The Consequences of an Unfinished Christ
Olivia Robertson
Citation: Robertson, Olivia. “The Consequences of an Unfinished Christ.” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, May 21, 2021.
Abstract: This paper considers several possible explanations for the state of unfinish of Albrecht Durer’s Salvator Mundi. The painting was done sometime around 1505, on the eve of the trip to Venice which would elevate Durer from regional phenomenon to European artistic icon. There is no record of the painting having been commissioned and no obvious explanation for his decision to start work on it. Despite its being unfinished, he kept the painting in his possession until the end of his life, after which his wife kept it until the end of her life ten years later. It was eventually sold into the collection of the grandson of his close friend, Willibald Pirckheimer. He did not recycle the materials. All of this evidence suggests a reason for the painting’s survival greater than mere chance. Possible explanations range from the purely pragmatic to the abstract spiritual. The painting could have been a teaching tool for the apprentices in Durer’s workshop. It may have had sentimental value to Durer, as a reflection of the evolution of his relationship with God. He may have also realized that existing in a state of unfinish gave the artwork additional meditative value that it would not have otherwise had. This paper explores each of these possibilities in depth, as well as the legacy of such an object into modern times.
Keywords: Albrecht Durer, Salvator Mundi, iconoclasm, Christianity
In 1573, Willibald Imhoff listed a “not quite finished” painting by Albrecht Dürer in his inventory. The painting was sold to Imhoff by Dürer’s sister-in-law after both the artist and his wife, Agnes, had died.[1] Imhoff was the grandson of Willibald Pirckheimer, one of Dürer’s close personal friends. Imhoff must have learned his appreciation of Dürer through his grandfather. In 1530, Imhoff inherited his grandfather’s library, which included saved correspondences between the Dürer and Pirckheimer, and, in 1560, he acquired what remained of Dürer’s estate.[2] The unfinished painting referenced in Imhoff’s inventory was Dürer’s Salvator Mundi, estimated to have been painted sometime before Dürer’s trip to Venice around 1505.[3]
The reason for the work’s creation and for its abandonment are both unknown. It was suggested by Eduard Flechsig in 1928 that the painting was originally conceptualized as the centerpiece of a triptych, with two unfinished panels, now in the Kunsthalle Bremen, intended to serve as the wings.[4] However, this theory was credibly refuted by Panofsky in 1943 on the basis of stylistic incongruity and later by a 2005 museum examination of the Bremen panels, which revealed significant differences in the underdrawings of the pieces.[5] There is always the possibility that the work was commissioned by some noble patron, but if this were the case, there is no surviving record for the transaction. Given the estimated timing of the piece, it may have been left unfinished when Dürer left Nuremberg to flee the plague in 1505.[6]
Whatever the case may be, Dürer continued to live for decades afterwards and neglected to continue work on his Salvator Mundi. Neither did he reuse the panel for another project, or get rid of the piece to make space, as one might expect of an uncompleted draft. Instead, he kept it for the rest of his life, and his wife kept it for another ten years after his death until her own passing. There are many possible explanations for the work’s preservation, varying in their levels of mysticism and pragmatism. One practical possibility is that it was kept in his workshop and used as a teaching tool.[7] Additionally, it may have held some sort of sentimental value to Dürer as an indicator of the progression of his connection to Christ over the course of his lifetime. The work’s unfinished state might have also amplified its power as a religious device and made it a valuable personal tool of worship.
