Thursday 1 October 2020

imago dei

Via Maps Mania, we are directed to another scrollytelling instalment from the New York Times in their in depth study of perhaps the greatest selfie ever executed in the 1500 (with antecedents and precedents) self-portrait of Albrecht Dรผrer (see previously)—dissected fully and reintegrated as an object of gaze and reflection.  Finished early in the year, just before the artist’s twenty-ninth birthday, as stated in the caption at eye-level left, the work ascribes to the symmetries and conventions of religious subjects but there is something nuanced happening here as well.
Not merely a display of isolated virtuosity, the self-portrait and cameos of himself appearing in the background of other commissions are common and do not represent a departure from the mass-market appeal and branding that Dรผrer achieved with his woodcuts but rather a landing-spot, a forever home, couched in modern terms, for that signature identity.  Much more to explore of this iconic and complex work at the links above.