Introduction

© Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Introduction
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Jeffrey Chipps Smith
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Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany was the
theme of the sixth international conference of Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär
(FNI), which convened at Duke University, Durham (NC), on March 29–31,
2012.1 The seventy-four papers addressed a specific aspect of visual culture
from a variety of different approaches. Visual acuity may be defined as a keen
awareness of the power of visualization. It is more than just the capacity of
the eye to see fine detail or the accuracy of perception. The raw tactility of
Christ’s wounds in Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece or the horror evoked by
Dürer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse trampling humanity linger in viewers’
minds. Artists, writers, preachers, musicians, and performers, among others,
often used visual images or conjured mental images to connect with their
audiences. Around 1500 Johann Geiler von Keisersberg, the famous Strasbourg
cathedral preacher, frequently evoked a familiar material object, one easily
imagined by his congregation, to frame a theological idea in his sermons. For
instance, he described Christ’s cross as a ladder to heaven. Following Christ’s
example, the faithful are to envision climbing each of the twenty-three rungs
of willing suffering, fervent prayer, and self-humiliation on Holy Thursday
and Good Friday.2 By fixing the mental picture of a ladder, worshippers could
readily conceptualize their own ascent and the duties required at each step.
Devotional literature, whether authored by Thomas à Kempis or later Ignatius
of Loyola, long urged one to “picture the place” by literally imagining what
one might see, hear, and smell if one was present in the stable at Christ’s
Nativity or on Golgotha witnessing his Crucifixion. A simple woodcut of a
hand with an overlay of words, tiny pictures, or mnemonic prompts on each
digit sufficed to guide one’s daily prayers.3 Or at the other end of the art of
memory, the individual constructed elaborate mental architectural structures,
such as a house of many chambers filled with vivid pictures and carefully
placed objects, as a method for remembering the contents of a long speech or
important information.4
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Sight can be affected by the other senses. Composers recognized how the
sounds of their music colored visual memories. Orlando di Lasso’s Penitential
Psalms could stimulate Lenten devotions and arouse or, at least, intensify
his listeners’ visions of Christ’s Passion.5 Memories of carnival plays and/or
religious theater lingered. Jesuit dramas evocatively staged the torments of
martyrs, the rewards of heaven, and punishments of hell for huge audiences.6
Their multi-sensory performances often featured compelling dialogue, skilled
acting, elaborate costumes, vivid stage props, and accompanying music as
means for imparting the essential moral messages of their stories.
It is this creative use of the visual and visual imagery to communicate that
stimulates our inquiry here. Although one can argue for different levels of
visual literacy, depending upon educational and social factors, society was
increasingly cognizant of the power of images to express ideas and emotions.7
The advent of prints and printed texts, especially in the German-speaking
lands, presented new means for reaching a growing audience. Lucas Cranach
the Elder could outrage Catholics and amuse Protestants with his portrayals
of the pope as the antichrist or the bloated sinfulness of clergy in his popular
woodcuts. He tapped into cultural stereotypes, such as the lazy, overly wellfed monk or the avaricious pontiff, while employing the satirical conventions
of carnival plays and contemporary literature. Cranach brilliantly understood
the pictorial mechanics necessary for conveying his messages. In his Passional
Christi und Antichristi (Wittenberg, 1521), he employed the visual antithesis of
good and bad behavior as he juxtaposed the actions of Christ and the pope
(Figure I.1).8 Whereas Christ drove the money changers from the temple, the
enthroned pontiff signed and sold indulgences for maximum profit. Although
accompanied by Philipp Melanchthon’s brief captions, the woodcuts truly
needed no textual explanations.
Emblems represent, arguably, the opposite end of the reception spectrum.
From the publication of the first emblem book, Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum
liber (Augsburg, 1531), the appetite for these symbolic representations grew
exponentially. Comprised normally of a motto, picture, and a brief explanatory
text, the emblem often challenged viewers’ knowledge and visual dexterity
as they sought to tease out or, alternatively, construct meaning(s) from these
prompts. These text and image collocations invite viewers to play once they
comprehend the methods or rules of the game of decipherment. One of
Alciato’s examples depicts an eagle eating a man’s liver (Figure I.2).9 A welleducated viewer might recognize the unfortunate victim as Prometheus who
was punished for stealing fire for mortals from Mount Olympus. The motto (or
inscriptio) reads “Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos” (What is above us is no concern
to us). The first part of the accompanying subscriptio voices Prometheus’s
lament while the second states, “The hearts of wise men, who aspire to know
the changes of heaven and the gods, are gnawed by various cares.” Text and
image frequently convey slightly different, indeed sometimes ambiguous
or contradictory, meanings.10 Emblems were used for personal satisfaction,
educational instruction, and civic iconographies, as once seen painted on the
walls of the great rooms of Augsburg and Nuremberg’s city halls.11
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Images were put to ever new uses as many disciplines adopted visual
criteria for testing truth claims, investigating pressing problems, representing
knowledge, or conveying information. Visual images are sometimes labeled
as true portraits (“counterfeits”) of a person, town, and even an animal or
simple plant.12 The viewer is asked to accept the veracity of the depiction.
