Story of the Wunderkind: An Erlangen Drawing from the Circle of Albrecht Altdorfer

When the Erlangen University Library published a new inventory catalog in 2014 for its southern-German and Swiss Renaissance drawings, many previously unpublished sheets were presented for the first time, among them a curious drawing with unidentified subject (fig. 1).^[1] This small sheet, measuring only 8–8.3 × 7.1 cm, is unattributed and bears the provisional title “Kinderbegrabnis (Child Burial) (?).” According to the catalog entry, it was made by a Bavarian artist in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The entry describes it thus: “In the center of this miniature pen drawing is a naked child standing in the opening of a cave-like tomb. A bird is soaring from here, and a man plummets with outstretched arms from above. Many other people, having gathered on both sides of the grave—including a man in turban— point at the protagonists and discuss the event in astonishment.” After describing this strange image, Manuel Teget-Welz, the author penning the entry, approaches the problem of its meaning: “How is the scene to be interpreted? It does not seem to deal with any episode in Christian iconography; alternatively, it could represent a miracle story (Wundergeschichte). Perhaps the child was buried because he was presumed dead as a victim of a crime. To the great surprise of all involved, the child remained alive. The falling man could be the alleged child murderer….”

1

Bavarian, Kinderbegrabnis (?), first quarter of the sixteenth century, pen and ink on paper, 8–8.3 × 7.1 cm. Erlangen, Universitätbibliothek, inv. no. B 1671 T. Here identified as representing the apocryphal Infancy stories of Christ, and attributed to an artist in Albrecht Altdorfer’s circle, made ca. 1508–1512

While the entry’s author intuitively—and in a sense, rightly—rejects a Christian reading for this bizarre scene and turns instead to fables and folktales, the possibility of the drawing representing a Christian scene cannot be hastily ruled out. What if the drawing does depict such an event, and that the naked child in the drawing’s center represents Christ himself? This paper clarifies the unknown iconography of this mysterious drawing, and provides contexts and analysis for its making and attribution.

1 The Apocryphal Infancy Gospels

In Christian iconography, a child who is comfortably naked and appears in a wide range of contexts is the Christ child. Dominating every aspect of Christian art, his life structures the pictorial cycle of numerous gospel illuminations, altarpieces, stained-glass windows, and devotional panels. In these pictorial representations, the depiction of Christ’s life usually begins with the account of his birth, starting with the scenes of The Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, culminating in the Crucifixion, and ending with the Resurrection. This iconographic formula is so familiar that any experienced churchgoer or student of western art knows its sequence by heart. When presented one of its scenes, a viewer would be able to immediately identify the event and its main protagonists.

Few would have realized, however, that many of these narratives constituting the standard pictorial cycle are in fact not strictly canonical— they are not described in the four Gospels, which give little information about Christ’s infancy and childhood.^[2] In the canonical texts, only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke briefly recount Christ’s early life. Both, however, remain silent about the events that occurred from the ages of five and twelve—that is, between the Holy Family’s settlement in Nazareth and Christ’s later appearance in the Temple confronting the doctors. This gap, which naturally calls for historical explanation, is instead filled by the Christian Apocrypha—the various texts that are excluded from the canonical writings and given the derogative term “apocryphal,” meaning “spurious, secondary, and derivative.”^[3] Characterized by liveliness and a kind of homespun rusticity, they supply anecdotes and additional details to the biblical accounts. The main apocryphal texts that narrate Mary’s and Christ’s childhood are the second-century Protevangelium of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in Greek, as well as the eighth-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew in Latin.^[4] The latter, drawing extensively from the first two and known as the Liber de infantia Mariae et Christi salvatoris during the Middle Ages, primarily contributed to the dissemination of apocryphal stories in the West.^[5]

Some of the stories from these infancy gospels can be easily adapted into images or incorporated into existing pictorial programs, like the ox and ass adoring the infant Christ by its crib in the Nativity and fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy: “The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib” (Pseudo-Matthew 14). Some other stories, however, are more elusive and problematic; they pose greater challenges to interpretation. The enigmatic subject of the Erlangen drawing belongs to this group of images.

The scene represented by the Erlangen drawing involves several episodes narrated by the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of PseudoMatthew. In these apocryphal accounts, the boy Jesus is portrayed as a Wunderkind, a precocious child with supernatural power who can decide the life and death of the people around him. As described in these infancy gospels with some variations, Christ already displays superhuman power as a very young boy. On the family’s flight to Egypt, the child causes a palm tree to bend and spring water to flow in order to provide refreshments for his family. This is recounted in Pseudo-Matthew: When Mary was fatigued by the desert heat and wishing to get some fruits from a date palm, the child Jesus, in response to his mother’s request, “said to the tree: ‘O tree, bend your branches and refresh my mother with your fruit.’ And immediately at these words the palm bent its top down to the very feet of Mary; and they gathered from it fruit with which they all refreshed themselves” (Pseudo-Matthew 20). Similarly, the child also commands a fountain to gush from the tree’s root to quench everyone’s thirst.

After the Holy Family settled in the village of Nazareth, the child Jesus continued to demonstrate his power and perform miracles. The Erlangen drawing concerns three episodes from this series of events. In a combined, shorthand form, it depicts: 1. Christ gathering and purifying pools of water; 2. Christ forming sparrows with clay and vivifying them; 3. Christ restoring a fallen boy to life and shocking the townspeople. The first two of these deeds are recorded in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas 2 and Pseudo-Matthew 27, here quoted at length:

When this boy Jesus was five years old he was playing at the crossing of a stream, and he gathered together into pools the running water, and instantly made it clean, and gave his command with a single word. Having made soft clay he moulded from it twelve sparrows. And it was the sabbath when he did these things. And there were also many other children playing with him. When a certain Jew saw what Jesus was doing while playing on the sabbath, he at once went and told his father Joseph, “See, your child is at the stream, and he took clay and moulded twelve birds and has profaned the sabbath.” And when Joseph came to the place and looked, he cried out to him, saying, “Why do you do on the sabbath things which it is not lawful to do?” But Jesus clapped his hands and cried out to the sparrows and said to them, “Be gone!” And the sparrows took flight and went away chirping. The Jews were amazed when they saw this, and went away and told their leaders what they had seen Jesus do [Infancy Gospel of Thomas 2].

