- Museum number
- 1931,0115.1
- Title
- Object: Deo optimo Maximo & diuo Sebaldo Patrono: pro felicitate urbis Norice : per Conradum Celten : & Sebaldum clamosum : eius sacre edis Curatorem : pie deuote & religiose positum.
- Description
-
Broadside on St Sebaldus; with a woodcut of St Sebaldus in the attire of a pilgrim, standing on a column, carrying on his left arm a model of the church St Sebald, at the top the Danish and French royal coat-of-arms, at the bottom the coat-of-arms of Conrad Celtis and Sebald Schreyer, and letterpress heading, a large initial, and two columns of a poem by Conrad Celtis in Latin in Roman type, at the bottom the name of the saint in Gothic letters. ca.1501
Woodcut and letterpress
- Production date
- 1501 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 333 millimetres (printed area)
-
Height: 280 millimetres (woodcut)
-
Width: 279 millimetres (printed area)
-
Width: 94 millimetres (woodcut)
- Curator's comments
- According to Schoch, printed in Nuremberg by the Printer for the "Sodalitas Celtica", however, Proctor says printed by Hieronymus Höltzel "ca.1508?".
For another impression, see BM 1900,0613.15 (coloured)
Entry from 'Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy', BM exh.cat. (2002-3), no.71:
This is an impression of a rare broadside designed by Dürer with an ode written by the Nuremberg poet laureate, Conrad Celtis (1459 B 1508) in praise of St Sebald, the patron saint of the city, in two columns on either side of the woodcut. The print also appeared in Celtis's 'De Felicitate', Nuremberg, 1501. Dürer's design is based on a woodcut attributed to Wolgemut which was printed with the same poem in Basel in about 1494; this earlier print records the occasion when Celtis delivered the ode in Nuremberg on the saint's feast day in 1493 (see Nuremberg 1971, no.389).
Sebald was a hermit saint whose relics were enshrined in the church dedicated to him in Nuremberg, the oldest and finest in the city, a model of which is held in the left hand of the figure in the woodcut. Beneath the saint are the arms of Celtis on the left, and those of Sebald Schreyer (1446-1520) an honorary church warden ('Kirchenmeister') of St Sebald; the arms of Denmark and France are above. Schreyer was a neighbour of the Dürer family who together with Hartmann Schedel, the author of 'The Nuremberg Chronicle' , the publication of which in 1493 Schreyer had partly financed (see cat no. 24) had formed a group of local humanists in the 1480s. Celtis designed a decorative scheme for a room in Schreyer's house, consisting of Apollo and the Muses and classical philosophers, with explanatory Latin verse (see Hutchison, p. 70). With its reference to classical motifs, this decorated room must have been of considerable interest to Dürer, who would have seen it after its completion in 1495 on his return to Nuremberg from Italy. Documents show that Sebald Schreyer commissioned numerous metalwork pieces from the elder Dürer for the church of St Sebald, and Dürer himself probably drew the large preparatory drawing for the glass window of St Peter (cat. no 77) in the church at about the same time as this print; despite the difference in scale and technique, the two show some stylistic similarity.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1971 BM, Dürer, no.67
- Acquisition date
- 1931
- Acquisition notes
- See Dodgson's report to the Trustees of 1 January 1931. The three woodcuts (1931,0115.1 to 3) were 'recently detached from a volume that also contained several books by Conrad Celtis'.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1931,0115.1