Portraits, such as Dürer’s engravings of Willibald Pirckheimer (1524) and Philipp
Melanchthon (1526), or Hans Holbein the Younger’s Bonifacius Amerbach (1519)
painting in Basel (Kunstmuseum), capture the sitters in a seemingly realistic
fashion.13 Yet it is the accompanying texts that authenticate the likenesses. The
tablet hanging from a tree beside Amerbach reads in translation:
Although only a painted likeness, I am not inferior to the living face; I am instead
the counterpart of my master, and distinguished by accurate lines. Just as he
completes three intervals each lasting eight years, this work of art diligently
renders his true character.14
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The text praises Holbein’s mimetic talents and the verity of the portrayal. On
receiving Dürer’s engraving and a portrait medal of Pirckheimer in 1525, the
humanist Erasmus wrote, “I have adorned the walls of my bedroom with thee,
so that wherever I turn I am seen by the eyes of Willibald.”15 The portraits
serve as pictorial surrogates for the absent person.
In 1552, Hans Lautensack presented two highly detailed views of
Nuremberg to the city council (Figure I.3).16 One etching bears the title, A
Truthful Picture of the Praiseworthy Imperial Town / Nuremberg towards the
West.17 As if to demonstrate to the sharp-eyed viewer that the prospect was
made from life, Lautensack included a diminutive self-portrait sketching in
the foreground. Three well-dressed onlookers, perhaps councillors, standing
beside the artist bear further witness to his skills. Other landscapes, notably
those by Albrecht Altdorfer or Wolf Huber, were less about showing a specific
place and more about stimulating memory.18 These draw attention to nature’s
beauty and, more generally, to the viewer’s experiences of the German
countryside.
During this great era of exploration, many people learned to read maps.
The visual language of cartography, including even how you orient a
map, required one to read two-dimensional lines spatially to comprehend
topographic features, territorial boundaries, and physical distances. Terrestrial
maps, constantly updated, opened up lands and continents that most viewers
would never personally experience. Similarly, Hans Burgkmair designed
woodcuts purporting to document the inhabitants of Africa, south Asia, and
the Americas; Melchior Lorck, who lived from 1556 to 1559 in Constantinople,
chronicled the costumes and customs of the Ottoman Turks in his prints;
and in 1515 Dürer claimed truthfulness (“Das ist hye mit aller seiner gestalt
Abconderfet” [It is represented here in its complete form]) for his famously
fantastic woodcut of the Indian rhinoceros that had been given to the king of
Portugal and who died off the coast of Marseilles on its way to Rome (Figure
I.4).19
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Such declarations of truth, however, did not necessarily mean the artist
actually possessed first-hand visual knowledge. Dürer never saw the
rhinoceros. He depended on someone else’s text and image, perhaps already
second- or third-hand, plus his own creative imagination when fashioning
his portrayal. Early modern viewers had to navigate truth claims critically,
especially in illustrated broadsheets reporting miraculous births, comets,
or meteorological anomalies.20 Accounts of battles, such as the broadsheets
depicting the destruction of Magdeburg on 20 May 1631, a Catholic victory
that left some 25,000 dead and the city in ruins, might make claims of
truthfulness, yet these were manipulated to bolster confessional propaganda
(and outrage).21
The authority of visual information or the privileging of sight over the
other senses was still actively debated in the sixteenth century. As Sachiko
Kusukawa has shown in her study of illustrated herbals and anatomical
treatises, some specialists distrusted or dismissed pictorial evidence as
inferior to textual accounts, especially if an image contradicted the received
wisdom of a classical author like Dioscorides.22 If a plant has a heart-shaped
leaf, is a botanically precise representation any better mnemonically than one
with a stylized heart impressed on the leaf?23 Was the “overreliance on seeing,
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I.4 Albrecht
Dürer, The
Rhinoceros,
1515, woodcut,
British Museum,
London. ©
Trustees of the
British Museum
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visual acuity and the arts of communication in early modern germany
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introduction
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either by oneself or by authentication … a limitation on knowledge,” as Pietro
Andrea Mattioli argued in 1558 in his dispute with fellow physician Conrad
Gessner?24 Gessner believed that verbal descriptions and the accompanying
illustrations should match. For him,
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[the] difference between an art object and an object in nature was that the former
lacked movement, but a superb image ad vivum would capture the eyes of the
beholder so strongly as to trigger the same response in the viewer as would the
actual living object itself … An image becomes “the thing itself” simply by being
seen.25
Some of their contemporaries might make a distinction between normal seeing
and scientific (or artistic) observation characterized by close, intentional,
methodical, and time-consuming viewing.
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Since an observation was as much the work of synthetic memory and discerning
judgment as keen perception, the resulting image was the joint creation of the eye
of the mind as well as the eye of the body: an epistemic image.26
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Visual acuity is not restricted to the visual arts. Authors and preachers alike
engaged their audiences through verbal pictures, such as vivid descriptions
of settings and people. These were often designed to stir the reader/
listener’s own memories and activate their imaginations. Hans Sachs, the
famous Nuremberg shoemaker and Meistersinger, frequently opened a play,
broadsheet, or rhyme by composing a vibrant verbal picture of a tavern or a
landscape in which he witnessed a remarkable sight or overheard a startling
conversation. Let us consider how text and image function apart and together
in Sachs’s broadsheet Ein yeder trag sein Joch dise Zeit/Und uberwinde sein ubel
mit gedult (Let Everyone Bear His Yoke at This Time and Overcome His Misfortune
with Patience) (Figure I.5).27 The opening stanza reads,
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One morning I went through a wood;
It had snowed and was horribly cold.
Next to the road I heard a whispering,
Something behind a bush talking loudly.