In this story, Christ’s acts of gathering pools and animating clay sparrows mirror God’s creation and have a cosmological dimension. In the narrative that follows, however, Christ’s behavior defies our expectation of a benign and humble human God. The child is instead portrayed as a capricious and revengeful “enfant terrible,” as J. Keith Elliott has characterized it, “who seldom acts in a Christian way.”^[6]In the next episode, when a neighbor boy, son of Annas the scribe, destroys Jesus’s pools using a willow stick, Jesus curses him and the boy instantly withers and dies. A similar fate befalls another boy, who accidentally bumps into Jesus. After the townspeople, alerted, bring their complaints to Joseph, the child strikes them blind in revenge. In his usual willful and rebellious way, Jesus disrespects his elders, even Joseph, and kills one of his teachers for not recognizing his wisdom. Like other children, Jesus in his learning process needs to be coaxed and pleased: one teacher Zacchaeus, who publicly displays his humility before Jesus and acknowledges his divine knowledge, placates the child who subsequently lifts his curses on the townspeople who earlier irritated him.

As the child Jesus grows older, he gradually learns to control his temper and direct his divine power for good use. In the Erlangen drawing, the falling figure refers to a later episode where Jesus resuscitates a fallen playmate, as told in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas 9 and the PseudoMatthew 32. This story, as usual, however, is not without its internal conflict and suspense:

Now after some days Jesus was playing in the upper story of a house, and one of the children who were playing with him fell down from the house and died. And when the other children saw it they fled, and Jesus remained alone. And the parents of the one who was dead came and accused him. But they threatened him. Then Jesus leaped down from the roof and stood by the corpse of the child, and cried with a loud voice, “Zeno”—for that is what he was called—“arise and tell me, did I throw you down?” And he arose at once and said, “No, Lord, you did not throw me down, but raised me up.” And when they saw it they were amazed. And the parents of the child glorified God for the sign that had happened and worshipped Jesus [Infancy Gospel of Thomas 9].^[7]

An episode like this, as narrated by the infancy gospels, follows the basic structure of a miracle story, but also contains ambiguities and nuances in its portrayal of the human God.^[8] Allegedly recorded by a contemporary witness or someone close to the family in some versions of the texts, these stories retain a certain degree of realism in their narratives, which bring out the complication and pressure faced by a special family—with its child prodigy—living in a small Jewish community.^[9]

2 Early Depictions of Infancy Stories

Early representations of infancy stories in medieval art occurred in manuscripts and other art forms. The depictions of these unusual iconographies are mainly found in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, due to the widespread popularity of extensively illustrated vernacular bibles and chronicles. Well-known examples that contain depictions of the apocryphal infancy episodes are the Holkham Bible Picture Book (London, British Library, Ms. Add. 47682) and the Tring Tiles (fig. 2), both from the early fourteenth century.^[10] The latter are closely associated with another manuscript at Oxford’s Bodleian Library (Ms. Selden Supra 38), which also features apocryphal depictions.

2

Tring Tiles, ca. 1330, red earthenware with white-slip overlay, incised, carved, and covered with clear lead glaze, 20 × 35.9 cm each. London, British Museum, inv. nos. 1922,O412.1.CR, 1922,O412.2.CR, 1922,O412.3.CR, 1922,O412.4.CR

The Holkham Bible, made probably in London around 1325–1340, has among its extant 231 illustrations multiple depictions of Jesus’ childhood anecdotes as narrated by the Apocrypha. These pictures are in the form of vivid, color-washed drawing, each explained by an accompanying inscription. After the representations of the family’s Flight—which include the episodes of the encounter with the forest robbers, the palm-tree miracle, and the falling of idols—Christ’s childhood miracles are presented on five following pages. On the first page (fol. 15v), the Zeno episode is depicted in the middle of the upper register (fig. 3). The fallen boy swoops down in a dramatic pose, while the other children watch from the windows above. In the picture, Christ holds the dead boy by his hand and makes a gesture of benediction. Its result is seen on the right, where the boy’s parent sends Mary a gift as thanks.

3

Holkham Bible Picture Book, ca. 1327–1335, pen and ink with colored washes on parchment, 28.5 × 21 cm. London, British Library, Ms. Add. 47682, fol. 15v

Below, we see some of Jesus’s other childhood miracles—or rather, his cunning tricks: on the left, Christ walks on water, while the children who follow him are drowned; in the middle, Christ sits on a sunbeam, while those who imitate him fail; on the right, the boy who imitates Christ in drawing water from a well finds his jar broken—the picture shows the two boys playing the “conkers” game, where Christ remains invincible. According to the inscriptions, these harmed children and broken jars are later all revived or restored.^[11] These anecdotes are derived from disparate sources, such as the Arabic Infancy Gospel and the Pseudo-Matthew. The sunbeam miracle and the episode of the broken water jars occur also in several German examples.^[12]

The pools and clay-birds episodes represented in the Erlangen drawing are also illustrated in the Bodleian manuscript of ca. 1315–1325: on fol. 9r (fig. 4a), the sprightly young Jesus gathers seven tiny pools of water using a compass, in a pose akin to God’s creation as illustrated in many medieval bibles.^[13] On the right, the taller boy who destroyed Jesus’ pools is struck dead and shown inverted with his willow branch aside. In the miniature, the background with its abstract red-and-blue color scheme aptly separates the realms of life and death. On a subsequent illustration on fol. 10v (fig. 4b), Jesus orders the clay sparrows to fly away, while the accusing elders standing nearby watch in amazement. An illustration (fig. 5) that combines these two scenes is found in a fifteenth-century Italian manuscript illustrating the Pseudo-Matthew (Paris, BnF, Ms. Lat. 2688, fol. 24r), whose pictorial scheme is comparable to that of the Erlangen drawing.^[14]

4a – b

Christ Gathering Pools and Striking Dead the Neighbor Boy and Christ Vivifying Clay Birds before the Jewish Elders, ca. 1315–1325, illumination on parchment. Oxford, The Bodleian Library, Ms. Selden Supra 38, fols. 9r, 10v

5

Christ Vivifying Clay Birds, fifteenth century, illumination on parchment. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Lat. 2688, fol. 24r

In Germany and its nearby regions, an early depiction that captures the content of the apocryphal gospels is the early twelfth-century painted ceiling of St. Martin’s Church in Zillis, Switzerland. Its pictorial program, comprising 153 painted panels and displaying a variety of Christian subjects, includes an image of Christ bringing clay birds to life before two companions.^[15] Besides this early instance, most other surviving images depicting the infancy episodes occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, in the many illustrated History Bibles (Historienbibeln) and World Chronicles (Weltchroniken) made for aristocrats, clerics and some urban elites, as will be discussed below.

