Meditating with Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)

In 1514, the German painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer was at the height of his art. After several stays in Florence and Italy over the years, the man decided to return to his city of the Holy Roman Empire, Nuremberg. He is famous throughout Europe for his art of portraiture and his mastery of engraving, further enriched by the Italian masters he met. That year, Dürer witnessed the death of his mother, which plunged him into depths of perplexity. Among the three famous engravings he produced at the time, two evoke the theme of death and melancholy. The third represents Saint Jerome at work. Three engravings which illustrate the three spheres of life as they were then described: moral life, intellectual life and, here, contemplative life. For the latter, the evocation of this saint who translated the Bible into Latin is essential.

Jerome had in fact settled next to the Grotto of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, to contemplate as closely as possible the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ. In 1514, Lazarus Spengler, a friend of Dürer, also dedicated a hagiography to him which must have inspired the engraver. But the engraving says even more: the old man, seated at his work table, is surrounded by numerous symbols that the humanist scholars of the time easily recognized. The light coming through the large bay window. The lion who watches, while the dog has fallen asleep. The skull on the shelf evokes the vanity of the world. As for perspective, a major concern of Renaissance painters, it is here off-centered with its vanishing point on the right of the engraving. Dürer understood that his world was changing. But its fair measure remains that of the humanity which remains there, always renewed.