I looked through, saw that sitting there
Were something like two hundred hares.
They’d assembled their imperial diet.28
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With these words Sachs stirs the reader’s curiosity. What has brought all of
these hares together? Sachs proceeds to tell a tale about how these hares, tired
of being hunted and oppressed, have joined together. With their nets, the hares
have snared hunters and their dogs. Their normal tormentors, now captured,
are tried for past crimes, found guilty, executed, and, finally, cooked. This is
the world upside down in which the hunter is now the hunted. Traditional
hierarchical relationships, whether in nature or society, are inverted. Sachs
uses this story as an allegory about how tyrants who oppress their people will
be “rewarded with violence.”
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introduction
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The broadsheet with Sachs’s title and poem dates to 1550; however, the
accompanying woodcut by Georg Pencz was originally created in about
1534–35. Whether at his own initiative or at the behest of a local publisher,
Sachs was inspired by the print’s imagery. Pencz depicts the hares matterof-factly butchering and stewing the dogs. One hunter roasts on a spit
at the rear while a second hangs helplessly from a blasted tree. His death
sentence is inevitable. A bespectacled rabbit, seated at his desk, efficiently
handles the legal paperwork. In this broadsheet, image and text, conceived
independently, use diverse means to appeal to the reader/viewer. Pencz
offers a rather rudimentary landscape filled with familiar characters, albeit
in inverted or reversed roles. The woodcut’s design is clear, simple, and
readily legible. It eschews the technical, compositional, and figural intricacies
of Pencz’s virtuoso engravings from the same years. Sachs’s rhetoric is
also simple though he takes pains to construct the rhymes in each stanza.
He changed the season to winter, introduced himself as the witness, thus
advancing the account’s claim of truthfulness, and, significantly, provided
a political moralization. Both address a popular audience using accessible
styles. Although Pencz and Sachs tell two rather different accounts of the
hares capturing the hunters, artist and author successfully appeal to the eyes
and minds of their viewers to visualize their scenes. Sachs and his publisher
further understood that broadsheets, such as this, could be printed in large
quantities and sold inexpensively. Some examples, especially if carefully
colored, might end up in a collector’s album or folded into a book; however,
broadsheets were often tacked on walls of taverns and public buildings. They
could be viewed in private or read out loud and discussed by a group. This
understanding of how to communicate with potentially diverse audiences is
another important characteristic of visual acuity.
Sometimes words were offered to explain images in order to heighten
viewers’ understanding of what they saw. Andreas Veringer, the Lutheran
minister of the parish church in Freudenstadt in the Black Forest, delivered
a farewell sermon on 1 May 1608 before moving to a new post in Stuttgart.
His talk was published later that year and again in 1609 as a twenty-eightfolio-long booklet entitled Ein Christliche Predig / Von der newerbawten Kirchen
zur Frewden-Staat (A Christian Sermon about the newly built Church in
Freudenstadt).29 He presents an exhaustive explanation of the “Mysteria unnd
Geistliche Deutungen” (mystery and spiritual meaning) as he systematically
describes virtually every feature of the church and its decoration. For
instance, Veringer remarks the Stadtkirche’s highly unusual L-shape forms a
measuring stick just as God’s word is the measuring stick of belief.30 The lightfilled interior is the heavenly light of the Holy Spirit illuminating the church
just as the word of God and the sacrament illuminates the dark temple of our
hearts.31 Many remarks are more specific. The large angel statue supporting
the pulpit should be understood as the protector of the preacher from the
devil, who is the foe of the word of God.32 He defends the twenty-six biblical
reliefs lining the balcony as a “Baueren Bibel” for the simple peasants.33 Near
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the end Veringer rhetorically asks his audience what they have learned from
the whole church. To which he answers that our hearts are temples for the
Holy Spirit and that we should lead a life pleasing to God.34
Visual acuity implies not just keen sight but in some cases also visual
literacy, an awareness of artistic distinctions. In his book Elementa rhetorices
(Wittenberg, 1531), Philipp Melanchthon references three contemporary
artists to illustrate the distinctions between three classical Greek rhetorical
styles. He writes,
[You] can see a similar thing to these three levels of style in pictures. Dürer
depicted everything more grand, and diversified his pictures with very many
and closely spaced lines. Lucas [Cranach the Elder]’s pictures on the other hand
are simple, and though attractive, comparison shows how different they are from
Dürer. Matthias [Grünewald] kept a middle [path] between Dürer and Cranach.35
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Melanchthon assumes that his readers are familiar with and could distinguish
between these artists’ works.
Visual knowledge took various forms. The rise of German humanism
popularized certain classical texts, such as Pliny the Elder’s Natural History,
which recounted the achievements and anecdotes of ancient artists, including
the rivalry between Parrhasius and Zeuxis. Comparison of Dürer, Cranach, or
their peers to Apelles became a standard topos of praise. Artists’ biographies
by Johann Neudörffer (1547) and Joachim von Sandrart (1675–80) in Germany,
Giorgio Vasari (1550 and 1568) in Italy, and Karel van Mander (1604) in the
Netherlands, among other authors, distinguished certain masters over others
and, as a result, contributed to the construction of a canon of eminent artists
and the rudiments of an early modern history of art.36
Melanchthon’s remarks acknowledge connoisseurship – the well-trained
eye capable of distinguishing between the works of different masters. With
the rise of the collector, especially from the sixteenth century on, the ability to
identify the author of a painting or sculpture becomes ever more important
for aesthetic and financial reasons. But the astute viewer will also learn how
to understand the specific artist’s visual language and intentions. How does
this master use expression, gesture, or light and color to convey meaning?