In the German-speaking areas, apocryphal infancy stories first gained widespread currency with the flourish of vernacular religious literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.^[16] During this period many poems devoted to the life of the Virgin and Christ were composed, which drew on the apocryphal materials and contributed new legends to the corpus. The popular poem Die Kindheit Jesu, composed ca. 1200–1220 by the Austrian writer Konrad von Fussesbrunnen in Middle High German, draws extensively from a version of the Pseudo-Matthew and narrates many infancy tales.^[17] The ca. 1250 Latin poem Vita beate virginis Marie et salvatoris rhythmica, running about 15,000 lines and written by a German author, was arguably the most widespread Latin poem on Mary’s and Christ’s life in the Middle Ages and similarly provides many infancy stories as told in the Pseudo-Matthew.^[18] Extremely popular in the regions of Bavaria and Austria—“almost every larger monastery possessed a copy”—this work was employed as a major source by many later vernacular translations.^[19] Among these is the early fourteenth-century poem Marienleben by Philipp von Seitz, which contains 10,133 lines and stood at the end of this long line of poetic tradition. Philip’s poem also had a major impact on the conception of the life of Mary and Christ in German religious literature, and remained very popular until the early sixteenth-century onset of Reformation.^[20]

Many lengthy biblical and historical compendia, produced in southern Germany during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and written in the vernaculars, incorporated these various texts and were often amply illustrated. A manuscript copy (Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Ms. Gen. 8) of the so-called Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk—a German translation of New Testament pericopes with a mixture of other materials by the so-called “Austrian Bible-translator”—contains part of Konrad von Fussesbrunnen’s Kindheit Jesu rendered in prose and features a series of illustrations for the narrated infancy stories.^[21]

The codex, created in Austria around 1340 and in its prologue offering itself as instruction for “the unlettered laity,” contains over 400 colored drawings in its side and lower margins.^[22] As in the Holkham Bible, several rarely depicted childhood wonders of Jesus are represented in a lively manner (fols. 24r – 28v). Its fol. 26r (fig. 6), for example, displays four vignettes that illustrate the stories mentioned in the text on this page. The picture on top shows Jesus helping one of Joseph’s workshop apprentices lengthen a wooden plank which had been erroneously cut too short (Infancy Gospel of Thomas 13; PseudoMatthew 37).^[23] The two scenes beneath it narrate how Christ carries water to his mother using his cloak (Infancy Gospel of Thomas 11; PseudoMatthew 33). In the middle of the lower margin, the image represents the by-now familiar episode of the broken jars, where the children who imitated Christ in drawing water from a well find their jars broken; these are only later restored by Christ’s command. On the verso of the page (fig. 7), we see Jesus granting Joseph the power to revive a dead man (Pseudo-Matthew 40) as well as the Zeno episode. The image of Jesus ordering clay sparrows to fly occurs later on fol. 28r (fig. 8), which also displays the scene of lions playing with Jesus and following him to the city gate (Pseudo-Matthew 35–36). Another contemporary (early fourteenth-century) depiction of Christ vivifying clay birds is found on a manuscript fragment of Philipp’s Marienleben in the archive at Graz in southern Austria.^[24] The picture’s composition is similar to the one in the Schaffhausen codex, which suggests the currency of the motif; it has probably become established iconography by that time.

6

Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, ca. 1340, pen and ink with colored washes on parchment, 38 × 27.5 cm. Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Ms. Gen. 8, fol. 26r

7

Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, ca. 1340, pen and ink with colored washes on parchment, 38 × 27.5 cm. Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Ms. Gen. 8, fol. 26v

8

Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, ca. 1340, pen and ink with colored washes on parchment, 38 × 27.5 cm. Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Ms. Gen. 8, fol. 28r

Like the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, a number of World Chronicles and History Bibles produced in Bavaria and Austria during the period of 1330–1430 wove disparate biblical and apocryphal accounts into their vernacular prose and include the infancy cycle in their texts and images.^[25]In a Historienbibel made ca. 1375–1400 in southwest Germany (New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, Ms. M.268), the depicted apocryphal childhood scenes include Mary leading Christ to school, and Christ animating clay sparrows and hanging a water jar on a sunbeam (fol. 26r; fig. 9).^[26]In a format akin to the Holkham Bible, it is a large-scale picture book filled with color-washed pen drawings accompanied by inscriptions (most are not filled in).

9

Historienbibel, ca. 1375–1400, pen and ink with colored washes, 36 × 28 cm. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, Ms. M.268, fol. 26r

Another series of depicted infancy scenes is found in a thick and densely illuminated Weltchronik produced ca. 1400–1410 in Regensburg (Los Angeles, Getty Museum, Ms. 33). Its texts compile the chronicles of Rudolf von Ems and Jansen Enikel, the Christherre-Chronik, and some other thirteenth-century texts including Philipp’s Marienleben. It therefore incorporates in its textual and pictorial program the apocryphal legends mentioned in Philipp’s poem, such as the family’s encounter with the forest robbers, the conversion of governor Affrodosius, the healing of robbed merchants with Christ’s bath water, Christ vivifying clay birds and reviving a dead playmate, and the episode of Christ and other children at the pond (fig. 10).^[27]

10a – b

Regensburg, Weltchronik, ca. 1400-1410, pen and ink with tempera colors on parchment, 33.5 × 23.5 cm. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 33, fols. 256v, 258r

