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
TypeOil on poplar panel
Dimensions65 cm × 80 cm (26 in × 31 in)
LocationMuseo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (formerly Castagnola, Lugano)

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./F. Romae/Opus quinque dierum, meaning "Made in Rome in five days") hastily while he was working on the Feast of the Rosary altarpiece in Venice. If Dürer has borrowed from lost work by Leonardo da Vinci or the possibly earlier painting by Cima da Conegliano.[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, focussing 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, pen, grey wash and highlights in tempera on blue Venetian paper, 27.3 x 21 cm, Albertina (3106)
Two Pairs of Hands, 1506, pen and brush, 15.7 ×13.7 cm, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg; black and white reproduction

Two preparatory drawings for the painting have survived, one of the infant's head (now in the Albertina, Wien), and a study with two pairs of hands holding a book, of which only one Dürer finally incorporated into the final picture (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg). Both are drawn on blue coloured paper from Venice, where he most probably already made them.[3]

The characters occupy the whole panel submerged in a dark background intensifying the tense atmosphere. 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 child, which stands steadfast in the central axis of the picture debating thoughtfully and counting off his arguments on his fingers, while the scibes 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.[4] 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. The gesturing hands were a characteristic Italian motif for the representation of scholars and teachers.[5] The head of the oldest 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.[6] 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 see into his work.[7]

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.[8] Bellini himself painted an expanded version of the Presentation at the Temple, which is considered a family portrait. Though both panels of Mantegna and Bellini have all personage and the beholder on equal height, whereas Dürer tilted the ground plane resulting in a perspectival view from slightly above, gaining him depth of space, so he could widen the crowded scene and emphasise the drama.

According to some sources, the panel of Jesus among the Doctors could have been given to Bellini. In the latter's house it was perhaps seen by Lorenzo Lotto, who used one of the figures in the painting for his Madonna with Child between Sts. Flavian and Onuphrius now in the Borghese Gallery.

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. According to Panofsky the painting by Bernardino Luini has been inspired by an assumed lost composition of Leonardo,[9] but this dependancy is disputed, despite some resemblance of the young Jesus with Leonardo's style.[10] 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.[11] 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, emphasized by the traditional motif of a hand 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 marked by their clothes, form a half-circle around the Christ Child, already generating a deeper space than the panels by Mantegna and Bellini. It is 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.
  • 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. ^ Fedja Anzelewsky (1980). "Italien 1505–1507". Dürer – Werk und Wirkung (in German). Stuttgart: Electa/Klett-Cotta. pp. 132–138. ISBN 3-88448-007-3.
  4. ^ 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
  5. ^ Panofsky, p. 114.
  6. ^ Panofsky, p. 115.
  7. ^ Anzelewsky, p. 136, 138.
  8. ^ Panofsky, pp. 31f.
  9. ^ Panofsky, p..
  10. ^ Brown, Ferino-Pagden, p. 112, cites Peter Humfrey 1983.
  11. ^ Brown, Ferino-Pagden, p. 112, cites Ringbom 1965.
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