Dürer's Fight Book: The Genius of the German Renaissance and His Combat Treatise

By Dierk Hagedorn and Daniel Jaquet

Albrecht Dürer is probably the most famous German artist of the Renaissance, if not of all time. His works are world-famous and he was a master in numerous artistic disciplines such as woodcut, copperplate engraving, drawing and painting.

What is less well known is that he was interested in weapons and fencing throughout his life. He produced several woodcuts for a tournament book by Emperor Maximilian I, but he devoted himself much more thoroughly to the subject of duels in his own extensive fencing manuscript.

Dürer’s fight book stands out from the mass of illustrated fencing manuscripts because of its outstanding quality. In well over 100 elaborate drawings, the master uniquely depicts dynamic pairs of fighters practising contemporary combat techniques, such as wrestling or sword and dagger fighting.

Since its creation more than 500 years ago, the fight book has never been published in its entirety. This edition offers the complete contents of the manuscript for the very first time: All illustrations are reproduced in color and the complete text is presented in a letter-perfect transcription as well as a translation into modern English.

Albrecht Dürer's fight book offers a unique, new look at Dürer the artist and Dürer the fighter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenhill Books
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781784387044

Dierk Hagedorn

Dierk Hagedorn was born in 1966 in Hamburg, Germany, and he started sport fencing at the age of nine. He is head instructor of the longsword for Hammaborg Historischer Schwertkampf. He is also a member of HEMAC, the Historical European Martial Arts Coalition, and has transcribed more than a dozen German manuscripts. He is an illustrator, web-designer and lecturer.

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

D

IERK

H

AGEDORN

and D

ANIEL

J

AQUET

U

NDER THE TITLE

Oπλοδιδασκαλια (Oplodidaskalia) sive armorvm tractandorvm meditatio Alberti Dvreri (Weapons training or: Considerations on the handling of weapons by Albrecht Dürer) lies a book often seen as a curiosity. Most of its content deals with how to wield a sword, how to wrestle, or how to fight on horseback.¹ About a third of the textual instructions are skilfully illustrated with pairs of men fighting, and some of the watercoloured figures stand by themselves as a medium to convey martial arts techniques. The rest of the textual instructions are compiled from previous fight books without illustrations, some of them being the only preserved witnesses of certain lines of tradition.

This is a fight book, part of a larger corpus of similar manuscripts and prints appearing in Europe in the early fourteenth century. These books are concerned with individual fighting techniques – not with battlefield strategies or tactics – with a wide range of intertwined disciplines and traditions.

It is not a book written by Albrecht Dürer alone, but rather one dedicated to his memory. The title page with the name of the artist as the author, as well as several parts of the manuscript, were produced at the time of its binding by an anonymous compiler, almost a century after the production of most of its contents. The drawing with the monogram of Albrecht Dürer is glued over the concluding page. The famous artist was indeed involved in its production, but many others were as well. Our present edition offers the full contents of the manuscript for the first time. By revising outdated or even wrong assumptions found in the secondary literature about the manuscript, the studies and analyses presented here will help the reader to navigate the rich history and variety of its contents.

All of the original images are reproduced in full colour and the entire text is transcribed and furnished with an English translation. Based on the latest research, this introduction provides information about the manuscript, gives a short historical outline of the art of fighting at the court of Emperor Maximilian I and presents the different parts of the miscellany (a manuscript compiling different works), which was bound together at the end of the sixteenth century. An additional chapter allows a glimpse into the different traditions of European martial arts disciplines in the light of the book, with selected commented passages taken from the wrestling section. Finally, the appendices contain not only a revised codicological description but also a table of contents with an identification of its sources.

ALBRECHT DÜRER AND THE FIGHT BOOKS

F

IGHT BOOKS

belong to a peculiar genre of literature. They are instructions for how to handle weapons of any kind (swords, daggers, lances etc.), with or without armour, on horseback or on foot. It’s a small niche, and up to the sixteenth century, the bulk of them were produced in Germany – mostly in the form of manuscripts, but also as some early prints.² Some of them contain only text, which may come in rhymes but is mostly written in rather simple prose; most of them, however, were illustrated by more or less gifted artists. It is clear that the genre of fight books was by no means unknown to contemporary artists, but Albrecht Dürer is by far the most prominent name that is linked to them. Other famous artists have contributed to the value of fight books, including Lukas Cranach;³ Gregor Erhart, sculptor from Ulm;⁴ Georg Lemberger;⁵ and Jörg Breu the Younger.⁶ Although quite a number of high-profile artists have contributed to the creation of fight books, their achievements have largely gone unnoticed.⁷