The Salvator Mundi motif is traditionally simple and direct in nature. Christ, shown frontally, holds in his left hand an orb and raises his right hand in a gesture of benediction. In Dürer’s Salvator Mundi, Christ is shown from his waist up, centered, consuming almost the entire height of the panel. He is wearing a rich blue robe, a red cloth draped over his shoulder, and his hair is splayed to create a triangular contour. The image is fairly symmetrical, offset by the tilt of Christ’s head to the left, the bend in his neck mirrored by the bend at his wrist directly below. Some elements of the painting, most notably the color palette, may bear some Italianate influence, attributed to the residence of Jacopo de Barbari in Nuremberg c. 1500-1503.[8] The detailed underdrawing bears similarity to the preparatory drawings done for Dürer’s major commissions in Venice in 1506, and the exterior portions of the painting being finished while the face is nearly bare is consistent with Dürer’s process, as demonstrated by the surviving test prints for his “Adam & Eve”.[9]
The various stages of completion for different segments of the painting may have contributed to its usefulness as a teaching tool. Skimming across the image, one can see examples of almost every phase of the painting process. Starting from the center of the forehead, appearing as a patch of blank canvas, one moves downward to the eyes and nose, realistically portrayed, but in grisaille.[10] Parts of the beard are colored with a sort of umber, and at Christ’s shirt-collar there is a horizontal patch of orange paint that seems to be the beginning stages of the development of a flesh tone. Directly below the collar is a patch of blue cloth, Christ’s hand in pale color, and then, proceeding down in a vertical line, the sumptuous folds of the dark blue inner sleeve. Even without the presence of the master to guide them through, this painting on its own provides an instruction in the method of making a masterpiece.
The Salvator Mundi could have also provided workshop assistants with the opportunity for a conceptual exercise, and perhaps an example of the work they would later be expected to produce. In its incompleteness, Salvator Mundi invites the viewer to imagine what it might look like in its fully realized form. An artist in training might try to envision the next steps Dürer would take in order to render the image fully. This kind of thought process could then serve as preparation for a later time when the assistants would be asked to practice transforming one of the master’s designs into a full painting for an important commission.
The early sixteenth century was also a period of growing appreciation for unfinished paintings even among those outside of the profession of painting. With the Renaissance revival came the revival of Pliny’s Natural History and his praise for the value of unfinished pictures as indicators of the artist’s thoughts.[11] Certain Italian artists began to use a “Plinian” signature on some of their works, using the imperfect past tense to indicate that they “were making it,” rather than having just “made” it, referencing the continuous nature and process involved in the act of making art.[12]
Dürer himself noted in 1500 a growing appreciation in the north for draftsmanship.[13] Given this, Salvator Mundi could have been a supplement to the finished works in his possession to show to potential visitors. His prints were famous, and his paintings were being purchased by nobility, so there was no question of his talent, but something like Salvator Mundi could be used to show the quality of genius at work.
The obvious choice of comparison for this painting within the collection of works Dürer himself owned is his 1500 self-portrait. Dürer’s portrayal of himself has been analogized to various portrayals of Christ. Part of this is due to the fact that this painting was quoted in images of Christ done by later artists, and so Dürer’s form has become integrated into modern conceptions of the Christlike image.[14] Prior to the nineteenth century, there was little commentary that actually linked this portrait to the image of Christ, suggesting that early modern audiences may not have been making that connection.[15] It is also possible that the analogizing between Christ and the self was all too obvious and therefore not worth commenting on; as Koerner suggests, this could be a reference to God making man in his own image.[16]
Brian Gregor proposes a more active reading of the image as a manifestation of Dürer’s intent in his own religious practice. He highlights the centrality of following in the footsteps of Christ within Christianity, and the goal of aspiring to embody the qualities that he represents.[17] This is not an abstract proposal; the imitation cannot take place only in the mind and imagination. It is a practice that is demanded of the faithful. In the theological framework he proposes, a painting of Christ invites sympathy, but also admiration for the elements of craftsmanship involved. His argument is that a standard painting of Christ may allow the viewer to immerse themselves in the narrative and the scene as a spectator and does not necessarily force any act of religious self-reflection. Although Dürer, by portraying himself in this manner so close to that of the Salvator Mundi, is actively performing this imitation and confronting the viewer directly about it.[18]
Margaret Sullivan strongly insists on a secular interpretation based in the Renaissance humanist sphere of knowledge. Specifically, she argues that Dürer was, in this painting, trying to fashion himself from the accounts of the famous ancient artist Apelles, known only from accounts by Pliny.[19] This is part of Dürer’s overall intention to style himself in the manner of the gentile class, as demonstrated by the sumptuous clothing he paints himself in.[20] These interpretations do not have to be mutually exclusive. The humanist artist can also be a pious individual who seeks to emulate Christ, and in a Renaissance society that was seeking out the wisdom both of classical authors and of the Church, these concepts may have been able to coexist.