What other characteristic pictorial strategies does the artist employ to
engage his audience? Does he consciously quote the work of another artist,
such as Dürer’s second-hand citation of the Apollo Belvedere in his Adam and
Eve engraving of 1504 or sculptor Georg Petel’s borrowings from Rubens a
century later?37 Is the quotation done in homage or as a commentary, perhaps
even as an ironic or subversive response, to its source?38
Many factors affect visual acuity. Personal past experiences structure how
one might respond to visual stimuli in certain settings. A statue or a painting
viewed in a church can trigger learned responses tied to context and devotional
practices. Yet encountering a similar object in a Kunstkammer might prompt
very different patterns of reaction because now criteria such as uniqueness,
artistry, or material value might be privileged. Whether or not one accepts
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introduction
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Michael Baxandall’s concept of the “period eye,” broader conventions of style,
ones that shift with time and location, can bring very different assessments.39
A knowledgeable south German patron around 1500 would have understood
the complex interplay of drapery on a statue with its intricate folds setting off
pools of shadow as evidence of the virtuosity of sculptors Veit Stoss, Tilman
Riemenschneider, or Master H.L.40 This expressive linearity, much like the
elaborate late Gothic vaulting or traceries in contemporary churches, signaled
technical mastery and personal innovation.41 Contemporary audiences
elsewhere in Europe may not have equally appreciated or even comprehended
these markers of skill or, alternatively, derided the forms as old-fashioned
or, in Albrecht Dürer’s words, “nit antigisch art, dorum sey es nit gut” (not
antique and so not good).42 Distinctions, such as arose between “Teutsch”
(German) and “Welsch” (Italian) styles by the second quarter of the sixteenth
century, challenged the visual discernment of artists and viewers alike. Some
masters, such as Peter Flötner and architect Bonifaz Wohlmut, claimed the
ability to work in either style according to the wishes of the patron.43 Yet
even the canonical classical orders can be subverted and reinvented as in the
imaginative illustrations of Wendel Dietterlin’s Architectura (1598).44
Visual acuity depends on the clever object, the clever creator, and the clever
recipient. Using our senses and imagination to “see,” whether literally and
in our mind, we process visual stimuli through the filters of our knowledge,
experience, and curiosity. From this frame of reference, we seek comprehension
and a structuring of this sensory information.
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The exponential growth in images, especially prints, impacted the intellectual
horizons and the visual awareness of the early modern viewers. They were
asked to process not just what today we term “art” but also methods of
seeing and codes of reading visual information. The ten essays in this volume
address the theme of visual acuity in distinctive ways as one might expect
from scholars drawn from different disciplines. These case studies, ordered
chronologically, broaden our understanding of real and mental images. The
authors creatively explore the construction and/or reception of visuality.
In the late fifteenth century several German engravers devised attractive
ornamental prints that could be used as models by other artisans. Related
to these but altogether distinctive is Martin Schongauer’s intricate Censer
(c.1480), which Allison Stielau aptly terms an “object engraving.” Although
conceived in two dimensions, just flat lines on paper, it projects visually as
fully three-dimensional, a solid goldsmith work, seemingly resting on a table
and interacting with a specific, if unseen, light source. Its tactility invites the
eyes’ discernment and, impossibly, the hand’s caress. One desires to touch
its surfaces and raise its chains. The print transforms the utility of the object
portrayed. Is it a model for a craftsman or a virtuoso marvel for a connoisseur’s
delectation or both or something wholly different? Schongauer’s Censer
presents a new, distinctly visual challenge to the viewer.
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Bridget Heal demonstrates how devotional attachments often survived
the advent of the Reformation, even in newly Protestant towns. Freiberg
in Saxony was a booming mining town around 1500 when a local artisan
fashioned a Crucifix made of rock crystal, jade, and silver for the town hall. In
1537 Freiberg embraced Lutheranism yet the magistrates proudly continued
to display this ornate Crucifix. Heal shows how this object exemplifies the
survival of local visual piety rather than just Lutheran toleration of some
religious images. Freiberg’s miners sensed that God protected them as they
performed their dangerous work. The Crucifix stood as a symbol of this
covenant. This example raises the issue of the cleverness of the object in
shaping meaning as the contexts for its reception evolve over time.45 Heal also
discusses a shift toward a more emotive Lutheran piety in the seventeenth
century centered on the spiritual truths that can arise from looking at and
then through images of Christ.
Johann Neudörffer was a renowned calligrapher and mathematics teacher
in Nuremberg. In 1547 he authored Nachrichten von Nürnberger Künstlern und
Werkleuten, an invaluable biographical account of the city’s many talented
artists. The manuscript, which was well-known but not published until
the nineteenth century, was dedicated to Georg Römer, a local patrician.
Discussions about Neudörffer tend to focus on the biographical information
of the Nachrichten, or on his published calligraphic texts, or on his occasional
collaboration with Albrecht Dürer. Susanne Meurer’s careful re-examination
of the Nachrichten’s manuscript copies, since the original is lost, and other
contemporary documents reveals that Römer likely valued the artistry of
Neudörffer’s majestic handwriting as much as the book’s contents. Put
differently, the way it was written, its visuality, was just as admired as what
was written.
