Nuremberg, a Renaissance City, 1500–1618

Although renowned for the excellence of its medieval art, the German city of Nuremberg reached the height of its artistic brilliance during the Renaissance. Beginning its ascendancy during the late fifteenth century, by 1500 the city had blossomed into both Germany's preeminent artistic center and one of the foremost cultural centers in all of Europe. Nuremberg was the home of Albrecht Dürer, the greatest Northern Renaissance master, whose creative genius inspired two generations of German artists. However, Dürer was only one of a host of extraordinary painters, printmakers, sculptors, and goldsmiths working in the city. Georg Pencz, Hans and Barthel Beham, Hans Schäufelein, Jost Amman, and Hans Lautensack were among the most accomplished printmakers of the day. Veit Stoss, Adam Kraft, Peter Flötner, and the Vischer family dominated early sixteenth-century German sculpture. Goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer was rivaled only by Florentine master Benvenuto Cellini in his inventiveness and technical virtuosity. This remarkably comprehensive volume is the first English-language examination of Nuremberg at its creative peak. Following a mapping of the city's principal landmarks, Guy Fitch Lytle provides a compact historical background for Jeffrey Chipps Smith's detailed discussions of the city's social and artistic history. Smith examines the religious function of art before and during the Reformation to demonstrate the magnitude of the cultural transformations that resulted from the adoption of Lutheranism in 1525. He considers the early manifestations of humanism in Nuremberg and its influence on the art of Dürer and his contemporaries, and he reviews the central role of Dürer's pedagogical ideas and his workshop in the dissemination of Renaissance artistic concepts. Finally, Smith surveys the principal artists and stylistic trends in Nuremberg from 1500 to the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618. Nuremberg: A Renaissance City, 1500–1618 is the permanent record of an exhibition organized by the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery as part of the centennial celebration of the University of Texas at Austin. As such, it represents not only a thorough introduction to the cultural heritage of Nuremberg during its period of greatest glory but also a catalogue of the more than two hundred objects borrowed for the exhibition from public and private collections in the United States, Canada, and Germany. The catalogue contains biographical sketches of forty-five major artists of the period. Over three hundred illustrations depict the city and its most magnificent artistic treasures.