Art historians have long looked to letters to secure biographical details; clarify relationships between artists and patrons; and present artists as modern; self-aware individuals. This book takes a novel approach: focusing on Albrecht Duuml;rer; Shira Brisman is the first to argue that the experience of writing; sending; and receiving letters shaped how he treated the work of art as an agent for communication.In the early modern period; before the establishment of a reliable postal system; letters faced risks of interception and delay. During the Reformation; the printing press threatened to expose intimate exchanges and blur the line between public and private life. Exploring the complex travel patterns of sixteenth-century missives; Brisman explains how these issues of sending and receiving informed Duuml;rerrsquo;s artistic practices. His success; she contends; was due in large part to his development of pictorial strategiesmdash;an epistolary mode of addressmdash;marked by a direct; intimate appeal to the viewer; an appeal that also acknowledged the distance and delay that defers the message before it can reach its recipient. As images; often in the form of prints; coursed through an open market; and artists lost direct control over the sale and reception of their work; Germanyrsquo;s chief printmaker navigated the new terrain by creating in his images a balance between legibility and concealment; intimacy and public address.
2016-12-21 2016-12-21File Name: B01N2WDR2R
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