Even if it had not been his intention to portray himself in a Christlike manner at the time of painting, the similarities between the self-portrait he had already done and the Salvator Mundi he started work on five years later may not have escaped him. The pair of images, done relatively close to each other in time, could be interposed against his 1522 Self-Portrait as the Man of Sorrows. In the initial pair, both Dürer and Christ are shown in full health, in a position of strength and power. The motif of Salvator Mundi emphasizes Christ’s heroism, and without any reference to suffering.
To be sure, Dürer did produce many images of martyrdom and suffering throughout his career, but interestingly, it is the painting of Christ which most closely resembles his self-portrait that escapes this brutality. This is a moment when Dürer was still young, before he had reached his peak success. Could this depiction of Christ be Dürer’s way of trying to understand him through his own personal experiences? Dürer’s later image of himself as the man of sorrows is a clear attempt to relate the experiences of his own life to Christ. This unambiguous analogy was created by someone older, who had experienced more and was no longer in good health. If we allow for a more pious than heretical argument, it seems that this is Dürer trying to understand Christ from the position of his own vulnerability. He, too, has become a man of sorrows. As the circumstances of his life changed, his strategy of identification with Christ changed.
Under this argument, Dürer kept his Salvator Mundi as some sort of devotional object with more intrinsic meaning, simply because he was the one to make it, rather than purchasing it from another artist. The manner in which Christ is portrayed stems from his own concept of what Christ looks like. The many hours spent laboring over the image, even to get it to such a state of incompletion, represents a meditative religious practice in itself, as during these hours he was focused solely on Christ’s image through the act of painting. In the same way that painting himself as a Christ analog can be seen as an act of worship inasmuch as it represents his efforts to quite literally embody the values of Christ, the painting of the Salvator Mundi can be seen as an attempt to better understand the ways in which those values can exist in a human form. The painting could have served as a reminder of some of the religious thoughts and feelings he had while creating it, some of which may have been unusually poignant, leading to the decision to keep it.
Additionally, the personal value the Salvator Mundi held in this respect may have led to his decision to not sell it and therefore not to finish it. Five years earlier, he was able to seemingly dedicate as much time as he wanted to the creation of his own self-portrait for personal usage. The Salvator Mundi was painted on the eve of his increased success and many intensive, large, high-value painting commissions. He may have had a harder time justifying spending so much of his time working on a painting that was for himself, rather than to be sold at this point in his career. Likewise, if he made the conscious decision, for whatever reason, that he did not want to sell the Salvator Mundi, this could have contributed to his decision to put it aside.
