Albrehta Dīrera darbu atbalsis Rīgas 17. gadsimta grāmatu ilustrācijās

• Authors: Ose Ieva

Title variants

EN

Echoes of Albrecht Dürer’s Works in Riga’s 17th Century Book Illustrations

• Languages of publication: LV

Abstracts

EN

Latvian book and art historians (Aleksejs Apinis, Silvija Šisko, Valdis Villerušs, Elita Grosmane et al.) have concluded that the matrices for book illustrations published in Riga in the 17th century were not made locally but were imported from abroad and could have been made by imitating the graphic works of 16th century German artists. This article is devoted to some examples that show the influence of the works of the German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) on the illustrations of books published in Riga. These are various religious publications, especially the Lutheran Church Handbook. Its first edition was published in Riga by the city printer Niclaes Mollijns in 1615. Then, under the title “Lettisches VADE MECUM”, other publishers’ re-editions followed in 1631, 1643 and 1673. Latvian book historians emphasize that Riga typographers often used the same image to illustrate different books in order to compensate for the increased costs of inserting woodcuts into the text. Although in the 17th century Riga book illustrations the number of figures depicted has been reduced, their arrangement simplified, the execution of the figures naive, less significant details omitted etc., the composition of Dürer’s prototypes is still easy to read. For Latvian book readers, illustrations of religious texts provided not only a visualization of biblical events. They also created an idea of Christian iconography – the principles of depicting images and attributes; the central perspective used in drawing allows for the depiction of the depth of interior space on a plane. At the same time, the illustrations demonstrate the enormous influence of the works of the great German artist Dürer, which did not fade over the centuries. On the contrary, his graphic works became a source of inspiration for many other artists and craftsmen in near and far off lands long after his death.

Keywords

EN

Albrecht Dürer; woodcut; book illustrations; Lutheran church handbook; Latvian book art

• Publisher: Institute of Art History of the Latvian Academy of Art and Art History Research Support Foundation
• Journal: Makslas Vesture un Teorija
• Year: 2025
• Volume: 29
• Pages: 6-14

Contributors

author

Ose Ieva

• University of Latvia Institute of Latvian History, Kalpaka Blvd 4, Riga LV-1050, Latvia