Scholars Series | Dürer-mania – Early Commerce and Collecting of Albrecht Dürer’s Prints
with Professor Jeffrey Chipps Smith

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Speaker
Jeffrey Chipps Smith is Professor Emeritus and Kay Fortson Chair in European Art at the University of Texas, Austin, specialising in Northern European art 1400-1700, especially that of Germany and the Netherlands. Smith’s publications focus on Nuremberg and its culture, Albrecht Dürer, German sculpture, goldsmith work, Jesuits, Northern Renaissance art, patronage, and issues of historiography and reception, among other topics.

His latest books are Albrecht Dürer and the Embodiment of Genius: Decorating Museums in the Nineteenth Century (Penn State Press, 2020), Kunstkammer: Early Modern Art and Curiosity Cabinets in the Holy Roman Empire (Reaktion Books [London], 2022), and Albrecht Dürer’s Afterlife (Lund Humphries [London], May 2024). He was articles editor of Renaissance Quarterly and inaugural co-editor of the Journal of the Historians of Netherlandish Art. Smith served on the board of directors of the College Art Association, Renaissance Society of America, Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär, Historians of Netherlandish Art, and Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. In 2018, he was feted with a Festschrift entitled Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith (Brepols).

About
The woodcuts, engravings, and etchings by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) have long been prized for their creativity, intellectual content, and technical virtuosity. His art marks the apogee of Renaissance printmaking.

World-renowned art historian and Dürer expert Professor Jeffrey Chipps Smith shares how Dürer sold, bartered, and gifted his prints and how, in the century after the Nuremberg master’s death, his works became prized possessions in princely Kunstkammern and other famous art collections across Europe.

Hear about examples of Dürer-mania and how several painters in Flanders and Italy incorporated faithful replicas of his prints within their portraits and pictures of meditating saints and curiosity cabinets, and learn more about the NGV’s extensive collection of works by Dürer.

Professor Jeffrey Chipps Smith’s visit to Melbourne has been supported by the Australian Research Council-funded project Albrecht Dürer’s Material World – in Melbourne, Manchester and Nuremberg, which is led by a team at the University of Melbourne.

Scholars Series
Scholars Series is a stream of in-depth presentations by experts in art and art history that uncover the stories behind works from the NGV Collection. Find out more

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