Dürer’s enthusiasm for Luther may have diminished after the German Peasants’ War in 1525 with its accompanying breakdown of public order.
Five years later, the city of Nuremberg officially went over to the Reformation, mandating evangelical doctrine in its churches. It opened one of the first schools reformed according to Philip Melanchthon’s educational principles, and when Melanchthon visited for the school’s opening, Dürer engraved his portrait. Dürer seems to have supported the changes in the city’s religious stance, but written evidence is limited. Art historians have scoured his works from the 1520s in search of any kind of shift toward more evangelical themes. Yet, Dürer had always focused on biblical stories, which makes it difficult to reach any definitive conclusions.
It is thought that Dürer’s enthusiasm for Luther may have diminished after the German Peasants’ War in 1525 with its accompanying breakdown of public order. But again, the evidence is slim. It is safe to say that Dürer was opposed to the more iconoclastic tendencies of Andreas Karlstadt, Thomas Müntzer, and others. After all, he was an artist who earned much of his living from decorating churches. But Dürer testifies of his strong personal spirituality in his letters, which he felt was strengthened through exposure to works such as Luther’s Babylonian Captivity of the Church, a book he received from a friend in the year of its publication. [2]
The Reformation was still in flux when Dürer died in 1528. Some of its greatest battles were yet to be fought. As the official Saxon court painter and a personal friend of Luther, Lucas Cranach the Elder was much better placed to become the artist par excellence of the Reformation. Yet even Cranach accepted commissions from Roman Catholics such as Albert of Brandenburg, archbishop of Mainz and Brandenburg. Thus, determining the true loyalties of artists in that era can be difficult.
Christ as Savior
When he died, Dürer left an unfinished painting of Christ as Salvator Mundi (“Savior of the World”). Many years earlier, Dürer had produced what is perhaps his most famous work, a self-portrait in the style of a Salvator Mundi, which now hangs in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek. But in his old age, Dürer no longer saw this religious theme as something to be reinterpreted in whatever manner he saw fit. He sought only to celebrate Christ as the savior of the world.
Perhaps this is a mere coincidence, or perhaps it speaks to a shift deep within Albrecht Dürer: from a man who saw religion primarily as something outward, to be depicted in art for profit and acclaim, to one who knew Christ as a living, internal reality. We will never know how much of a Lutheran Dürer truly was at the end of his life, but he does seem to have grown in his love and pursuit of Jesus Christ, and for that, we can give thanks.