The lack of finish itself contributes to the meaning of the image in many ways. The Christian religion, being an amalgam of multiple ancient religious practices, inherited from its roots in Paganism the use of images and objects as useful from a standpoint of religious worship, and from its connections to Judaism, the rejection of and condemnation of these images as idolatrous.[21] Germany in the sixteenth century was an especially complicated time and place for this sense of conflict. On one hand, there was the long-standing tradition of religious art and icons of varying levels of complexity offered by the Catholic church; on the other hand, the critique of all things Catholic and new concerns about the worship of saints and their corresponding images. These critiques, supported by a number of proponents of Protestantism located largely in northern Europe including present-day Germany, resulted occasionally in acts of iconoclasm. Complicating things further was the humanist Renaissance influence which supported the interest in and admiration of ancient pagan sculpture.[22] As Protestants claimed, idolatry was a fundamental part of Catholicism, “institutionalized within the sacramental system,” and therefore one of the reasons to distance oneself from it.[23]
The sin of idolatry, according to Paul in the New Testament, was “to worship the creature rather than the creator.”[24] Beyond this, exactly what kind of image or object constituted an idol was largely unknown and the mainstream religious opinion on this matter fluctuated over the centuries. There was a concerning ambiguity between “the rejection of images as representations of other Gods and the rejection of images per se, including images of ‘natural things’.”[25] Early Christians were able to distance themselves from a blanket condemnation of all religious art by emphasizing the understanding of the distinction between the creature and the created.[26] Saint Thomas Aquinas supported the use of images of angels and saints to teach religious doctrine and inspire piety, but warned against confusing these images, or even the angelic and saintly subjects themselves for targets of worship, since only God and Christ were actually to be revered in such a way.[27] This was the basic opinion which informed both Catholic and Protestant stances on the difference between idols and normal religious art, though their stances on the execution varied.[28] For his part, Luther favored simplicity in art and the use of images as a means of “didactic communication.”[29]
Within the framework of religious artworks as idols, this Dürer painting poses an interesting question specifically due to its state of unfinish. It evokes the image of a man, but not completely. Enough components are missing, and so obviously, that a viewer is not likely to forget that they are looking at a painting. This is contrary to Dürer’s typical artistic style and his theorized imitation of Appelles, whose talent was in incredible realism.[30] So, in response to the concern that religious art takes the unseeable and unknowable and makes it all too visible, the ambiguity left by the unfinished parts of the painting means that it actually does reproduce a certain element of unknowability.[31] Rather than “temporarily abolish[ing] the unseen,” it asks the viewer to remember and reflect on the unseen.[32] As the contemporary scholar Bill Brown said, “We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us.”[33] His examples of this include a broken drill, a stalled car, or a dirty window; items which take on a certain character through their active use, or which are generally not noticed because of the way they are seamlessly integrated into our lives, but that we do remember are just things when their functionality is interrupted. In this case, he is not describing religious art from the Renaissance, but this theory feels transferable to the Salvator Mundi in support of an anti-idolatrous argument. If the function of art generally is to immerse, distract, and entertain, have beautiful finish, or to tell a narrative, as is the case according to the Renaissance understanding, then the spots of open canvas on Christ’s head disrupt that. The viewer understands that the painting is a “thing.”
The lack of finish also reflects the active nature of religious icons in medieval belief. The power of the forces represented were often said to act through these images, which is one of the reasons praying to Jesus or Mary in front of an icon would have been considered an effective strategy. In the Golden Legends, there are several narratives of images reacting to Christian or anti-Christian actions taken around or against icons, such as a painting of Christ, which was said to bleed at the throat after it had been stabbed by a Jew.[34] As Sarah Salih claims, “The popularity of such tales surely meant that any image might be so regarded.”[35] Of course, there were hundreds of thousands of household devotional objects bearing the images of Christ and Mary at this time period, and even more outside of the home in local churches, monasteries, and administrative buildings.
These images were not rare and were observed constantly by average people, and under such a state of observation presented themselves as mostly static objects. They were probably not performing miracles on a regular basis. This does not dissuade the belief in the latent miraculous potential of these objects, however. As Bruno Latour argues, “the more images, mediations, intermediaries and icons are multiplied and overtly fabricated–explicitly and publicly constructed–the more respect we have for their capacities to welcome, gather, and recollect truth and sanctity.”[36] Their very numbers and presence in the household is exactly what lends plausibility to the idea that they might take action. It is understood that they are man-made and not imbued with any inherent spiritual power on the basis of their creator or their materials. They are fabricated and known to be “things.” However, their prevalence and the knowledge that all of them, including those in stories such as from the Golden Legends, are known to be fabricated “things” lends credibility to the argument that any of them, at any moment, could actually transform into a real embodiment of the divine.
