Christ Among the Doctors (Dürer)

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This article is about a painting. For the biblical episode, see Finding in the Temple.
Christ among the Doctors
ArtistAlbrecht Dürer
Year1506
Typepainting
Mediumoil on poplar panel
MovementGerman Renaissance
SubjectFinding in the Temple
Dimensions65 cm × 80 cm (26 in × 31 in)
LocationMuseo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (formerly Castagnola, Lugano)
Accession134 (1934.38)

Christ among the Doctors is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to 1506, now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain. The work belongs to the time of Dürer's second sojourn in Italy, and was executed (according to the inscription 1506/A. D./Opus quinque dierum, meaning "Made in five days") hastily while he was working on the Feast of the Rosary altarpiece in Venice. If the work was influenced by Leonardo da Vinci or based on the possibly earlier painting by Cima da Conegliano cannot be doubtlessly proven.[1]

The topic is the Finding in the Temple episode from Jesus' childhood, found in the Gospel of Luke. The subject had been already treated by Dürer in a woodcut of the Life of the Virgin series and in a panel of the Seven Sorrows Polyptych. However, in this work the German artist adopted a dense composition of half-figures focused on faces and hands, which was introduced by Andrea Mantegna in his The Presentation at the Temple (c. 1454, Berlin) and present in all Northern Italian schools including Venice.[2]

  • Head of the Infant Jesus, 1506, brush in grey and black, grey wash and highlights in tempera on blue Venetian paper, 27.3 x 21 cm, Albertina (3106)
    Head of the Infant Jesus, 1506, brush in grey and black, grey wash and highlights in tempera on blue Venetian paper, 27.3 x 21 cm, Albertina (3106)
  • The Hands of the Twelve Year Old Infant Jesus, 1506, brush, 20.7 × 18.5 cm, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (Hz5482)
    The Hands of the Twelve Year Old Infant Jesus, 1506, brush, 20.7 × 18.5 cm, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (Hz5482)
  • Hand with Book, 1506, brush, 19,1 x 25,2 cm, Albertina (3103)
    Hand with Book, 1506, brush, 19,1 x 25,2 cm, Albertina (3103)
  • Two Pairs of Hands, 1506, brush, 15.7 ×13.7 cm, Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Hz5481) black and white reproduction![3]
    Two Pairs of Hands, 1506, brush, 15.7 ×13.7 cm, Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Hz5481) black and white reproduction![3]

Not until his second journey to Italy Dürer made detailed studies after living models before he worked out a final composition for paintings and engravings alike.[4] [5] His first preparatory drawings originated in Venice, all in the same technique, dark ink drawn with a brush, highlighted with white tempera, on large sheets of blue dyed Venetian paper Template:It. The blue color serves as a middle tone, a method he formerly applied in the Green Passion of 1504, and in drawings where he washed the background around the figures.[6] Four preparatory drawings for the painting have survived, one of the infant's head and a hand holding a book (both in the Albertina, Wien), a study of the hands counting of arguments, and a further drawing with two pairs of hands holding a book, of which only one Dürer finally incorporated into the final picture (both in the Germanische Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg).[7][8]

The color palette is rather narrow, essentially two green tones for the cloaks of Jesus and two of the scholars, and a range of brown tones, from the darkened faces in the shadowy back, the book and the reddish cloak of the doctor on the right, the yellowish cap of the figure on the left, to the lighter skin colors and the broken white tones of hair, paper, the chemise poking out at the wrist on lower left corner, and the cap on the head of the oldest doctor. It is expressively restraind compared to his interpretation on the altar-piece of the Seven Sorrows and the rich color conception of Italian Renaissance art.

The characters occupy the whole panel submerged in a dark background intensifying the tense atmosphere. Especially when compared to his former interpretations of the scene with their spacious compositions and traditional conception, the almost "nightmarish" (Panofsky) staging becomes evident. Here, the young Jesus is besieged by six philosophers surrounding him, arranged on at least four different planes, each with different skin texture, pose and expression, like character studies. They stand in stark contrast to the entirely soft and restraint appearance of the innocent child. Still, it stands steadfast in the central axis of the picture contemplating his arguments and counting them off on his fingers, while the doctors keep to the books in their hands ready to cite from them.

The man on the lower left has a cartouche on his beret, a customary depiction of the Pharisees.[9] The oldest of the philosophers on the right next to Jesus refutes his thoughts even with his imposing hands that interrupt the child's argumentative gesture. These two pairs of hands form a kind of ornament in the center of the picture, summorizing the panel's theme in an abstract way.[10] The gesturing hands were a characteristic Italian motif for the representation of scholars and teachers.[11] The head of the "wicked old scholar" shown in profile "can hardly be imagined without some knowledge" of the caricature drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, and with the contrasting depiction of "extreme beauty and extreme ugliness" Dürer may as well has been following Leonardo's instruction in his Trattato della Pintura how to depict a conversation.[12] In fact, although Leonardo was in Milan at the time, Dürer went to Florence for a short time and probably visited Leonardo's workshop, where his apprentices were still busy, so he could have seen into his work.[13] Nevertheless, in this panel Dürer displayed the believe in the morally good that is expressed in Italian art pictorially through ideal beauty. This is hardly found in the works of his Northern Renaissance contemporaries, and Dürer himself adepted some crucial ideas of the Italian Renaissance esthetic but did not orient his work wholeheartedly towards it either. He came to understand art as a science, but his Jesus among the Doctors has no part in this, and is often seen as "Gothic" still.