Albrecht Dürer is perhaps the most famous German artist of all time. Even people with only a remote interest in art have either heard of him or know some of his most beloved pieces of art, such as the Praying Hands; the Young Hare; the Rhinoceros; or his dandyesque self-portraits. He lived from 1471–1528, an era that we, half a millennium distant, call the dusk of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the German Renaissance. Dürer’s versatile œuvre mirrors this transition: while his early woodcuts show a strong influence of the edgy Gothic fashion, the rest of his work indicates a more individual style, characteristic of the spirit of the Renaissance. Dürer reached mastery in numerous disciplines, such as woodcutting, engraving, drawing and painting. He travelled to Italy, homeland of the Renaissance, and was in contact with many artists, including Giovanni Bellini, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I was a champion of knightly sports. He set up his court as the place to be for knightly tournaments, and he experimented with old and new ways of displaying martial skills. He also used the new medium of printing to depict himself as the last knight.⁸ It has been suggested that Albrecht Dürer might have received a mandate to realise a fight book for the Emperor when he was in his patronage.⁹ The first document alleging Dürer’s service to the Emperor is dated to 1512, which would correlate to the date inscribed in the manuscript and on its cover.¹⁰ However, without other evidence to support this theory, it can be disputed, as done by Flechsig and Rupprich, based on the misdating of the manuscript. Furthermore, it turns out that the illustrated part of the work was produced on a paper dating to at least ten years before the artist entered the service of the Emperor. In addition, as mentioned above and as the codicological analysis shows (see appendix: ‘Codicological considerations’), the involvement of the master in the realisation of the manuscript was rather limited. However, Albrecht Dürer was involved in several of the Emperor’s projects related to the art of fighting, such as the tournament book Freydal, for which he produced several engravings in 1517.¹¹ Müller has also drawn attention to the interest of Albrecht Dürer in drawing weapons and fighting bodies, a subject that never ceased to fascinate him.¹²

Figure 1: (left) Knight, Death and the Devil, 1513, engraving (24.8 × 19.25 cm); (right) Study of a rider, 1498, pen and watercolour on paper (40.8 × 32.4 cm).

For example, one of Albrecht Dürer’s most revered and influential pieces of art is one of his three so-called Master Prints, Knight, Death and the Devil (figure 1, left). It was engraved in 1513 and features an austere armoured man-at-arms who rides through a barren, rocky landscape, unimpressed by the presence of a horned Devil and Death himself, presenting an hourglass. The style of the armour is a flashback to times gone by, since it was already almost a generation out of fashion: fan-like fluted so-called Gothic armour, accompanied by the characteristic long-tailed helmet called a sallet, was predominantly worn by German warriors from the 1470s to the 1490s. In the beginning of the 16th century a totally different style was preeminent, the so-called Maximilian style, named after the emperor. Here, the entire surface of the armour (with the exception of the greaves which protect the calves) is decorated with multitudes of parallel flutings. Dürer falls back on an earlier pen-and-ink drawing with watercolour washes he had created in 1498 (figure 1, right). The man-at-arms wears exactly the same armour, but for the engraving, Dürer has replaced his moustached face with a more grim-looking one. Knight, Death and the Devil mirrors in one single image what we can notice in Dürer’s fight book as well: The artist goes back to a decades-old source, refurbishes it in an unprecedented way and sparks new life to it. The static rider from the 15th century is turned into an active warrior, accompanied by his faithful dog, and serenely leaving Devil and Death behind. This process of seizing an old topic afresh can be witnessed in the manuscript kept in the Albertina. Dürer’s fight book, particularly the illustrated part about wrestling (B1), is a reshaped and artistically superior version of Baumann’s fight book (Augsburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. I.6.4o.2, siglum B) from about 1470.

Figure 2: Allegorical fighting scene between Albrecht Dürer and Apelles (Lazarus Spengler). Stone carving by Hans Daucher (22.8 × 16.8 × 2 cm), Augsburg, 1522.