Elaborate goldsmith works were among the most prized objects in early
modern Kunstkammers and collections. Their material value was matched
by their artistic and, in some instances, intellectual sophistication. Their
very material value, however, often prompted their subsequent destruction
in times of financial need or aesthetic change. Andrew Morrall argues that
objects, such as Jonas Silber’s Universe Cup of Emperor Rudolf II (Berlin,
Kunstgewerbemuseum) of 1589, had different visual conventions than a
painting or most sculptures. Viewing here is a physical act. One must hold,
lift, turn, and probe the object’s exterior and interior to appreciate it fully.
This “acute act of sustained … examination” unfolds its meaning as a series
of visual discoveries, a manner of looking that is quite different to reading a
text. Morrall traces Silber’s learned sources and the intellectual vitality these
demand of the viewer.
In much of the recent literature on the Protestant Reformation, the stress is
on the debate over the validity and use of images, on incidents of iconoclasm,
or on the development of new, confessionally appropriate iconographies. The
importance of art for its intrinsic characteristics, including beauty, is rarely
raised. Ruth Slenczka demonstrates how visual features and the personal
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styles of artists were important to contemporary audiences. When Lucas
Cranach the Younger died in 1586, he was buried in Wittenberg’s parish
church. The Lutheran preacher Georg Mylius delivered the funeral sermon,
the text of which was published. Mylius did not laud Cranach for his antiCatholic polemical prints or mention his many inventive new Lutheran
altarpieces, including this church’s monumental high altar of 1547. Instead
Mylius stressed not what but how Cranach painted. The sermon emphasizes
how Cranach’s style is best seen in his use of color, perspective, such as deep
landscape panoramas, and form. The preacher makes careful distinctions
between different types of viewers, some of whom looked at art in fear
because they lacked adequate faith in God’s will and, as a result therefore,
visual acuity. For the expert, Mylius contended, art reveals something about
its maker that is wholly independent of its subject.
The relationships between the visual and aural are at the heart of Alexander
Fisher’s consideration of experience in the famous Benedictine monastery of
SS. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg. As part of an ambitious re-decoration of
the church, Abbot Johannes Merk commissioned Hans Reichle’s emotionally
charged, bronze Crucifixion group, completed in 1605. Life-size statues of the
Virgin Mary, John the Evangelist, and, clutching the cross, Mary Magdalene
surround the crucified Christ. Standing originally in the center of the church
toward the eastern end of the nave, Reichle’s ensemble provided a focal point
for the congregation. In 1604, as the statues were being cast, Gregor Aichinger,
the church’s former organist, composed his Lacrumae D. Virginis et Ioannis,
music accompanying Marcus Welser’s text of an eight-part Latin dialogue
between Mary and John on the theme of Christ’s suffering and redemption.
Dedicated to the abbot, Aichinger’s composition provides “voice” to Reichle’s
statues, a synesthetic experience designed to heighten the viewer/listener’s
affective response of penitential tears and lamentations.
Anthony Mahler considers visual media as a psychagogic tool; that is,
as a means of affecting behavior by assisting in the choice of desirable life
goals. Visual acuity is central to the narrative theme of Jacob Bidermann’s
Cenodoxus, a play first performed in 1609 in Munich. Although celebrated for
his exceptional virtue, Cenodoxus, a Parisian doctor and central character,
suffers from acute vainglory. His prideful self-image or self-love blinds him in
spite of his guardian angel’s best efforts to point out his sin and to make him
averse to it. Upon his death, Cenodoxus is judged and damned. Bidermann, the
noted Jesuit poet, impresses upon his audience the question whether vision,
including self-vision, comes from God or the Devil. Can visual acuity combat
sin or, if misunderstood, delude the viewer? This sort of discernment ideally
followed by the purgation of sin is central to Ignatian spirituality. The play
with its compelling dialogue, dramatic acting, and flashy staging evoked vivid
images in the viewers’ minds. The anonymous Jesuit who edited Bidermann’s
play for publication in 1666 stressed how the shock of Cenodoxus’s downfall
as he was dragged to hell by devils prompted spectators to search their own
souls. The production of sensual experience, here a story rooted in the world
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visual acuity and the arts of communication in early modern germany
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yet also anchored in self-reflexive anxieties, reinforces the abstract concept of
faith.46 The editor claimed the play was more affective than even one hundred
sermons and, following its initial performance, prompted several men to join
the Jesuits or to seek their spiritual guidance.
As the Thirty Years’ War raged across Germany and Central Europe,
Danish King Christian IV (1577–1648) developed elaborate court ceremonies
articulating his pretensions of power and authority. As Arne Spohr
demonstrates, the king was especially proud of the internationally famed
musicians at his court. At times he staged them as if they were precious objects
on view. On other occasions guests could hear but not see the musicians.
The discovery of sound conduits at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen
verifies contemporary travel accounts about how the musicians sometimes
performed, unseen, in a separate room. Their music flowed through these
conduits into the main hall where the king entertained his guests. This type
of “concealed music” occurred at the courts of Stuttgart and Dresden. For the
knowledgeable listener, the sounds might conjure visions of the performers,
perhaps even specific performers, in spite of their physical displacement.
Their absence also underscores Christian IV’s control of the visual. Spohr
traces the Italian origins of the idea and architecture of concealed music. He
also argues that Christian IV, using the Pythagorean idea of the harmony of
the spheres, staged himself as the cause and center of earthly harmony – a
powerful message amid the chaos of the current war.
