Dürer nyitott ajtós címere és a korai híradások apai őseiről

Abstract

Albrecht Dürer’s name first appeared in Jacob Wimpfeling’s book on German history, printed in 1505, in which the Alsatian author praised the then famous artist. In his book on the work of Martin Schongauer, printed in Nuremberg in 1515, the humanist Christoph Scheurl mentioned that Dürer’s father was born in Cula, near the town of Várad in Hungary. He was therefore the first, albeit with an incorrect town name, to make this biographical information public. Joachim Camerarius also mentioned in the preface to his book on the artist’s symmetry, published posthumously in 1532, that Dürer’s paternal lineage was from Pannonia. The only surviving manuscript is the calligrapher Johann Neudorfer’s biography of Dürer, in which the artist’s father’s biography is in agreement with his family records. This knowledge also reached the Hungarian humanist János zsámboky (Sambucus), who compiled a Latin and Greek epigram in praise of Dürer, mentioning the Pannonian origins of the artist’s ancestors. This information was published in Adam Melchior’s book on the life of German scholars, published in 1615, in the section about Dürer. The artist’s own notes were published by Joachim von Sandrart in 1675.From then on, this publication became the basis for biographies of Dürer. The present essay will now look at the reception of these family records in Hungary, with its pitfalls, especially the village of Ajtós and the Dürer name, as well as the related open-door coat of arms and the portrait of the artist’s father.