The lack of finish of the painting is a representation unto itself of a state of suspended animation. As the traditional icon embodies a state of suspended animation on the spiritual plane, Salvator Mundi embodies this on the material plane. It may be that the lack of finish removed some of this spiritual power. Salvator Mundi cannot occupy the space of the traditional icon referenced in Latour’s argument because it has not actually been finished and does not enter into the traditional space of an icon in the home. It remains separate, in a unique category not often contemplated, because the evidence of the labor of man that went into its creation are still fully visible, rather than just presumed. It has not experienced the sort of transition that the state of completeness may have offered it. However, it is also possible that this very lack of finish heightens its spiritual powers. A reference to its suspended animation on the material plane may also reference the suspended animation on the spiritual plane. The claim of Hermes Trismegistus was that makers do not retain control of their objects.[37] Regardless of the maker’s intention, once an object has been finished, the ways in which it is used could make it an agent for Godly action, or vulnerable to satanic possessions. This is a sentiment that could be applied to any piece of artwork or media made across the span of time. Although a creator may have a certain intention for the way in which their object will be interpreted, the audience may choose an entirely different application that would overwhelm the initial conceptualization. For example, the Christiographic readings of Dürer’s 1500 self-portrait informed images of Christ in art and media over the course of the next several centuries.[38] In the case of Salvator Mundi, the abandonment of the piece without any clear record of Dürer’s intentions for it may make it more available for such interpretations. Dürer has submitted it to the realm of things outside of his control without even executing his full will as to its appearance and perception. The possibilities for its usages and interpretations expand outward from this. The object is “ominous with life potential”inasmuch as the Christ has features that are still identifiable enough to give the image believable presence, but also because of the formal ambiguity which points on its own to a sense of imminent transformation.[39] The image is perpetually awaiting its next brushstroke. It is on the brink of change.
These two arguments may seem somewhat contradictory. The argument that the Salvator Mundi is just a “thing,” and therefore could not be idolatrous because it could not be mistaken for an actual manifestation of Christ is, in many ways, opposite to the idea that the lack of finish transforms the Salvator Mundi into a perpetually animate object. This is reflective of conflict present in medieval and early renaissance Christian theological thought, which argued that Pagan artworks were both vacant of meaning and value and also possessed by devils because they were not Christian.[40] These arguments fit into a schema of highly complicated beliefs and systems of rationalization that demand much effort on the part of the outsider to accurately reconstruct. It is not suggested here that these two hypotheses about the unfinished image were, in actuality, maintained in paradox about this image. It is only suggested that they are both possibilities, and that the consequences of an unfinished icon within the ideologies of this time period are due more consideration. It does follow, though, that if any spiritual presence at all could be assumed in this image, Dürer would have had a degree of reluctance in destroying it. Rather than just an artist’s frustrations with an unsatisfactory piece, this would have been tantamount to iconoclasm. In addition, if, as theorized, its circumstances imbued it with an additional level of spiritual power, it makes sense that Dürer would have wanted to keep it in his possession, and his wife Agnes after him.
In the same way that this piece proposes exercises of artistic contemplation for those in Dürer’s studio, it also proposes spiritual contemplation and effort on the part of the beholder. The object does not permit passive observance. There is nothing to be gained from such an action, and it is difficult to achieve when confronted with the provocative nature of the half-complete. In the way the mind compiles composite colors when looking at a painting of Seurat, the mind tries automatically, without a person’s conscious input of intent, to complete this image. So, as discussed previously, it defies idolatrous connotation and demands meditation from its audience in the way that the normal image from this time would not.
Transcending simple issues of prayer and possession, this painting also engenders thoughts about the role of artistry and the act of creation itself. There is no shortage of commentary on the artist’s relationship to God, as two agents who are involved, making things which did not exist before. Leonardo Da Vinci drew the comparison between artist and God in that the artist must also understand the complexities of creation in order to replicate them, and asserts that “the mind of the painter must resemble a mirror which permanently transforms itself into the color of its object and fills itself with as many images as there are things placed in front of it.”[41] Dürer, meanwhile, although he supported the study and replication of nature, ascribes to the artist the need for a more specifically generative capacity to turn his mind into, as Panofsky argues, “the inexhaustible source of novel inventions.”[42] Panofsky draws a very fine line between heresy and admiration here, as authors do with the apparent Christological reference of Dürer’s 1500 self-portrait. He must be expressing a desire to emulate, rather than heretical self-aggrandizement.
