Durer and His Culture.

Dagmar Eichberger and Charles Zika, eds. D[ddot{u}]rer and His Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xviii + 255 pp. illus. $69.50. ISBN: 0-521-62037-6.

An exhibition of D[ddot{u}]rer's prints from the outstanding collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (1994) prompted the present volume of selected papers from the Melbourne conference held at that time. Rather than present yet another overview of D[ddot{u}]rer's artistic development, the conference centered around contemporary sixteenth-century cultural practices and discourses, thus following the direction taken in both East and West Germany in the exhibition catalogues and symposia of D[ddot{u}]rer's 500th anniversary year (1971). Included is "Ways of seeing in the age of D[ddot{u}]rer," an essay contributed by the late Bob Scribner, to whose memory the book is dedicated, which combines observations on scientific, moral, and mystical writings on vision.

Irena Zdanowicz, Melbourne's Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, traces the history of the National Gallery's D[ddot{u}]rer collection from its beginning in 1853 to the present; Eichberger gives a general overview of Kunst und Wunder collecting, and of drawings and watercolors as appealing substitutes for middle class collectors who could not aspire to own live animals or the most exotic naturalia, treating D[ddot{u}]rer's own role as collector and that of Margaret of Austria. Christiane Andersson's essay on censorship of images in Nuremberg (1521-1527), while not dealing directly with D[ddot{u}]rer, gives general background for the last years of the artist's life as the city attempted to deal with rising Reformation sympathies without giving unnecessary offense to Charles V, and showing that the punishments specified for publishing anti-Papal images and texts were often either commuted or ameliorated.

Larry Silver's "Germanic patriotism in the age of D[ddot{u}]rer" gives a convenient review of the basic literature by Joachimsen, Spitz, and Wuttke, with added emphasis on parallels with the writings of Heinrich Bebel. Lyndal Roper's essay on tokens of affection and the meaning of love develops the general context of courtship as a societally-controlled institution. Charles Zika discusses "D[ddot{u}]rer's witch, riding women and moral order"; Wim H[ddot{u}]sken examines the literary context of the disputed Michelfeldt Tapestry and themes of the "World Upside Down"; and Paul M[ddot{u}]nch contributes an excellent essay on "Changing German perceptions of the historical role of D[ddot{u}]rer."