Was Albrecht Dürer a practitioner of the fighting arts himself? We have at least two mentions of him actually fighting,¹³ with a representation of him wrestling against his friend Lazarus Spengler, town clerk of Nuremberg (fig. 2).¹⁴ Also, as highlighted by Dörnhöffer and Rupprich, the appendices of the Latin translation of the Book on Human Proportion realised by Camerarius in 1532 presents the master as familiar with the art of fighting.¹⁵ The translator outlines some of the arts which the master practised even after he had grown old: ‘the art of wrestling and the art of poetry’.¹⁶ There is little doubt as to whether Albrecht Dürer, like most men of his time, was acquainted with the art of fighting, whether in wrestling as a popular game, or as spectator of the various martial displays of the ‘Knightly Renaissance’ in its prime during his time under Maximilian I. However, according to the evidence at hand, it is disputable whether to present him as an author of a fight book or as a dedicated practitioner of the fighting arts.

THE MANUSCRIPT UNDER THE LENS OF RESEARCHERS

T

HE FIGHT BOOK

ascribed to Albrecht Dürer (Vienna, Albertina, Hs 26232; olim Vienna, Fideikommissbibliothek, Cod. XXIV. A 21, siglum AD) has received little scholarly attention since the 1907/1909 (re-published in 1910) study and partial edition (only reproducing the illustrated part of the manuscript) by Friedrich Dörnhöffer. This work was considered conclusive and included black and white reproductions of all the illustrated sections, plus some additional colour images,¹⁷ as well as a transcription. Dörnhöffer offers an examination of the illustrated sections but entirely neglects the second part of the manuscript, which consists of mere text. He does give some brief pieces of information on its contents which, however, are neither complete nor comprehensive.

Most of the discussions in the following studies focus on whether or not the fight book from the Albertina should be ascribed to Albrecht Dürer, on the disputable dating of 1512, and on its status as an unfaithful copy of the manuscript B (Baumann’s fight book).¹⁸ Almost all contributions since then dealt only with the illustrated part (B1–4, ff. 1r–91v; for sigla of the sections in AD, see appendix, table 1), and that mostly only partially. Even the complete catalogue of Dürer’s graphical work only reserves space for 16 sheets from his fight book in a coy appendix.¹⁹ However, no research has been published to date on the textual part of the miscellany (C–D, ff. 96r–124v), and no thorough codicological analysis of the manuscript is available. Moreover, works mentioning or describing this section are either incomplete or erroneous.²⁰ Indeed, the manuscript is rarely presented as it is: a compilation of various works (a heterogeneous miscellany, put together in the late 16th century).

Apart from the fight book, two fragmentary drawings with a brief commentary, similar in style and content to the manuscript kept in the Albertina, are also ascribed to the master, and those do indeed bear his monogram.²¹ These are kept in the British Library in London. There is, however, no codicological evidence supporting the assumption that these fragments are related to the production of the fight book.²²

New studies regarding the provenance of the manuscript and its reception in the 19th century have been recently published, and an edition with new research is currently being prepared by Rainer Welle.²³

THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

S

YDNEY ANGLO

described some of the German fight books as ‘bibliographical snowballs’,²⁴ an image meant to illustrate the fact that some of these books are collections of various sources, accumulated over time (physically, but also intertextually). The fight book ascribed to Albrecht Dürer is a good example of this. The manuscript is composed of distinct parts, each with a different origin. The title page with the portrait of Dürer in a medallion (A1: 1r),²⁵ the praise poems to Dürer (A2–3: 2r–3r) and the epitaph with a pasted drawing with monogram (A4: 125r) were all produced at the end of the 16th century/ beginning of the 17th century, when the manuscript was bound – even if both the cover and the title page bear the date 1512. Most of the scholars focused only on the illustrated part (B: 13r–91v) which can be divided in four different sections (see appendix: ‘Table of contents of the manuscript and discussion of the source material) and in which each illustration is numbered: B1, wrestling (ff. 13r–52v; nos. 1–120), B2, sword (ff. 60r–66r; nos. 1–13), B3, dagger (ff. 66v–67v; nos. 14–22), and B4, Messer (ff. 74r–91v; nos. 1–58). Only the wrestling section is accompanied by text. Dörnhöffer attributed all drawings to the hand of Dürer, except sections B2 (long sword) and B4 (Messer).²⁶ This attribution is disputed in a note by Tietze.²⁷ Furthermore, Flechsig demonstrated that the dating of 1512 should be pushed back to the early 1500s, based on his analysis of the handwriting and on the drawings of the master.²⁸

