(1471-1528)

During the course of his career Dürer made over one hundred engravings, the earliest bearing his monogram being the Virgin with the dragonfly, 1495, made just after his return from his first trip to Italy. In 1492 he had acquired his own printing press, thus allowing the making, publication and, in his own case, distribution of his works via agents. His entrepreneurial flair in promoting his own prints with the readily identifiable monogram quickly attracted copyists and Dürer acted on occasions to protect his work. However, the protection granted by the authorities in Italy (the Venetian Senate in the case against Marcantonio Raimondi) or Germany, was more often for the protection of his trademark monogram, (which had to be removed from the copyists' plates) not the images themselves. Indeed, when Dürer published a set of woodcuts of the Life of the Virgin, 1511, he warned others in the preface, ‘Woe unto him who ventures to assail us and lay hands on the toil and invention of another !’.  

The subject of the Orient had already been explored by Dürer in a slightly earlier drawing, Three Orientals, c.1494-5 (British Museum, Mus no.1895-9-15-974), itself based on three figures in the background of a painting by Gentile Bellini (1429?-1507), Corpus Christi Procession in the Piazza San Marco, 1496, (Venice, Academia). It has been suggested that Dürer made this engraving, because of the topical nature of the subject matter. The Turks had invaded Croatia in 1493 and were a serious threat to Western Europe. The head of the Turk in this work also appears in the drawing of Pilate in the series of the Green Passion.

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Prints, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery .

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