During the fifteenth century, the apocryphal infancy stories continued to be recounted and illustrated, but the depiction of some of the more violent and controversial episodes had become increasingly rare, reflecting a change in people’s belief in these dramatic and sensational stories.^[28] As Elisabeth Landolt-Wegener has remarked, the fifteenth century saw the gradual cooling of the passion for lively narrative and storytelling.^[29]The textual and illustration cycles of this period tend to eliminate Christ’s childhood tricks and his punitive deeds, retaining only a few miracles related to the family’s Flight. This stricter adherence to a standard set of narratives and iconographies and people’s increasing concern about a source’s canonicity were already observable around 1400. In a group of Historienbibeln produced in Diebold Lauber’s workshop in Hagenau in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, made to be sold on the market, the sequence of illustrated episodes became more or less standardized.^[30] While their texts still rely on medieval sources such as Philipp’s Marienleben, the pools-creating and the clay-birds episodes are no longer to be seen, and the narrative cycle is reduced to limited events. Only several episodes, including the palm-tree miracle, the veneration of the dragons, the conversion of governor Affrodosius, Mary leading Christ to school, Christ reviving a playmate, and Christ playing with lions, are still regularly represented, as demonstrated by the Darmstadt and St Gall copies (figs. 11–12).^[31]

11

Diebold Lauber (workshop), Christ Reviving a Dead Child, in a Historienbibel, ca. 1430, pen and ink with colored washes. Darmstadt, Landesbibliothek, Hs 1, fol. 256r

12a – b

Diebold Lauber (workshop), Mary Leading Christ to School and Christ Reviving a Dead Playmate, ca. 1450–1455, pen and ink with colored washes. St. Gallen, Kantonsbibliothek, Vadianische Sammlung, Ms. 343d, fols. 56v, 59v

In the second half of the fifteenth century, hand-illustrated History Bibles were gradually replaced by printed chapbooks, which continued the former’s tradition and included similar sequences of apocryphal stories in their texts and images. One popular publication was the 1476 Die neue Ee printed by Anton Sorg in Augsburg, reissued in 1481 and 1491.^[32] Read as the New Testament—and hence the name Neue Ee— the work, largely modeled on the Christherre-Chronik, features multiple apocryphal infancy episodes in its narrative and its woodcut images, including the robbers episode, Christ going to school, and Christ resurrecting a dead playmate (fig. 13).^[33] Like the History Bibles before it, the work, although still relying on medieval sources such as Philipp’s Marienleben, the Passional, and other devotional poems, does not include the magic wonders of Christ vivifying clay sparrows or lengthening Joseph’s wooden planks, and the text, now partially purged, adheres more closely to the canonical gospels.^[34] In the Lübeck version of this work, published as De nye Ee by Lucas Brandis in 1478, the text is even further redacted.^[35]An edition of the work from as late as 1503 is also preserved, which was produced in Johann Froschauer’s Augsburg workshop.^[36]

13a – b

The Holy Family’s Encounter with the Robbers and Christ Reviving a Dead Child, from: Anton Sorg, Die neue Ehe, Augsburg 1476, woodcut with colored washes. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 2 Inc.c.a. 499 m, fols. 25v, 35r

Even though the apocryphal content is trimmed away in these more or less formalized fifteenth-century manuscripts and printed books, popular interest in these stories seems to have persisted. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—up to the time of our drawing—the apocryphal infancy stories were still widely disseminated, apparently through a variety of oral, textual, dramatic, and pictorial forms. Gerd Dicke in his significant study on the reception of apocryphal infancy legends up to the early sixteenth century investigates various means through which the apocryphal legends were transmitted and penetrated popular culture: they were preached from the pulpits, enacted in liturgical dramas and plays, celebrated in festivals, and reached their audience through chronicles, chapbooks, poems, and songs.^[37] The history of the several above-mentioned manuscripts itself attests to these stories’ continuous and widespread circulation: the ca. 1410 Getty Weltchronik was later owned by Albert IV (1447–1508), Duke of Bavaria, who had his and his wife’s portraits and coats of arms added to one of its folios. The late fourteenth-century Morgan Historienbibel was presented in 1522 to the abbot of the Ottobeuren Abbey in Bavaria. In 1562, the Schaffhausen Klosterneuburg Evangelienwerk was purchased by a Viennese citizen Valentine Renner from a book peddler, who noted his purchase on one of its leaves and pasted two woodcuts of Luther at its front.^[38]

While these apocryphal stories continued to circulate and remained popular, the general attitude towards these legends subtly shifted over time, as is indicated by these stories’ gradual disappearance from books and their pictorial programs. Despite the ample availability of literary sources and medieval examples, the depiction of the apocryphal stories concerning Christ’s childhood—except those that had already become the standard iconography—is almost non-existent in sixteenth-century art. It is therefore unexpected—and perhaps astonishing—that the apocryphal infancy stories resurface in an early sixteenth-century German drawing.^[39]

3 The Erlangen Drawing’s Iconography and Style

The Erlangen drawing is thus atypical, eccentric, and full of paradox. Its iconography is hard to recognize, moreover, not only because some of these apocryphal legends were rarely depicted in its era and are now obscure to us, but also because the artist has deliberately chosen an obscure mode of representing them. In the drawing, the apocryphal episodes are condensed into encrypted symbols: the scattered small pools, the two flying sparrows, the fallen neighbor boy Zeno, the Jewish townsfolk, and even the Christ child himself are all summarily and obliquely depicted—in the artist’s deliberate, cryptic manner—decipherable only to those who are familiar with the stories.

Confusion results already from the ambiguous depiction of the Christ child. Occupying the center of the image, he is framed by a doorway— just large enough to enclose him—which opens onto a mound that evokes an ancient burial site. Standing in a strange contrapposto and clapping his hands (in the act of animating clay birds), the naked child seems too tall for a baby—he has the height already of a young lad. And yet the artist has paradoxically retained his nakedness, as if still trying to cling to the one signifier of the infant savior in Christian art. This identity is ultimately obfuscated, as the child bears no nimbus; otherwise, the figure would be immediately recognized as Christ, not confusing its viewer. When it is compared to the haloed Christ in all earlier pictorial representations, one senses the Erlangen artist’s unwillingness to disclose the figure’s identity and his contrived sense of mystery. Admittedly the Christ child of the infancy stories did pose problems for earlier artists, who hesitated in representing either an infantile or a more mature figure.^[40]

In the Erlangen drawing, not only the Christ child, but also the entire image is marked by a deliberate furtiveness and a strange sense of humor. As noted above, the attributes that help identify the subject are intentionally downplayed and obscured by the artist’s seemingly careless drawing manner, even if the small size of the sheet is taken into account. It is difficult, for example, to notice and make out the almost illegible five water puddles at the child’s feet—unmentioned in the catalog entry—although after our recognition of the picture’s subject, we see that the elders nearby are in fact pointing directly at them and alerting us to their presence. Similarly, the time and setting of the depicted event in the drawing are also ambiguous and conceal the drawing’s subject. The mound-like structure with its doorway framing the Christ child does not refer directly to any infancy story—but it does give clues about the child’s identity, resembling as it does Christ’s tomb as depicted in Italian art, as we will see below. Nor does the sixteenth-century dress of the bearded elders, some of whom, nonetheless, wear uncommon headdresses that at least hint at their otherness, if not Jewishness.