The genealogical tree (the Stammbaum) had long been a popular means
of visually conveying ancestry. Dynastic development is synchronized with
biological growth. Traditionally, trees served to display the evolution of a
dynastic house from its founder, pictured as the tree’s roots, to the male or
male and female lineage unfolding on its branches. The challenge arises when
dynastic relationships become increasingly intricate and intertwined. Volker
Bauer charts an alternative visual option that emerged in the seventeenth
century. Drawing upon new scientific records and travelers’ accounts,
artists used exotic, non-European trees. The banyan with its multiple trunks
permitted the visualization of the parallel development of different family
branches or dynasties. Even though the clear distinctions between parents,
offspring, and siblings are intentionally blurred, the totality attests to the
family’s dynastic breadth.
Visual acuity is not limited to the pictorial arts. Kristoffer Neville examines
the central role of architecture in royal ceremony. In 1701 Margrave and Elector
Friedrich III of Brandenburg became Friedrich I, King of Prussia. Almost
immediately, Friedrich began transforming Berlin into a fitting royal capital
by commissioning several new architectural projects, most notably including
the Royal Palace. Neville argues that the king and his advisors were not
interested in mimicking particular sources, such as Versailles, nor the styles of
famous architects. Instead Friedrich sought a “ready-made royal image.” The
writings of Johann von Besser, the court poet, and the engravings illustrating
Paul Decker’s Fürstlicher Baumeister (Princely Builder), published in Augsburg
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introduction
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in 1711–16, focus on how features such as towers, triumphal arches, and
suites of rooms could be incorporated in various kinds of court ceremonies.
These universal elements presented a “royal” mode, a visual language readily
understood by a generation particularly obsessed with nuances of rank and
royal imagery.
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und Früher Neuzeit, eds. Birgit Emich and Gabriela Signori, 197–235. Berlin, 2009.
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trans. Dan Marmorstein. 4 vols. Copenhagen, 2009.
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Janeck, Axel. Zeichen am Himmel. Flugblätter des 16. Jahrhunderts. [Exh. cat.,
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg] Nuremberg, 1982.
Kavaler, Ethan Matt. Renaissance Gothic: Architecture and the Arts in Northern Europe
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Haus der Kunst, Munich] Munich, 2007.
© Ashgate Publishing Ltd
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Kusukawa, Sachiko. Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in SixteenthCentury Human Anatomy and Medical Botany. Chicago, IL, 2012.
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Largier, Niklaus. “Mysticism, Modernity, and the Invention of Aesthetic Experience.”
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Leitch, Stephanie. Mapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print
Culture. New York, 2010.
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und Quellenüberlieferung aus den Beständ der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München.
Tutzing, 1994.
Marquard, Reiner. “Philipp Melanchthon und Mathias Grünewald.” Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte 108 (1997): 295–308.
Mende, Matthias. Das alte Nürnberger Rathaus, vol. 1. Nuremberg, 1979.
Müller, Christian ed. Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years 1515–1532. [Exh. cat.,
Kunstmuseum Basel] Munich, 2006.
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Parshall, Peter. “Imago contrafacta: Images and Facts in the Northern Renaissance.” Art
History 16 (1993): 57–82.
Placzek, Adolf K., intro. The Fantastic Engravings of Wendel Dietterlin. The 203 Plates and
Text of His Architectura. New York, 1968.
Pollmer-Schmidt, Almut. “Conjoined Twins, a Monstrous Pig, and a Rhinoceros.
Dürer’s Broadsheets,” in Albrecht Dürer – His Art in Context, ed. Jochen Sander,
294–97. [Exh. cat., Städel Museum, Frankfurt] Munich, 2013.
Rupprich, Hans ed. Dürer. Schriftlicher Nachlass, 3 vols. Berlin, 1956–69.
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Schauerte, Thomas, Jürgen Müller, and Bertram Kaschek, eds. Von der Freiheit der
Bilder. Spott, Kritik und Subversion in der Kunst der Dürerzeit. Petersberg, 2013.
Schoch, Rainer, Matthias Mende, and Anna Scherbaum, eds. Dürer. Das
druckgraphische Werk. 3 vols. Munich, 2001–04.
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Sherman, Claire Richter. Writing on Hands. Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern
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2000.
Smith, Jeffrey Chipps. Nuremberg, a Renaissance City, 1500–1618. [Exh. cat., Huntington
Art Gallery, University of Texas] Austin, TX, Huntingon Art Gallery, 1983.
———. Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany.
Princeton, NJ, 2002.
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———. “The Pictorial Language of German Art, 1400–1650,” in Early Modern German
Literature 1350–1700, ed. Max Reinhart, 549–92. [Camden House History of
German Literature, vol. 4] Rochester, NY, 2007.
———. “Imaging and Imagining Nuremberg,” in Topographies of the Early Modern City,
eds. Arthur Groos, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, and Markus Stock, 17–41. Göttingen,
2008.
———. “Master H. L. and the Challenge of Translating Invention into Different Media,”
in Invention: Northern Renaissance Studies in Honor of Molly Faries, ed. Julien
Chapuis, 175–89. Turnhout, 2008.
© Ashgate Publishing Ltd
© Ashgate Publishing Ltd
introduction
17
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———. “Historians of Northern European Art from Johann Neudörfer and Karel van
Mander to the Rembrandt Research Project,” in Companion to Renaissance and
Baroque Art, eds. James M. Saslow and Babette Bohn, 507–24. Malden, MA, 2013.