Either way, these statements evoke questions about the nature of design and creation within the earthly and divine spheres. As many talents were and are, the ability to create realistic images through artistic expression was seen as a gift from God, implying a special relationship between the earthly and divine creators. This resulted in a paradoxical idea of learned versus innate skills. If the ability to create art was an honor directly bestowed on the artist from God himself, how could it be presumed to be teachable?[43] This is a conflict that remained unresolved, as Dürer wrote treatises on art clearly intended as teaching tools, while also sustaining belief in his own talent as a reflection, in some capacity, of the divine. As expressed by Jordan Kantor, “Dürer believed that through the display of his mastery, he honored the God who gave him that mastery. That is, the perfection of the creation, the artistic genius demonstrated through the work of art, reflects the perfection of the creator (God).”[44] Any skills that Dürer may have had were reflections on God’s mastery in His creation of Dürer. Creating art is an act of godliness performed by human individuals to demonstrate their piety and closeness to God.
An incomplete painting is a reference to an act of creation as much as anything else. Pliny in his discussion of Appelles considered it within the context of the incomplete as a reference to the artist’s skill in the act of creation, and an insight into the artist’s mind, as referenced earlier in relationship to the argument that Salvator Mundi may have been kept as an example of Dürer’s draftsmanship. Pliny was not a Christian and so would not have extended this argument into a Christian one, but the viewers of the Renaissance would have done so. As Dürer’s skills can only be a reflection of God’s skills, Salvator Mundi solicits contemplation of God’s miracle in the act of creation. Dürer has not been able to achieve a finished image of Christ in this case. Could this represent the ways in which the Holy Scriptures and the most intimate truths of Christ are out of reach to humanity, at least during their mortal lifespan? Could it be a message about the superiority of God over man in the face of human hubris, that God has the power to create Dürer and imbue him with these gifts, but Dürer does not have the ability to create God in the same manner? Neither of these questions presume to be the truth, but only try to demonstrate the power that this painting has in evoking such questions.
An ironic extension of these debates about idolatry is the incredibly minor role this painting has played in the extant cult of Dürer. It has been overshadowed by the 1500 self-portrait in every way, such that available commentary on the Salvator Mundi by scholars exists only incidentally, as a passing remark on the relationship between this image and the image of Dürer himself. This actual image of Christ is replaced in posterity by Dürer’s image of himself, which may or may not have had any actual intentional Christiomorphic dimensions. Koerner credits the cult of Dürer as one of the major contributing factors to the rise of art as a sort of “secular religion.”[45] Whatever the manifold virtues and layers of meaning this painting may have to offer in isolation, the primary feature of import that it brings to modern scholarship is its connection to Dürer, and its status as a sort of relic of his artistic lifespan. After the death of Willibald Imhoff, the widow Imhoff attempted to sell the Salvator Mundi to Rudolf II under the claim that this was the last piece Dürer had ever worked on.[46] The role of Christ hardly features into that argument. Instead, it centers the status of Dürer and the desire to be close to him at one of the pivotal moments of his life – the end. In reviewing the provenance of the image in 1942, Harry B. Wehle would write that a nineteenth century owner had commissioned an artist to complete the image and that paint had been added “shamelessly” to the picture.[47] This statement implies that to add to a Dürer painting is something that a person should be ashamed of, an act of iconoclasm in its own right. To interfere with the creation is a slight against the creator.