Bellini and Mantegna[edit]

The half-figure on the far right side is perhaps a citation of Giovanni Bellini, with whom Dürer became acquainted with on his first stay in Venice in the mid-1490s. Dürer very much respected Bellini, who was also the brother-in-law of Mantegna. Mantegna died in Mantua in 1506, and there are no sources that would confirm Dürer ever met him personally, but through Bellini he learned about his work. In 1494 he copied at least two engravings by Mantegna, Battle of the Sea Gods and Bacchanal with Silenus.[14] Bellini himself painted an expanded version of the Presentation at the Temple, which was often considered a family portrait. Both panels of Mantegna and Bellini have all personage and the beholder on equal height, whereas Dürer seems to have tilted the ground plane resulting in a perspectival view from slightly above to gain depth of space and rectify the overcrowded scene. But the composition is "conceived flatly, and the spatial relations between the figures are so much neglected that we must interpret this lack of three-dimensionality as intentional."[15] Nevertheless he emphasised the drama quite contrary to the prefered equilibrum of Venetian art.

Bernardino Luini and Cima daConegliano[edit]

The theme of Jesus among the Doctors became popular in Italy. In 1504 Isabella d'Este commissioned Leonardo to paint the Infant Jesus, but nothing came of that. The later painting by Bernardino Luini might has been inspired by an assumed lost composition by Leonardo,[16] but this dependancy is disputed, despite some resemblance of the young Jesus with Leonardo's style.[17]

The same applies to the work of Cima da Conegliano, which probably preceded Dürer's painting about a year or two. Cima followed the local tradition established by Mantegna and Bellini, of whose composition about thirty copies and variations are known.[18] Cima took the theme out of its narrative context and created an autonomous symbolic composition. He left Mary and Joseph out of the picture and concentrated the image on the theological debate, emphasised by the traditional motif of hands enumarating points on the fingers (computus digitalis). The overriding theme of divine knowledge through Christ as Alpha and Omega can be read from left to right (Old versus New Testament). And the personage, whose diversity is illustrated by their clothes, form a half-circle around the Christ Child, already generating a deeper space than the panels by Mantegna and Bellini. It seems more likely that Dürer developed his composition from Cima's, than the other way around.

See also[edit]

Sources[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Christ among the Doctors by Dürer.
  • Erwin Panofsky (1971) [1945]. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (PDF). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 114. ISBN 0-691-00303-3.
  • Jan Bialostocki (1959). ""Opus Quinque Dierum": Dürer's 'Christ among the Doctors' and Its Sources". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 22 (1/2). London: The Warburg Institute: 17–34. Retrieved 2024-05-10.
  • Fedja Anzelewsky (1980). "Italien 1505–1507". Dürer – Werk und Wirkung (in German). Stuttgart: Electa/Klett-Cotta. pp. 132–138. ISBN 3-88448-007-3.
  • Costantino Porcu, ed. (2004). Dürer. Milan: Rizzoli.
  • Martina Sauer (2021), Affordance as a Method in Visual Cultural Studies Based on Theory and Tools of Vitality Semiotics. A historiographic and comparative study of Formal Aesthetics, Iconology, and Affordance using the example of Albrecht Dürer's Christ Among the Doctors from 1506, New York and São Paulo: Art Style Art & Culture international Magazine 7, pp. 11–37

References[edit]

  1. ^ David Alan Brown; Sylvia Ferino-Pagden (2006). Bellini, Giorgione, Tizian and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting. National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. Princeton, NJ: Yale University Press. pp. 112–115. ISBN 978-0-300-11677-9.
  2. ^ Erwin Panofsky (1971) [1945]. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (PDF). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 114. ISBN 0-691-00303-3.
  3. ^ For a proper (not downloadable) reproduction see online catalog [1] of the Germanische Nationalmuseum.
  4. ^ Panofsky, p. 118.
  5. ^ Albrecht Dürer 1471–1971 (Ausstellung des Germanischen Nationalmuseums Nürnberg) (in German). Munich: Prestel. 1971. p. 113. ISBN 3791300040.
  6. ^ Panofsky, p. 118.
  7. ^ Fedja Anzelewsky (1980). "Italien 1505–1507". Dürer – Werk und Wirkung (in German). Stuttgart: Electa/Klett-Cotta. pp. 132–138. ISBN 3-88448-007-3.
  8. ^ Rainer Schoch (1986). "Italien 1505–1507". Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg (in German). Munich: Prestel. pp. 297f. ISBN 3-88448-007-3.
  9. ^ Katie Turner (2015), "'The Shoe is the Sign!' Costuming Brian and Dressing the First Century."", in Joan E. Taylor (ed.), Jesus and Brian, London: T&T Clark, pp. 221–237 and Joshua Schwartz (2021), "Clothes Make the Jew: Was There Distinctive Jewish Dress in the Greco-Roman Period?", in Alicia J. Batten; K. Olson (eds.), Dress in Mediterranean Antiquity, London: T&T Clark, pp. 247–256
  10. ^ New York/Nuremberg, p. 298.
  11. ^ Panofsky, p. 114.
  12. ^ Panofsky, p. 115.
  13. ^ Anzelewsky, p. 136, 138.
  14. ^ Panofsky, pp. 31f.
  15. ^ Jan Bialostocki (1959). ""Opus Quinque Dierum": Dürer's 'Christ among the Doctors' and Its Sources". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 22 (1/2). London: The Warburg Institute: 17f. Retrieved 2024-05-10.
  16. ^ Panofsky, p.115.
  17. ^ Brown, Ferino-Pagden, p. 112, cites Peter Humfrey 1983.
  18. ^ Brown, Ferino-Pagden, p. 112, cites Ringbom 1965.
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