Tipton, Susan. Res publica bene ordinate. Regentenspiegel und Bilder vom guten Regiment –
Rathausdekoration in der Frühen Neuzeit. Hildesheim, 1996.
Trusted, Marjorie. German Renaissance Medals: A Catalogue of the Collection in the
Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 1990.
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Valentin, Jean-Marie. Le Théâtre des Jésuites dans les pays de langue allemande, 1554–1680.
Bern, 1978.
Veringer, Andreas. Ein Christliche Predig / Von der newerbawten Kirchen zur FrewdenStaat. Stuttgart, 1608.
Waterman, Joshua P. “Miraculous Signs from Antiquity to the Renaissance,” in The
Book of Miracles, eds. Till-Holger Borchert and Joshua P. Waterman, 2 vols., 1: 6–47.
Cologne, 2013.
Wood, Christopher S. Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape. Chicago, IL, 1993.
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Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. Chicago, IL, 1966.
Endnotes
1www.fni.ucr.edu.
E. J. Dempsey Douglass, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching: A Study of John Geiler of Keisersberg
(Leiden, 1989), 181.
3
Claire Richter Sherman, Writing on Hands. Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, exh. cat.
Trout Gallery, Dickinson College (Seattle, 2000), esp. nos. 1 and 2.
4
Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, 1966); Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study
of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990).
5
Horst Leuchtmann and Hartmut Schaefer, eds., Orlando di Lasso: Prachthandschriften und
Quellenüberlieferung aus den Beständ der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München (Tutzing, 1994), 19–26,
43–44, 75–99, 129–86.
6
Jean-Marie Valentin, Le Théâtre des Jésuites dans les pays de langue allemande, 1554–1680 (Bern,
1978); Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in
Germany (Princeton, 2002), 73–75, 170–71.
7
David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989).
8
R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation
(Cambridge, 1981), 148–63.
9
Peter M. Daly, “The Emblem and Emblematic Forms in Early Modern Germany,” in Early Modern
German Literature 1350–1700, ed. Max Reinhart [Camden House History of German Literature, vol.
4] (Rochester, NY, 2007), 509–45, here 512–14.
10
“[B]ecause they [emblems] are composed of pictures and a few words, which contain the sense,
opinion, and understanding of the inventor; they point to more than is depicted or written
and give occasion to further contemplation.” Daly, “The Emblem,” 527 citing Georg Philipp
Harsdörffer, Frauenzimmer Gesprächspiele [Playful Colloquies for the Ladies] (Nuremberg, 1641–49).
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11
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2
Wolfram Baer, Hanno-Walter Kruft, and Bernd Roeck, eds., Elias Holl und das Augsburger
Rathaus (Regensburg, 1985), 79–90, 240–52; and Matthias Mende, Das alte Nürnberger Rathaus,
vol. 1 (Nuremberg, 1979), 333–62; and, more generally, Susan Tipton, Res publica bene ordinate.
Regentenspiegel und Bilder vom guten Regiment – Rathausdekoration in der Frühen Neuzeit (Hildesheim,
1996).
© Ashgate Publishing Ltd
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visual acuity and the arts of communication in early modern germany
Peter Parshall, “Imago contrafacta: Images and Facts in the Northern Renaissance,” Art History
16 (1993): 57–82; Sachiko Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in
Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany (Chicago, 2012), 8–19.
13
Rainer Schoch, Matthias Mende, and Anna Scherbaum, eds., Dürer. Das druckgraphische Werk, 3
vols. (Munich, 2001–04), nos. 99 and 101; Christian Müller, ed., Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel
Years 1515–1532, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Basel (Munich, 2006), 104–06, no. 38.
14
“PICTA LICET FACIES VI / VAE NON CEDO SED INSTAR / SVM DOMINI IVSTIS NO / BILE
LINEOLIS: / OCTO IS DUM PERAGIT / TPIETH, SIC GNAVITER IN ME / ID QUOD NATURAE
EST, / EXPRIMIT ARTIS OPVS. // BON. AMORBACCHIVM. / IO. HOLBEIN. DEPINGEBAT. / A.
M. D. XIX. PRID. EID. OCTOBR.” Translation in Müller, Holbein, 194.
15
Marjorie Trusted, German Renaissance Medals: A Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert
Museum (London, 1990), 10, 35.
16
Jeffrey Chipps Smith, “Imaging and Imagining Nuremberg,” in Topographies of the Early Modern
City, eds. Arthur Groos, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, and Markus Stock (Göttingen, 2008), 17–41, esp.
25–28.
17
“Warhafftige Contrafactur der Löblichen Reychstat Nuremberg gegen dem Nidergang der Sonnen
1552” or, more literally, towards the setting of the sun.
18
Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (Chicago, 1993).
19
Stephanie Leitch, Mapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print Culture (New
York, 2010), esp. 63–100; Erik Fischer with Ernst Jonas Bencard and Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen,
Melchior Lorck, trans. Dan Marmorstein, 4 vols. (Copenhagen, 2009); and Schoch, Mende, and
Scherbaum, Dürer, no. 241.
20
Axel Janeck, Zeichen am Himmel. Flugblätter des 16. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat., Germanisches
Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (Nuremberg, 1982); Almut Pollmer-Schmidt, “Conjoined Twins, a
Monstrous Pig, and a Rhinoceros. Dürer’s Broadsheets,” in Albrecht Dürer – His Art in Context, ed.
