Dürer's Portrait of Erasmus and the Ars Typographorum

Abstract

Dürer's portrait of Erasmus is an image so familiar that for most of us it has become the quintessence of the scholar portrait (Fig. 1). In spite of this—or perhaps because of it—few have thought about this famous engraving with any precision. It comes as a surprise, moreover, when one examines the literature, to find that the encounter between such a notable pair of personages has produced a strangely limited and unsatisfying body of commentary. What emerges is basically the critical dilemma summed up in one writer's assessment of Dürer's effort: “Il a fait une admirable gravure, mais un mauvais portrait.“ Heinrich Wölfflin and Erwin Panofsky found certain commendable traits in the Erasmus engraving. But these and other scholars reach consensus principally in their negative judgment of how Dürer's print functions as a likeness of Erasmus.

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