Following a careful study and new research, we can now postulate about the different steps involved in the making of the manuscript in its current form. The illustrated part (B) has three different hands for the writing of the text, one of them belonging to Dürer. Someone in the late 16th century had a high consideration for this work and took care of the following steps. He decided to protect the original drawings by inserting new paper between all the original pages with illustrations. He then assembled the front and the end matter, with the title page bearing the medallion of Albrecht Dürer and an inaccurate dating, two praise poems and the epitaph. The epitaph bears the monogram of Albrecht Dürer, but has been cut from an original unidentified work and glued on the page.²⁹

The anonymous compiler also included two additional units containing many faithful, partial, abridged or unfaithful copies of earlier texts about the art of fighting. We do not know whether these works were part of an unachieved project of fight book production in Albrecht Dürer’s workshop or whether they were only added at the time of the binding. It is possible, however, that these two units (parts C and D) were study material for the original project. One of them (C) is written on the same paper as B, while the other is unrelated and written on an older paper. The first one (part C) consists of a series of copies of different relevant works that were available to the writer. It is written in two columns in a rushed hand. It bears very few elements indicating that this manuscript was anything but a working document, and most of the copies are partial or abridged, only copying selected parts of the original.

Figure 3: Front and back cover of Albrecht Dürer’s fight book. Wood and leather with gilding. Inscription: OPVS ALBERTI DVRERI – ANNO MCCCCCXII. Vienna, Albertina, Hs 26232.

The second part (D) stems from another origin. It bears signs of structure with rubrics and the text is written in one column by a quieter hand. Unlike the other scribes, we can definitely identify this one: Willibald Pirckheimer was a Renaissance lawyer and humanist, as well as a City Council member in Nuremberg. Furthermore, he was a close friend of Albrecht Dürer, who depicted him in his artwork on several occasions. Pirckheimer is also responsible for Dürer’s epitaph that is copied on the last page of the manuscript (fol. 125r).Via the authorship of one of its parts by Dürer’s closest friend Pirckheimer, there’s another significant connection between our fight book and the famous master from Nuremberg.

The city library of Nuremberg holds a strikingly similar fight book authored by Pirckheimer which is kept as loose fascicles (siglum WP).³⁰ It shows a huge overlap with the entirety of section D, which contains faithful and complete copies of earlier 15th century texts, as opposed to the previous part with mostly partial copies. Also, this part is the oldest of the miscellany, realised on a paper dating to the last decade of the 15th century. It may have originated in another context and have been bought as such after having circulated unbound.

The provenance of the manuscript can be traced back to the imperial library in the early 17th century. The first known entry is made by the painter Daniel Fröschl who listed all of Dürer’s works at the time under the mandate of Emperor Rudolf II.³¹ This is even earlier than the first ownership mark in the manuscript (Jacob Stahl 1657), noted by Dörnhöffer. He assumed the manuscript travelled to Belgium and France, but provides no further evidence for this assumption. Rainer Welle recently discovered the earliest mention of the manuscript in 1594 in an exchange between the humanist Justus Lipsius and Johannes Vivianus.³² There are also early traces of a copy of this manuscript, known as the Breslau copy, which has been considered lost since World War II.³³

Widauer and Welle shed new light on the early 19th century interest around Dürer, with the foundation of the Dürer society in 1818.³⁴ From this period comes the (re)discovery of the manuscript in 1823 by Prof. Vincenz Weintritt in a private collection in Styria and its re-entry to the imperial collection in 1833.³⁵ The cover itself (fig. 3) has been dated to 1600 by Dörnhöffer, but lately revised to the second part of the 17th century, possibly even the early 19th century considering the last interventions.³⁶ Based on this information and on the study of the watermarks (see appendix: ‘Codicological considerations’), we can say that most of the parts of the miscellany were produced around the beginning of the 16th century. The different parts may have been assembled during the 16th century, but at the latest in the early 17th century when it was bound. The manuscript as a whole has been manipulated from the end of the 16th century up until the early 19th century. It entered the collection of the Albertina in Vienna in 1920.