Jochen Sander, exh. cat., Städel Museum, Frankfurt (Munich, 2013), 294–97, and nos. 12.1–8; Joshua
P. Waterman, “Miraculous Signs from Antiquity to the Renaissance,” in The Book of Miracles, eds.
Till-Holger Borchert and Joshua P. Waterman, 2 vols. (Cologne, 2013), 1:6–47.
21
Birgit Emich, “Bilder einer Hochzeit. Die Zerstörung Magdeburgs 1631 zwischen Konstruktion,
(Inter-)Medialität und Performanz,” in Kriegs/Bilder in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, eds. Birgit
Emich and Gabriela Signori (Berlin, 2009), 197–235.
22
Kusukawa, Picturing, 162–77.
23
Kusukawa, Picturing, 18, fig. 0.11.
24
Kusukawa, Picturing, 169.
25
Kusukawa, Picturing, 174–75.
26
Lorraine Daston, “Observation,” in Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, ed.
Susan Dackerman, exh. cat., Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (New Haven, 2011), 126–33,
here 129.
27
Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Nuremberg, a Renaissance City, 1500–1618, exh. cat., Huntington Art Gallery,
University of Texas (Austin, 1983), no. 106; Susan Dackerman, ed., Painted Prints: The Revolution
of Color in Northern Renaissance & Baroque Engravings, Etchings, & Woodcuts, exh. cat., Baltimore
Museum of Art (University Park, 2002), no. 21; Jeffrey Chipps Smith, “The Pictorial Language of
German Art, 1400–1650,” in Early Modern German Literature 1350–1700, ed. Max Reinhart [Camden
House History of German Literature, vol. 4] (Rochester, NY, 2007), 549–92, here 574–76.
28
“Eins morgens gieng ich durch einn Wald / Es het geschneit vnd war grimm Kalt / Neben der
strassen hort ich wispern / Etwas hind’ einem gestreuß laut zispern / Ich gugt hin durch sah das
da sessen / Etwas in die zwey hundert Hasen / Hetten sam da fren Reichstag.” Smith, “Pictorial
Language,” 574, 576. I wish to thank Max Reinhart for help with this translation.
29
Andreas Veringer, Ein Christliche Predig / Von der newerbawten Kirchen zur Frewden-Staat (Stuttgart,
1608).
31
32
33
34
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30
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12
Veringer, Christliche Predig, fol. 12v.
Veringer, Christliche Predig, fol. 8v.
Veringer, Christliche Predig, fol. 11v.
Veringer, Christliche Predig, fols. 14–14v.
Veringer, Christliche Predig, fol. 17v.
© Ashgate Publishing Ltd
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introduction
19
“in picturis facile deprehendi hae differentiae possunt. Durerus enim pingebat omnia grandiora,
et frequentissimis lineis variata. Lucae picturae graciles sunt, quae et si blandae sunt, tamen
quantum distent a Dureri operibus, collatio ostendit. Matthias quasi mediocritatem servabat.”
Hans Rupprich, ed., Dürer. Schriftlicher Nachlass, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1956–69), 1: 306; Michael
Baxandall, “Hand and Mind,” London Review of Books (March 17–31, 1983): 16–17 (with partial
translation); and Reiner Marquard, “Philipp Melanchthon und Mathias Grünewald,” Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte 108 (1997): 295–308.
36
Jeffrey Chipps Smith, “Historians of Northern European Art from Johann Neudörfer and Karel
van Mander to the Rembrandt Research Project,” in Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art, eds.
James M. Saslow and Babette Bohn (Malden, MA, 2013), 507–24, esp. 507–10.
37
León Krempel, Georg Petel 1601/02–1634: Bildhauer im Dreißigjährigen Krieg, exh. cat., Haus der
Kunst, Munich (Munich, 2007), no. 33.
38
Thomas Schauerte, Jürgen Müller, and Bertram Kaschek, eds., Von der Freiheit der Bilder. Spott,
Kritik und Subversion in der Kunst der Dürerzeit (Petersberg, 2013).
39
Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven, 1980), esp. 143–63.
40
Jeffrey Chipps Smith, “Master H. L. and the Challenge of Translating Invention into Different
Media,” in Invention: Northern Renaissance Studies in Honor of Molly Faries, ed. Julien Chapuis
(Turnhout, 2008), pp. 175–89.
41
Ethan Matt Kavaler, Renaissance Gothic: Architecture and the Arts in Northern Europe 1470–1540 (New
Haven, 2012), 47–55.
42
This is how Dürer described the criticism of his art by Italians during his stay in Venice. Rupprich,
Schriftlicher Nachlass, 1: 44 (letter to Willibald Pirckheimer dated February 7, 1506).
43
Barbara Dienst, Der Kosmos des Peter Flötner (Munich, 2002), 319–418; Kavaler, Renaissance Gothic,
14–20, fig. 17.
44
Adolf K. Placzek, intro., The Fantastic Engravings of Wendel Dietterlin. The 203 Plates and Text of His
Architectura (New York, 1968).
45
Matthew C. Hunter and Francesco Lucchini, “The Clever Object: Three Pavilions, Three Loggias,
and a Planetarium,” Art History 36/3 (2013): 474–97.
46
Niklaus Largier, “Mysticism, Modernity, and the Invention of Aesthetic Experience,”
Representations 105 (Winter 2009): 37–60, here 49.
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