The drawing, in this way, remains semi-closed and semi-open, blocking the viewers from a straightforward identification of its subject and yet simultaneously giving out hints for navigation. In several places it recalls the earlier-discussed medieval prototypes, as in the figure swooping down and the concise symbols of the pools and sparrows, but it also differs drastically from these antecedents in its conception and overall design. The drawing seems to be the artist’s unique contrivance. He was aware of the earlier pictorial tradition of the apocryphal legends and yet he decided to detour and chart his own path of pictorial narration. As we have seen, in the most recent chapbooks—the 1491 Neue Ee by Anton Sorg and other, later editions—the legends of Christ gathering pools and animating clay birds are already no longer present. The artist therefore must have learned of these apocryphal stories through other means, likely from older sources. Discounting the landscape setting of the scene, the artist’s treatment of the pools and clay-birds episodes in fact closely follows their medieval prototypes: pools are signified by the tiny blots on the ground (compare figs. 4, 5), and the birds are soaring away from the child (compare figs. 8, 10). These reflect the artist’s knowledge of earlier pictorial antecedents in addition to the stories. The unidentified artist, however, reformulated all these elements in his own distinct manner and in the pictorial language of his era, giving them a symmetrical composition and providing a background with a hilltop townscape and lush foliage, just as in many religious images of his time.

Besides its distinct approach to iconography, the drawing’s style is also highly characteristic. In the catalog entry, Teget-Welz correctly addresses the drawing’s style and relates it to the Historia Friderici et Maximiliana, a codex illustrated by Albrecht Altdorfer (ca. 1480–1538) of Regensburg around 1508-1509.^[41] Stylistically the drawing is very close to the Historia and Altdorfer’s early drawings from the years 1508–1511. Comparable details of landscape can be found in many of the artist’s works, such as the 1508 Wild Man in London, the two Saint Christopher around 1509–1510 in Vienna and Hamburg, and the Historia (fig. 14a – d).^[42] The gesturing elders in the Erlangen drawing’s foreground, with their baggy bodies and loose outlines, also resemble Altdorfer’s slightly rotund figures of this period, like the comic-looking servant in the Berlin Female Falconer on Horseback (ca. 1508) and the swollen Samson in the New York Samson and Delilah (1506).^[43] Smaller details, such as the overlong sleeves typical of Altdorfer’s figures, also correspond. Moreover, the abbreviated, tiny figures in the drawing—the Christ child and the fallen Zeno—have parallels in the artist’s small-scale woodcuts, especially in the series The Fall and Salvation of Mankind (fig. 15a–e) of ca. 1513.^[44]

14

Landscape comparisons. Details from a: the Erlangen drawing (fig. 1); b: Wild Man, London, British Museum, inv. no. 1910,0611.1; c: Historia Friderici et Maximiliani, Vienna, HHStA, Hs B 9, fol. 30r; d: St. Christopher, Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 3000

15

Figure comparisons. Details from a: the Erlangen drawing (fig. 1); b: The Last Judgment from The Fall and Salvation of Mankind, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 20.11.45; c: Female Falconer on Horseback, Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, KdZ 81; d: Historia Friderici et Maximiliani, Vienna, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Hs B 9, fol. 8v; e: The Dispute in the Temple from The Fall and Salvation of Mankind, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 20.11.20

The Erlangen drawing, however, also poses some difficulties for a direct attribution to Altdorfer because of some deficiencies in its artistic quality. First, it displays some formal weaknesses, especially in the delineation of the figures’ bodies and in some places the hesitancy and corrections of the lines. The unclear forms in the crowded groups also create confusion within the composition. Second, the several figures in sixteenth-century garb look unusual and seem to diverge from Altdorfer’s common renderings. The elder with forked beard and Jewish headdress in the center left—with a smug (?) expression on his face—is a strange-looking figure, and on the right the long-bearded elder in a turban seems to be copied from something else. On these two figures, the artist uses many small strokes ending in tiny loops to indicate the creases of the draperies. Altdorfer occasionally does this, as in his Martyrdom of Saint Catherine (1508) in Vienna, but not in such profusion.^[45] Two things that need to be considered regarding this drawing’s artistic quality, however, are its small scale and its potential purpose. The very tiny scale and the drawing’s likely function as a probing design—a study testing preliminary ideas for a more refined composition—may account for the imprecision in its form and rendering.

In any case, the drawing’s author remains mysterious.^[46] The sheet could have been made by a follower or someone in Altdorfer’s immediate circle. The possibility that the artist himself made it should not be entirely eliminated, however. Despite the existence of some formal divergences, the general feeling of the drawing—and especially the rhythm in the pose and gesture of the figures—makes one suspect Altdorfer’s authorship. The peculiar standing pose of the Christ child, for example, recalls the twisted torso of Eve in his woodcut The Fall of Man and the wild man in his British Museum drawing.^[47] The excited gesturing and turning figures of the crowd have comparanda in Altdorfer’s many drawings, engravings and woodcuts.^[48] What is more, the mood of the drawing—besides its formal language—is very close to works by Altdorfer: the drawing’s indirect mode of presentation, and also the peculiar choice of subject itself, both align well with the interest and inclination of the artist. With its inherent humor, the drawing secretly betrays its author—an artistic personality very close to Altdorfer, an eccentric humorist who is prone to unpredictability, and whose work, usually furtively comic or ironic, exudes an air of disquieting charm.