THE ART OF FIGHTING ACCORDING TO THE MANUSCRIPT

T

HE MANUSCRIPT

includes most of the disciplines favoured in the tradition of the late medieval fight books. It covers unarmed combat (wrestling) and the main weapons used to fight on foot without armour, that is dagger, Messer (literally: knife), and sword. It does not include, however, the handling of pole arms, which occurred only sporadically in late 15th century fight books but was mainstream in the second third of the 16th century. It also covers armoured combat, on foot with the sword, the spear, and the dagger, as well as on horseback, with the lance and the sword. At the time of the production of most parts of the miscellany (1498–1520, according to the dating of the watermarks), the tradition of the fight books is more concerned with protosportive practices in the context of urban prize fighting or fencing schools. The fencing masters were mostly active in urban centres and organised in guilds (associations). In the Holy Roman Empire, the guild (brotherhood) of Saint Mark received Imperial privileges in 1487.³⁷ In almost all fight books preserved, there are no direct – or explicit – mentions of fighting practices in relation to warfare or military contexts.³⁸ Most of the authors, however, do mention that the techniques described can be used in playful (Schimpf) or in more serious (Ernst) contexts.³⁹ Nonetheless, the techniques are not executed differently on a technical level. Only the ending would actually change according to the context of the application. Some authors indeed focused on matters of honour and ‘judicial’ duelling with or without armour. Some display techniques for the defence of one’s body, others include only techniques geared towards fencing games.

Indeed, the ‘art of fighting’ (Kunst des Fechtens) is about personal fighting techniques, not about group tactics. Nor is it about knights and tournaments. These matters are covered by the vast genre of tournament books. Maximilian I organised, sponsored and even fought in many chivalric encounters in a playful context. He was also an experienced battle commander. The relation between these contexts is obvious, but never explicitly mentioned in the fight books in general. The art of fighting includes both sides of the same coin (playful and serious). Since the manuscript is a miscellany compiling previous material, it is difficult to qualify its content as typically playful or as serious. It is a collection of different and diverse elements.

The current state of the manuscript presents the illustrated sections on unarmoured combat (wrestling, sword, dagger and Messer) as the main part. The other two parts of the manuscript are a collection of various texts, some of which are about the disciplines mentioned above, others about fighting techniques in armour on foot or on horseback. Details about codicological studies, identification of source material, and description of each section of the manuscript can be found in the appendices.

ANNOTATIONS

1Vienna, Albertina, Hs 26232 (siglum AD). All manuscripts are hereafter referenced by their siglum. The sigla can be found in the bibliography along with information regarding the institution where they are kept and their shelf mark.

2For a general overview, see J

AQUET

/ V

ERELST

/D

AWSON

2016; for a study on the corpus including manuscripts and printed books, see J

AQUET

2020.

3Although it is still under discussion whether the woodcuts in Fabian von Auerswald’s wrestling treatise stem from the Younger or the Elder – or both. A

UERSWALD

1987, pp. 13–8.

4His name is mentioned in Glasgow, R. L. Scott Collection, E.1939.65.354 (siglum GE), fol. 2r.

5See W

ELLE

2017, who identified the artist in Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellonska, Ms. Germ. Quart. 2020 (siglum G).

6D

ÖRNHÖFFER

1910, p.

XX

ascribes – unproven – authorship of Paulus Hector Mair’s massive compendia to him, although recent research hints at the necessity for a revision of that claim, see H

AGEDORN

/A

MBERGER

2020, pp. 30–1.

7See A

NGLO

2012.

8About Maximilian I, the authoritative works are the five volumes of W

IESFLECKER

1971–1985. For the latest scholarly views, see H

ELMRATH

/K

OCHER

/ S

IEBER

2018.

9This theory is discussed in D

ÖRNHÖFFER

1910, p.

XIX

. His main argument is a note in the third Gedenkbuch (book of memory) of the Emperor dated 1509–1513 (Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2900): ‘Vermerckt die gefechtstück, so die Kay. M. selbs angeben hat, mit geschrifft und gemäl in ain puech zu bringen…’ (Note the fighting pieces that the Imperial Majesty himself has specified, in order to create a book in writing and with paintings …). This entry is followed by a list of technical terms (cited in full in ibid. p.

XVIII

). For opposite views, see F

LECHSIG

1928, pp. 487–8.

