Melchior Lorck's Emblematized Adages

chapter 17 Hidden in Plain Sight: Melchior Lorck’s Emblematized Adages

Mara R. Wade

Melchior Lorck (also Lorichs, ca. 1526–after 1580) was a bold maker of emblem- atic images in the early decades of the genre. The first Danish artist of inter- national renown, Lorck was born in Flensburg, apprenticed with a goldsmith possibly from Lübeck, and visited Augsburg and Nürnberg in 15471 [Fig. 17.1]. Upon returning to Flensburg, he received from the Danish king generous fund- ing for four years to travel and advance his art in the Netherlands and Italy.2 Therewith the monarchy subsidized one of the most promising graphic artists of the age. Lorck travelled to Italy and the Netherlands as well as to Vienna and again to Southern Germany during the early 1550s. In 1550–1551 he was certainly in Nürnberg, the centre of German Renaissance humanism, art, com- merce, and printing; this sojourn had a significant impact on Lorck, as an artist and cosmopolitan. Both Nürnberg and Augsburg, the latter referred to as the picture factory, Bilderfabrik, of Europe, were key centres of publishing in general, and in particular of woodcuts and engravings, having developed ad- vanced technologies for printing in these media.3 It is also worth noting that the first emblem book, Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum Liber, was published in Augsburg in 1531,4 and both cities were centres of early emblem publication in German-speaking lands [Fig. 17.2]. Moreover, Lorck particularly revered Albrecht Dürer and his journey to Nürnberg can be considered an artistic pil- grimage. Lorck developed his distinctive block-letter artist’s monogram “MLF”, with the “F” nestled into the dip in the “M”, presumably in imitation of Dürer’s immediately recognizable signature “AD”. Lorck’s exposure to mass-produced

1 Fischer E. with Bencard E.J. and Bøgh Rasmussen M. (eds.), Melchior Lorck, Biography and Primary Sources, vol. 1 (Copenhagen: 2009) 72–80. 2 On 22 March 1549 Lorck signed for the first installment of the stipend. See Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, Lorck, vol. 1, 72 and document 1549, 22 March and 24 March. 3 Paas J.R., Augsburg, die Bilderfabrik Europas: Essays zur Augsburger Druckgrafik der Frühen Neuzeit (Augsburg: 2001). 4 The first three editions of Alciato (and many subsequent ones) are freely available in Emblem- atica Online: http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/search/books?query.keywords=Alciato +1531. Accessed 18 July 2018.

Figure 17.1 Melchior Lorck, Self-Portrait in Antique Style, 1575, later used as title page, from Wolgerissene und geschnittene Figuren zu Ross und zu Fuß […] (Hamburg, Gundermann: 1646) Image courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel