2008 Albrecht Diirer's Curls: Melchior Lorck's 1550 Engraved Portrait and Its Relationship to Diirer's Self-Fashioned Public Image Joan Stack A.umro-rr Fig. I. Melchior Lorck (Danish, 1527-1594). Portrait of Albrecht Diirer, I 550, engraving. Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri, acc. no. 86.26. The image of the Nuremberg artist Albrecht Diirer with a mane of long curly hair is internationally recognizable. Its place in the collective consciousness of the Western world has been years in the making, beginning with self-portraits produced by Diirer himself. Numerous later artists have since represented the longhaired Diirer, and this article seeks to place one such image into its cultural context. Melchior Lorck's small engraved Portrait ofAlbrecht Diirer is the first posthumous print to represent Diirer with a long curly coiffure. A fine impression of this engraving is housed in the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri (Fig. 1). 1 The museum's engraving is trimmed to the plate mark and printed in black ink on white laid paper measuring 165 x 96 mm. The sitter is identified with capital Roman letters, and his name is "split" on either side of the effigy, "Albrecht" on the left, and "Diirer" on 43 ALBREC HT D U RER'S CURLS the right. The artist signed the plate with his monogram, ML, "carved" in an illusionistic manner on the parapet below the portrait, together with the date I 550. 2 The letter F (which stands for the engraver's native city of Flensburg) is nestled in the center of the M. Lorck represented Di.irer in profile, facing right. The German master is distinguished by a large hooked nose with an unusual break at the brow. The artist's neatly trimmed beard covers his square protruding chin, and his full mustache curls to touch his cheeks. Di.irer's eyes protrude slightly below his thin arched eyebrows, and his expression is stoic and serious. He wears a well-tailored pleated shirt with a delicately ruffed collar, covered by a heavy garment trimmed with fur. Although Di.irer's face and clothing are striking, his magnificent hair is the most intriguing element in the print. His pale curly mane takes up over one-third of the composition, and distinct ringlets hang over the artist's right temple, touching his shoulder and parting to reveal his right ear. Below the effigy, Di.irer's hair is referenced in the Latin inscription written on a carte/lino (a fictive sheet of paper or vellum) below the bust. Lorck created the illusion that this carte/lino was pinned to the stone parapet in front of Di.irer. An English translation of the epitaph reads as follows: As one upon whom the Phoebean goddesses bestowed their gifts, as one whom wise Minerva brought forth from her own bosom. Such was he, comely in countenance and hair, he lived five years times ten plus six. On the effigy of Albrecht Di.irer. 3 An in depth analysis of the wording of this inscription appears later in this article. Here it is sufficient to point out that the textual emphasis on the hair relates to the visual prominence of the artist's locks in the print. This study argues that Lorck's focus on Di.irer's hair attests to the continued success of the Nuremberg master's lifetime campaign to make his curls a bodily trademark. Melchior Lorck: Gentleman Artist, Admirer of Diirer, and Beneficiary of the Diirer Legacy Although historians have no records documenting the birth of Melchior Lorck, the artist's 1548 engraved portrait of Martin Luther includes an inscription indicating that the printmaker was twenty-one years old when he made the engraving of the protestant leader. Lorck therefore must have been born in 1526 or 1527. The printmaker was a native of Flensburg and identified himself with an ML F monogram (with the "F" inside the M), which stands for "Melchior Lorck Flenburgensis;' or "Melchior Lorck of Flensburg:' Although Flensburg is today part of modern Germany (Lorck is sometimes described in the scholarly literature as a German), he was a Dane, born within the sixteenth-century borders of the kingdom of Denmark. Much of what scholars know of Lorck's youth comes from a short autobiography written by the artist in a 1563 letter to King Frederick II of Denmark (1534-1588). 44 JOAN STACK This text was published in 1574 as an introduction to Lorck's book on Turkey, Soldan Soleyman Turckischen Khaysers. 4 The artist wrote that he was naturally attracted to the arts from a young age, and that as a youth (probably in the late 1530s and early 1540s), he was apprenticed to a Lubeck goldsmith with whom he traveled around Denmark and the Baltics. After his apprenticeship, Lorck went to Germany and made contacts at the imperial court. Count Palatine Ottheinrich and the bishop of Augsburg (Prince Otto Truchsess von Waldburg) were among his most important patrons during this period. During the 1550s, Lorck continued to work in Germany and received patronage from Ferdinand I, brother, deputy, and eventual successor to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. 