Nachrichten aus Nürnberg: The Annunciation as an Epistolary Address
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Shira Brisman
Abstract
When, around the turn of the fifteenth century, the art of northern Europe developed a pictorial motif whereby an angel delivers the news of the Incarnation in the form of a sealed document, the material properties of ink and wax metaphorically evoked the unique properties of the inscription of divine form upon Mary’s virginal body. The social impact of this communication, the dissemination of the message to a community of recipients, could be strengthened by references to the re-transmittable nature of the announcement, as enforced by other indicators of sociability detectable in different portions of the narrative scheme. The Tucher Altarpiece in Nuremberg and Michael Wolgemut’s altarpiece for the cathedral of St. Mary in Zwickau present two examples of uses of the epistolary Annunciation that may have influenced Albrecht Dürer, who employs the motif in his woodcut series The Life of the Virgin, which also contains, along with this pictorial form of broad address, more narrowly articulated messages to his contemporaries in the form of written words.
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Photo Credits: 1 – 3 Photo: © www.metmuseum.org; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. – 4 Photo: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Art Resource, NY. – 5 Photo: Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program, Los Angeles. – 6 Photo: Courtesy of the author. – 7 Photo: Courtesy of akg-images. – 8 Photo: © bpk, Berlin; Alte Pinakothek München; Art Resource, NY. – 9 Photo: Courtesy of Stephan Roller. – 10, 11 Photo: Courtesy of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg; Medienarchiv Fränkische Tafelmalerei vor Dürer. – 12 Photo: Courtesy of the Frick Collection.
© 2016 Shira Brisman, published by De Gruyter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Debatten/Debates
- Zur Lage der Kunstgeschichte Fortsetzung der Debatte aus Heft 3/4, 2015
- Kunstgeschichte und Digital Humanities Einladung zu einer Debatte
- Art History and the Digital Humanities
- Wechselkurse der Form
- Aufsätze
- Joseph christophore dans la Fuite en Egypte: transmission d’un schéma iconographique spécifique à travers le Moyen Age
- Nachrichten aus Nürnberg: The Annunciation as an Epistolary Address
- The Creation of the World by Virgil Solis
- Die Renaissance des Epos im romantischen Fresko
- Art Is Still Not Enough. Bilder von AIDS im Spannungsfeld zwischen Kunstanspruch und politischer Mobilisierung
- Miszellen
- The So-Called Sainte-Chapelle Windows of Soissons Cathedral: Another Look
- Buchbesprechungen
- Mapping Spaces. Networks of Knowledge in 17th Century Landscape Painting
