Albrecht Dürer and the Epistolary Mode of Address

Book excerpt: The first book to argue that the expansion of literacy and the proliferation of personal letter-writing in the late 15th and early 16th centuries both affected and inspired the great painter and graphic artist Albrecht Durer. Brisman argues, in lucid prose, that the experience of writing, sending, and receiving letters shaped how Durer conceived of the work of art as an agent for communication. She assesses the different kinds of letters that were written in Durer s timetheir formulations, the patterns by which they traveled, and the means by which they established relationships between authors and readers. And she thinks about the efficacy of works of art in transmitting messages, developing the idea of an epistolary mode of artistic address that is marked by an appeal from artist to viewer that is direct and intimate while also acknowledging the distance and delay that defers the message before it reaches its recipient."