4 Altdorfer’s Artistic Mode and His Possible Connection to the Erlangen Drawing

Altdorfer’s treatment of religious subjects, as has often been pointed out, is always marked by novelty and creates surprises.^[49] Joachim von Sandrart, who wrote the first vita of the artist in his 1675 Teutsche Academie, already employed the terms “wild” (“wild”) and “Selzamkeit” (“strangeness”) in describing Altdorfer’s work.^[50] The artist does not follow conventional iconography but rather reimagines sacred events by giving them an unexpected twist. Altdorfer was especially interested in the family stories and the human relationships within the biblical accounts. In his known œuvreand especially in his early years, he created a number of works that deal specifically with family life, including its prosaic aspects and dramas, and rephrased hagiographical events into humanizing episodes that tell of the joy and pain, and many subtle emotions that only find their most apt expressions in the daily life of an ordinary person.

In Altdorfer’s art, the Holy Family often assumes the life of commoners and acts as protagonists of quasi-profane tales. In his woodcut series The Fall and Salvation of Mankind of ca. 1513, the artist renders the biblical cycle with a set of original compositions. In what can be called a humanizing reformulation of biblical stories, Altdorfer unleashes the inner conflict inherent in each Christian episode and humorously involves the divine personage in human dramas. His Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple (fig. 16), for example, presents the episode as a decisive moment of parting with family members with no turning back.^[51] The little Mary, just aged three and escorted by her father, cheerfully runs up the stairs towards the priest who is waiting for her with open arms. Her father Joachim, seen from behind, bends his body in dramatic motion, as if failing to keep pace, which indicates the brevity and haste of the event. The Protevangelium of James which narrates the birth and infancy of Mary tells us that this separation came with some difficult feelings and resolutions on the parents’ part: Joachim, who fears his child would miss her parents on her way to the temple, orders the Hebrew virgins to follow them and carry burning torches, so that the child “may not turn back and be tempted away from the temple of the Lord” (Protevangelium of James 7). Altdorfer’s characteristic narrative approach can be also seen in an earlier scene, Saints Anne and Joachim Meeting at the Golden Gate (fig. 17).^[52] In this scene, the reuniting couple, after experiencing hardship and separation, is now sustained in a silent act of embrace. Anne slumps into the shoulders of her husband, the couple sharing a moment of joy and other unnamable emotions; their faces are hidden from us.

16

Albrecht Altdorfer, Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, from the series The Fall and Redemption of Man, ca. 1513, woodcut, 7.2 × 4.8 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 20.11.12

17

Albrecht Altdorfer, Meeting of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate, from the series The Fall and Redemption of Man, ca. 1513, woodcut, 7.2 × 4.8 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 20.11.11

In retelling these biblical narratives as homely tales, Altdorfer regularly adopts an unusual viewpoint and exposes the unfamiliar aspects of the story. In reintroducing the internal conflicts at the core of each biblical story into his picture, the artist leaves them unresolved, thereby extending the story’s drama to the full. In other situations where a scene itself is charged with great emotional tension, however, the artist then always chooses to conceal and reduce suspense, deliberately showing the figures from behind and hiding their faces. In Altdorfer’s presentation, disingenuous sophistication is coupled with childlike sincerity, which creates a double effect of his work.

In Altdorfer’s deliberately oblique manner, his Christ among the Doctors—unlike the common version which shows Jesus high on a pedestal—adopts a low focal point and plants the teenage Jesus on the ground, who is obscured by the crowd (fig. 15e).^[53] In another of his eccentric pursuits of unpredictability and theatricality concerning the same episode, the artist deploys a reverse perspective, not showing Christ disputing among the doctors, but instead picturing his anxious mother looking for and finally finding him in the temple after the family was separated on the way back from Jerusalem (fig. 18).^[54] The effect of these works by Altdorfer is at the same time familiar and strange, as the viewers, although capable of relating the event to a real-life situation, might not be able to immediately identify the subject or might find the mode of presentation perplexing. In these bizarre concoctions of shock and intrigue, the artist’s humor lurks.

18

Albrecht Altdorfer, The Virgin Searching for Her Son in the Temple, ca. 1519–1520, engraving, 6.3 × 4.2 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 30.24.1

With unpredictability and ambiguity forming his basic rhetoric, the artist is also a skillful shifter of perspectives—of narrative, time, and space. In his works, mythological, historical, and legendary events can be all expressed in the present tense and presented as contemporary events. In the artist’s special treatment, the mythological deities of Venus and Cupid are brought in to tell a family story. In a precious, tiny drawing depicting Venus Chastising Cupid (fig. 19), the goddess is shown as a contemporary housewife upbraiding her toddler.^[55] In the image, only an inconspicuous broken bow in the foreground betrays the picture’s true subject. In Altdorfer’s depiction of Samson and Delilah, the biblical hero and his deceitful companion both wear sixteenth-century garb as in contemporary drama.^[56] In making adjustments to the standard iconographies, Altdorfer transforms each event—hitherto existing only in the symbolic sense—into a concrete social situation rooted in the real world.

19

Albrecht Altdorfer, Venus Chastising Cupid, 1508, pen and ink on paper, 9.7 × 6.6 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, KdZ 4184

In the work of his sixteenth-century contemporaries, Altdorfer’s approach was neither common nor neutral. People in the early sixteenth century were aware of his anachronistic presentation, even at times confused by his deliberate blurring and disingenuous retelling.^[57] Some artists who imitated Altdorfer tried to reproduce the same kind of disingenuousness: Wolf Huber, for example, depicted some of his saints as swaggering mercenary soldiers.^[58] Some other artists who imitated Altdorfer chose to tune down the rusticity of his images and his contrived sense of familiar homeliness. A contemporary engraver who copied Altdorfer’s engraving Virgin and Child with Two Boys (1507), for example, attempted to resolve the image’s ambiguity by attaching haloes to the infant Christ and the two adoring boys—who look like country lads—in order to fix their identity and prevent a slippery reading.^[59] The copying artist perhaps considered it dangerous when the profane elements of the picture overstep the divine.

