Dürer's Lost Masterpiece: Art and Society at the Dawn of a Global World - Hardcover

by Ulinka Rublack (Author)

Dürer's Lost Masterpiece tracks the history of a turning point in the career of the celebrated German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), when he stopped painting altarpieces after arguing with a merchant patron over payment. As an eloquent homage to Dürer s life, it brings us closer to the creation and meaning of his paintings than ever before.

Dürer's Lost Masterpiece considers the celebrated German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), his time and his legacy. It tracks the history of a crucial, and often overlooked, turning point in his career, when Dürer stopped painting altarpieces after falling out with the Frankfurt merchant Jacob Heller over a commission. The story of this painting, as Dürer s lost masterpiece, functions as a lens through which to view the new relationship developing between art, collecting and commerce in Europe up to the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) when global trade and cultural exchanges were increasing. At the heart of the book is the argument that merchants, and their mentalities, were crucial for the making of Renaissance art and its legacy for modern art.

The book draws on a decade of research, and uniquely draws the reader into the rich emotional worlds of three merchants each of whom typified the evolving relationship between art and commerce in that entrepreneurial, and often ruthless, age. It brings to life Dürer s determined fight for creative makers to be adequately paid and explores the big questions about how European societies came to value the arts and crafts that remain relevant to our time.

Author Biography

Ulinka Rublack, Professor of Early Modern European History, Cambridge University

Ulinka Rublack is a professor of history at Cambridge University and St John´s College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her work as a historian and her book The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Kepler´s Fight for his Mother (OUP, 2015) were recognised with Germany´s most prestigious prize for historians, the Deutsche Historikerpreis. Rublack has published widely on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture as well as on methodological concerns. Her books are translated into six languages, and her book on Kepler inspired an opera, a film, a novel, musicals, and theatre plays.