Literary Traditions, Genre Conventions and Author Authorities in Early Modern Artists’ Biographies – The Case of Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer (Nuremberg, 1471-1528) is the most frequently mentioned German artist in literature worldwide, both in art historical writings as well as in popular literature. 1 Dürer is outstanding not only in a quantitative but also in a qualitative sense inasmuch as he became a canonical figure in literature already during his lifetime as well as a reference figure for the literary portrayal of other artists.In many respects, the literary "discovery" of Albrecht Dürer and the shaping of his biography ran parallel to the emergence of literary genres and academic discourses in the early modern period, including artist biographies and art literature in the narrower sense. 2 On the one hand, his reception in literature is a mirror of how the artist was perceived at a certain 1 The first Dürer bibliography by H. W.