Altdorfer’s portrayals of the Christ child, in his usual artistic approach, are also fluid and ambiguous. In his renderings, the Christ child can be both the vulnerable infant in Mary’s arms and the trickster child in Saint Christopher’s legend, who insists that the saint ferry him across the river and then miraculously weighs the whole world upon the latter’s shoulders, as depicted in a British Museum drawing of Saint Christopher (1512) showing them from the rear (fig. 20).^[60] In these scenes, there is always a gently satirical flavor in the artist’s depiction of divine personage and hagiographical event. In the Erlangen drawing too, a satirical tone is palpable in the artist’s pictorial arrangement. In the drawing, the narrative is not stressed, but rather the effect: the astonished villagers, gesturing and turning in their amazement, are brought to the front and enlarged, who contrast sharply with the tiny Christ child, who looks static and selfcomposed. In this image, the Christ child is ostensibly the Wunderkind—an ambiguous force that borders on good and evil, of an unknown nature and differing from anyone else.

20

Albrecht Altdorfer, Saint Christopher, 1512, pen and ink with white highlights on dark brown prepared paper, 27.2 × 15.5 cm. London, British Museum, inv. no. 1925,0509.1

Behind the Christ child, the central setting of a dome-like structure, which has not yet been explained, reinforces this message. This is the artist’s unique addition to the traditional iconography. Placed in the context of the illustrated stories and in this composition, the dome-like mount serves a double purpose. First, it forms the high rock from which Zeno has fallen, as recounted in most German versions of the apocryphal tale.^[61] It also functions as a signifier of Christ: evoking the future, it points to Christ’s grave, which is often represented in the Italian Entombment as a central, rocky chamber, as in Fra Angelico’s version (fig. 21).^[62] This frontal Italian tomb does not usually appear in fifteenth-century northern art. Another German artist with extensive Italian contact, Hans Burgkmair, painted two Entombments using this central-tomb motif around 1520.^[63] He was probably inspired by northern Italian prints, such as those by Mantegna and his followers. In a drawn design by Burgkmair for an altarpiece, the tomb is set centrally in the Italian fashion, similar to the Erlangen drawing (fig. 22).^[64] Altdorfer, a resourceful artist, was already engaged with northern Italian prints in the first years of the sixteenth century, using them as models for many of his designs and translated them thoroughly into his own idiom.^[65] Employed in the Erlangen drawing, the tomb-like structure implicitly invites visual comparison between the sagging body of crucified Christ and the upright torso of the invincible child, and foreshadows his eventual suffering.^[66]

21

Fra Angelico, Entombment, ca. 1438–1440, tempera on wood, 37.9 × 46.6 cm. Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. no. WAF 38 a

22

Hans Burgkmair, Christ’s Entombment and Resurrection, ca. 1521, pen and ink on paper, 23.3 × 11.5 cm. Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv. no. NMH 119/1918

Curiously, the illustrated Historia Friderici et Maximiliani, a work that is stylistically closest to the current drawing, also deals with the theme of the Wunderkind, which portrays the ambitious emperor Maximilian I as a child prodigy, his life mimicking the trajectory of Christ.^[67] The codex, intended as a gift from Maximilian to his grandson, the future Charles V, contains a chronicle composed by Joseph Grünpeck and 46 full-page illustrations by Altdorfer showcasing the deeds of Maximilian and of his father Frederick III, which may also have been prepared for a planned publication with woodcuts, like the later Weißkunig. The codex’s first scene illustrating Maximilian’s childhood depicts a miracle performed by the prince during his first bath, in which the new-born “stands steadily in his bathtub for a moment without crying,” a scenario that apparently runs parallel to many hagiographical accounts (fig. 23).^[68] Compared to the infant Maximilian portrayed in the Historia, the Christ child in the Erlangen drawing, however, is unequivocally naked, and looks abstract and superhuman. The Wunderkind in the Erlangen drawing is an estranging device deployed by the artist. The artist distances his child from the viewer’s accustomed experience with hagiographical subjects, once again to defamiliarize the familiar.

23

Maximilian’s First Bath, from: Joseph Grünpeck and Albrecht Altdorfer, Historia Friderici et Maximiliana, ca. 1508–1511, pen and ink with colored washes, 28.7 × 21.1 cm. Vienna, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, HS B 9, fol. 38r

And yet in the drawing at Erlangen, irony and jokes also abound. Part of the picture’s comic quality comes from the inner contradictions of its depicted story, which defies common experience. The drawing is comic also because it represents a miracle story and the artist knows it is fictive and impossible. Thus, the drawing is marked by irony, which, as André Jolles reminds us, is when a joke feels too close to the telling person—in this case, the artist proposing a “fake” altarpiece.^[69] In its unreal, dreamy world, a small child with his playful acts can somehow outdo the learned, experienced elders. In the image, the child’s tiny scale is contrasted with his immense power. His simple outline seems to mock the putative sophistication of human knowledge, as embodied by the rotund and well-clothed elders. Drama is inherent in this drawing; its mood resembles the violent humor of Altdorfer’s art, which often hides the powerful and divine behind simple, laconic strokes.

5 The Context for the Drawing’s Creation

Although the Erlangen drawing is seemingly a design for a larger panel or an altarpiece, such a project was probably never realized. The framing enclosing the scene—an ogee arch flanked by two smaller round arches—is a common shape for the central Corpus of a retable in southern Germany at the time, either carved or painted.^[70] Some monumental sculpted or painted projects also follow this form.^[71] On the Erlangen drawing, no wing of an altarpiece is indicated, but the two vertical lines on the side extend underneath, as if suggesting undepicted content. To provide some context, a few altarpiece designs of the period range from elaborate, meticulously rendered Visierungen like those by Hans Holbein the Elder and Veit Stoss, to freer and more liberal studies such as Wolf Huber’s 1519 sketches for his Annenaltar.^[72] Some copies made after altarpieces are also preserved.^[73] But all these are “normal” designs with usual subject matters, focusing on the Virgin or the important events from the life of Christ. Could the Erlangen drawing be a copy after an existing panel? That would be even more remarkable, in fact unthinkable. And yet, German art of the period is full of surprises, as the current drawing itself shows.