10 Albrecht Dürer received imperial patronage no later than in 1512, based on a letter of the Emperor to the town of Nuremberg, asking for exoneration of the master (see edition by R

UPPRICH

1956, vol. 1, p. 77).

11 M

ÜLLER

2002, pp. 124–31. See also K

RAUSE

2014, p. 169, note 28, and P

OKORNY

2019, p. 50, note 7.

12 M

ÜLLER

(see previous note).

13 W

AETZOLDT

1950, p.24 (quoted in A

NGLO

2000, p. 183, note 48).

14 Stone carving by Hans Daucher, 1522. Reproduced in L

ÜDECKE

/H

EILAND

1955, plate 13 (quoted in Rupprich 1956, p. 430, note 8).

15 D

ÖRNHÖFFER

1910, p.

VII

and R

UPPRICH

1956, pp. 429–30.

16 ‘… et ipse per aetatem non neglexerat, et probabat etiam senex, cuius modi sunt gymnastices et musicae reliquiae.’ (… and he did not neglect wrestling and the remaining arts even in old age and still practised them as an old man.) R

UPPRICH

1956, p. 308. As discussed by the editor, gymnastices must be translated as the ‘art of wrestling,’ since it comes from lat. gymnas, -adis (not as ‘gymnastic arts,’ as Dörnhoffer translated).

17 The drawings were rendered in black and white, with five exceptions in colour, in a print method called ‘collotype’ which results in outstanding quality that is impossible to achieve with modern four-colour printing machines. Notwithstanding this, the colour images were only remotely close to the true appearance of the original manuscript. While the clarity of line reproduction is almost unparalleled by other printing processes, colour accuracy is only mediocre.

18 The manuscript ascribed to Dürer is commented in correlation to Baumann’s fight book in W

ELLE

1993, pp. 13–6, 12731; W

ELLE

2014, pp. 13–6 and 127–65; A

NGLO

2000, pp. 182–6. It received a subchapter in B

ODEMER

2019, pp. 129–38.

19 D

ÜRER

1970/1988, pp. 1096–1112.

20 D

ÖRNHÖFFER

1910, pp.

XXI-XXIV

, identifies quire VIII as a copy of Lecküchner’s treatise from 1478. The next three quires are described as a ‘second fencing treatise’, unrelated to Dürer’s work. The same connection between Lecküchner and ff. 96r–100v had already been made by W

ASSMANNSDORFF

1888. H

ILS

1985, p. 116, follows Dörnhöffer. L

ENG

2008, p. 132, follows Dörnhöffer and Hils.

21 First discovered by T

HAUSING

1876, p. 317. Discussed in D

ÖRNHÖFFER

1910, pp. 8–9. Edited by R

UPPRICH

1956, p. 432. Mentioned in S

TRAUSS

1974, pp. 1314–5. The fragments bear the monogram of the master and the date 1512. Kept in London, British Library, Ms 5229, ff. 67v–69r.

22 Thausing, Dörnhöffer and Rupprich pointed out that the fragments are unrelated to the manuscript kept in the Albertina. Our investigation of the fragments did not bring any new argument to that matter. Sadly, the paper of the fragments from London bears no watermarks.

23 W

IDAUER

2017 and W

ELLE

2020. Regarding the forthcoming edition, see acknowledgments.

24 A

NGLO

2000, p. 129.

25 Copy of the medallion by H. Schwarz, 1519. See D

ÖRNHÖFFER

1910 (note 1), p.

XXV

.

26 D

ÖRNHÖFFER

1910, p.

VI

: ‘Von den 200 Stücken bleiben also 175 übrig, die in Zeichnung und Kolorierung von Einer Hand – meiner Überzeugung nach der Hand Dürers – herrühren, während die übrigen 25 zwar aus demselben Geiste geschaffen sind, aber unter verschiedengearteter Mitwirkung von Gesellenhänden auf das Papier gebracht sein mögen.’ (So, out of the 200 pieces, 175 stem from a single hand in terms of drawing and colouration – in my conviction Dürer’s hand – while the remaining 25 are in fact created in the same spirit but may have been put on paper with the help of various assistants’ hands.)

27 S

TIX

/T

IETZE

1933, p.24, no. 163. The attribution to Dürer based on an examination of the handwriting is discussed by both Flechsig and