5 Ferdinand sent Lorck on an important diplomatic mission to Turkey that probably took place between 1555 and 1559. In a letter dated February 22, 1564, Ferdinand recognized Lorck's service in Turkey, while at the same time confirming and renewing the artist's noble status.6 In the 1560s and 1570s, Lorck worked in Vienna and Northern Germany. During this period, he created a series of woodcuts based on his Turkish drawings representing the people, costumes, architecture, landscape, and customs of the Anatolian region. Some of these prints were published during the artist's lifetime and others after his death. In 1580, Lorck was appointed court painter to King Frederick II of Denmark in Copenhagen. For unknown reasons, the king withdrew the appointment in 1582, and the artist is last documented in 1583, a date sometimes presumed to be the year of his death. As an artist, Lorck is stylistically associated with the German masters of the sixteenth century. His earliest drawings and prints reflect the influence of Albrecht Di.irer and his followers, in particular Hans Sebald Lautensack and the so-called little masters. Later works by the Danish artist reflect his familiarity with Italian prints, in particular with works by Venetian artists. The Portrait of Albrecht Diirer was made early in Lorck's career, a period for which scholars have little documentation. Before making the portrait, however, the young Lorck demonstrated an awareness of the art of Di.irer with one of his first surviving engravings, a 1546 copy in reverse of the great German master's 1512 dry point St. Jerome Seated near a Pollard Willow. 7 The making of this engraving indicates that Lorck, like many artists of the period, respected and emulated Di.irer as a printmaker. When the twenty-six-year-old Danish engraver again demonstrated his interest in his German predecessor with the posthumous Portrait of Albrecht Diirer, he created a dignified profile likeness of the Nuremberg master attired in fine clothing and eulogized with a Latin epitaph. Although the circumstances surrounding the making and dissemination of the engraving remain unknown, one can assume that Lorck (and perhaps an unknown patron) admired Di.irer and participated in a growing movement among sixteenth-century Europeans to commemorate the Nuremberg artist visually (more about this movement to follow). The presence of the Latin inscription, the textual references to Roman mythology, and the classically inspired profile bust all confer cultural status on Di.irer and indicate an erudite and sophisticated intended audience for the print. 45 ALBRECHT DURER'S CURLS The noble-born Lorck was in a position to profit from this exaltation of Diirer as an intellectual and humanist hero. By honoring Diirer, Lorck promoted the German master as a paradigm of artists, worthy of the highest honors and the utmost respect. In a period when many painters and printmakers were still struggling to achieve "gentleman" status, Diirer served as an ideal exemplar-an artist whose talents and intellect far exceeded those of mere craftsmen. The visual advancement of the great Nuremberg master validated the young Dane's choice of career and promoted a precedent for the recognition of Lorck and other artists as the equals of other members of the cultural elite class. The Source of the Likeness in Lorck's Portrait Lorck copied the general design of his engraved Portrait ofAlbrecht Durer from a 1520 medallion sculpted by Hans Schwarz during Diirer's lifetime (Fig. 2). 8 Diirer was one of a small group of German Renaissance artists to sanction portrait medals of himself, and this commission reflects his active Fig. 2. After Hans Schwarz ( German, participation in the fashionable Renaissance practice 1492- after 1535). Portrait of Albrecht Durer, 9 late sixteenth century after cast of I 520 of making and exchanging small portable medallions. original, bronze medal. British Museum, There is no record of the Schwarz commission, but London, cat. no. 1875, 1004.1. © The Trustees several documents seem of the British Museum. to relate to it. The first is a drawing by Diirer in the British Museum that portrays two studies for the reverse of a portrait medal (Fig. 3). Both studies include Latin inscriptions, the longer of which translates, "Image of Albrecht Diirer, German, which he made personally of himself at the age of 48 in the year of grace 1519:' 10 Although the words "made personally of himself" indicate that Diirer either created or planned to create a self-portrait to adorn a medallion, no known drawing for the obverse of such a medal survives.