As with most art historical scholarship, this article privileges the interpretations and uses of this artwork within its historical context. It does not intend to ignore the longevity of Salvator Mundi and the possible applications it may hold for modern viewers. As Bill Brown writes, “Temporalized as the before and after of the object, thingness amounts to a latency (the not yet formed or the not yet formable) and to an excess (what remains physically or metaphysically irreducible to objects.”[48] Dürer is dead and that which is not yet formed is no longer formable. The features which may have made this painting legible as an icon with spiritual power to his workshop students allow it to continue to be an object of interest hundreds of years later. The meaning of the object lies between its latency and its excess, that which differentiates a “thing” from a mere “object,” in the language of Brown, and in the intangible quality that transforms a canvas and a store of pigments into “art.” Finally, Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood wrote of Renaissance art, “A materialistic approach to historical art leaves the art trapped within its original symbolic circuits. It tends not even to notice that the artwork functioned as a token of power, in its time, precisely by complicating time, by reactivating prestigious forebears, by comparing events across time, by fabricating memories.”[49] The Salvator Mundi for the modern Dürer scholar reactivates time by returning us to a moment in his workshop when he put down his paintbrush and walked away from the canvas. He is the prestigious forebear it reactivates, at a moment of pause, in contemplation, in suspended animation.
Endnotes
1. Elisa Urbanelli and Anne Rebecca Blood, Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 20.
2. British Museum, “Imhoff,” Accessed December 6, 2020,
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG32537.
3. Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Salvator Mundi,” Accessed December 6, 2020,
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436243.
4. An artwork consisting of three sections, often used as an altarpiece; Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Salvator Mundi.”
5. Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Salvator Mundi.”
6. Urbanelli and Blood 2016, 289.
7. Urbanelli and Blood 2016, 20.
8. Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Salvator Mundi.”
9. Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Salvator Mundi.”; Harry B. Wehle, “Preparatory Drawing on a Panel by Dürer,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 1, no. 4 (1942), 161. 10. A style of monochrome painting.
11. Urbanelli and Blood 2016, 19.
12. Urbanelli and Blood 2016, 21.
13. Urbanelli and Blood 2016, 20.
14. Joseph Leo Koerner, “The Artist as Christ,” in The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art, ed. Joseph Leo Koerner, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 74.
15. Margaret A. Sullivan, “Alter Appelles: Dürer’s 1500 Self-Portrait,” Renaissance Quarterly 68, no. 4 (2015): 1164.
16. Koerner 1993, 77.
17. Brian Gregor, “Thinking Through Kierkegaard’s Anti-Climacus: Art, Imagination, and Imitation,” The Heythrop Journal 50, no. 3 (May 2009): https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2008.00409.
18. Gregor 2009.
19. Sullivan 2015, 1168.
20. Koerner 1993, 67.
21. Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344258.
22. Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Theology, Ethnography, and the Historicization of Idolatry,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006): 585. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30141048.
23. Rubiés 2006, 583.
24. Rubiés 2006, 577.
25. Rubiés 2006, 574.
26. Rubiés 2006, 577.
27. Rubiés 2006, 582.
28. Rubiés 2006, 584.
29. Christopher S. Wood, “1500-1550,” in A History of Art History, ed. Christopher S. Wood (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019): 69. doi:10.2307/j.ctvdf0jr3.6.
30. Sullivan 2015, 1169.
31. Gregor 2009.
32. David Kaufmann, “Beyond Icons and Idols,” in Faith. Ed. James Hyde. (Real Art Ways: 2006): 111. 33. Brown 2001, 4.
34. Sarah Salih, “Idol Theory,” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 4, no. 1 (2015): 31. doi:10.5325/preternature.4.1.0013.
35. Salih 2015, 31.
36. Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), p. 72. 37. Salih 2015, 19.
38. Koerner 1993, 74.
39. Salih 2015, 19.
40. Salih 2015, 17.
41. Erwin Panofsky and Jeffrey Chipps Smith, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 281.
42. Panofsky and Smith 2005, 281.
43. Panofsky and Smith 2005, 282.
44. Jordan Kantor, Durer’s Passions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2000), 17. 45. Koerner 1993, 72.
46. Wehle 1942, 156.
47. Wehle 1942, 156.
48. Brown 2001, 5.
49. Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010), 18.
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