Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), a universal genius of the kind we now call a “Renaissance man” in the same way as Leonardo da Vinci, has maintained his high status since his death, even if Kenneth Clark in his Civilisation could fairly ridicule the egotism that led him to portray himself as Christ in a 1498 self-portrait. (Besides, the subtitle of Civilisation was “A Personal View.”) It is possible for a casual admirer to go through life only knowing Dürer as a painter, but he was celebrated as an engraver, too: his prints were widely circulated during his lifetime and spread his reputation throughout Europe. A new exhibition at the Château de Chantilly’s Musée Condé concentrates on Dürer the engraver.1 “The engraving was . . . the medium of exchange par excellence,” write the exhibition’s two co-curators, Mathieu Deldicque of the Musée Condé and Caroline Vrand of the Department of Prints and Photography at the Bibliotheque nationale de France. “Easily reproduced and transportable, it passed frontiers and circulated among artists.”