The Erlangen drawing, to my knowledge, is the only surviving early sixteenth-century artwork that takes the apocryphal stories of Christ making pools and animating clay birds as its subject. It could well be a unicum in its own era—the only instance when an early sixteenthcentury German artist contrived an unrealistic image of wonder. And yet, even this sense of fabled enchantment and wonder was not entirely lost in the first decades of the sixteenth century and pervades many artworks depicting the Holy Family. Albrecht Dürer in his woodcut series Life of the Virgin (Marienleben), created earlier but published in book form in 1511, also depicts several apocryphal scenes that are familiar and genial. In the scene of the Holy Family’s sojourn in Egypt, the family is shown outdoors in a dilapidated city in front of an expansive landscape. Joseph is busy with his carpenter’s work, assisted by a lively throng of little putti, while the Virgin, who is preoccupied with spinning and surrounded by angels, rocks the cradle of her child with one foot (fig. 24).^[74] The other scenes from the series, such as the Birth of the Virgin and the Presentation in the Temple, are also saturated with anecdotal details and direct observations from life, including the boisterous household during Mary’s nativity and the profane market— literally pro-fanum—before the steps of the temple.^[75] Other artists such as Lucas Cranach the Elder, on the other hand, chose to engage with the subject of Holy Kinship (Heilige Sippe)—another iconography derived from apocryphal legends— which came into vogue especially in German art in the first two decades of the sixteenth century.^[76]

24

Albrecht Dürer, The Sojourn of the Holy Family in Egypt, from the series Life of the Virgin, 1511, woodcut, 41.9 × 29.8 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 1975.653.4

In the period between 1508-1512, Altdorfer produced many drawn and painted works on the subject of the Holy Family. He painted two Nativity panels, a Rest on the Flight, and made multiple drawings on the Adoration of the Magi and Rest on the Flight, besides the scenes of Crucifixion and Lamentation of Christ. So did many Altdorfer’s contemporary artists and followers, who repeatedly described and reinterpreted these Marian and Christian episodes in their pictures. The family’s Flight is one of the most depicted subjects of the artists of the so-called Danube School, who envision the family passing laboriously through a sylvan Alpine landscape—as in a painting by Wolf Huber—or taking a refreshing break in the forest by a stream, like those pictured by Hans Baldung and Hans Leu.^[77]

What were Altdorfer’s recorded activities in Regensburg during this period? In 1509, Altdorfer painted a panel for the choir of the Romanesque church St. Peter just south of the city wall, for which the city paid him 10 Gulden.^[78] In 1510, the artist donated a painted panel on his own initiative, the Rest on the Flight to Egypt (fig. 25), which presents the Holy Family by a fountain, along with a pious inscription in Latin dedicating the panel to the Virgin.^[79] But there was no existing major altarpiece corresponding to this drawing, or even remotely like it—it is simply too radical. Part of the delight brought by this drawing, if it is rendered into a complete painting, would be irretrievably lost. The intimacy of the drawing is bound up with its medium and its highly unusual subject, and perhaps the artist understood this. When rendered into a largescale altarpiece, the serious enterprise would undermine the drawing’s intrinsic charm, for to enlarge this small-scale sheet with its eccentric subject is to destroy its secrecy, as seriousness leaves no space for clandestine joke.

25

Albrecht Altdorfer, Rest on the Flight to Egypt, 1510, oil on panel, 58.2 × 39.3 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 638B

If a project such as that had ever been undertaken, the altarpiece must have lacked a devotional center, as the true subject of this Erlangen drawing concerns the Christ child’s trickster gift, not his precocious wisdom or passion. Created in the years that led up to the Reformation, when the taste for illustrating apocryphal legends was gone and superstitious materials banned from the most recent Weltchronik (by Hartmann Schedel), the drawing with its untimely existence presents something between make-believe and disbelief, something typical of the period. While cautious and skeptical humanist scholars discredited relics and devotional images, large groups of fervent and credulous pilgrims flocked to the Marian shrines in Regensburg, Altotting, and other German regions to participate in the worship of miraculous icons.^[80] In Altdorfer’s Regensburg, the local Marian cult of 1519–1521 caused such a sensation that the massive crowd of fanatical worshippers was recorded in a woodcut by Michael Ostendorfer, and the event was condemned by reformers and critics alike, among them Dürer and Luther.^[81]

At this time apocryphal literature was still being eagerly consumed and was not short of subscribers, but they were probably read by the discerning many with amusement and in disbelief.^[82] The respected Strasbourg preacher Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg, for example, pointed out in his sermon the falsity of Christ’s childhood miracles and warned his listeners not to believe in such tales as found in the little booklet (i.e. the “kindbiechlin Christi”), which they call the “apocryphos.”^[83] Luther, in his usual polemics, considered the fables in the infancy gospels “laughable and foolish things” (“viel lächerlich, närrisch Ding”), and in his 1522 Kirchenpostille railed against these apocryphal materials and suggested they be burned.^[84] He specifically picked out the popular folkloric account of Jesus going to school, as found in the Neue Ee (latest surviving edition from 1503) and still shown on the stained-glass windows of many regional churches, remnants of previous centuries and already outmoded.^[85]

Considering its enchanting but somewhat light-hearted air, the drawing is likely a disingenuous joke on the part of the unidentified artist. Is the drawing the artist’s mockery of the standard and serious altarpiece? Was it a whimsical creation, a private joke, for the fun of the artist himself, who was amused by the apocryphal stories? Was it the artist’s quixotic envisioning of how one might design a picture with this apocryphal subject? Although we are not sure about the identity of the artist, Altdorfer, we know, was himself a skeptic of the so-claimed historical veracity and truth, and portrayed the Roman heroes from the tales of Gesta Romanorum as dubious mock-heroes.^[86] His contemporary collectors and his many followers must have understood and appreciated the subtle humor in Altdorfer’s pictures, for they were avidly collected and widely imitated. This can be inferred by the existence of exact duplicates of several of Altdorfer’s chiaroscuro drawings. Evidently they were sent to different clients, as in the case of the two nearly identical sheets of Samson and the Lion (ca. 1512) in Berlin.^[87]

The Erlangen drawing protects its own content. The artist counts on the resourceful viewer to recognize the subject matter. Otherwise the drawing remains elusive, clandestine. Created in an inopportune era, it is an “apocryphal” artwork in its own right.

I dedicate this piece to my teachers, Professors Carol H. Krinsky, Kathryn A. Smith, and Christopher S. Wood, to whom I am deeply indebted. I am also grateful for a three-month fellowship awarded to me by the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; I would like to thank Dr. Michael Roth, Michel Hansow, Christian Jäger, and Felix Schreier.