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Humanism in Wittenberg: Frederick the Wise, Konrad Celtis, and Albrecht Dürer's 1508 Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 82; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00233609.2012.754490

1651-2294

Paul M. Bacon,

Medieval European History and Architecture

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Five epigrams authored by Celtis in 1500 compared Dürer's creative powers to those of the ancient Greeks Apelles and Phidias, as well as to the medieval scientist and philosopher Albertus Magnus. For further reference, see Dieter Wuttke, »Dürer and Celtis: Von der Bedeutung des Jahres 1500 für den deutschen Humanismus: Jahrhundertfeier als symbolische Form,« Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. X (1980), pp. 73–129; and Ulrich Pfisterer, »Apelles im Norden: Ausnahmekünstler, Selbstbildnisse, und die Gunst der Mächtigen um 1500,« in Apelles am Fürstenhof: Facetten der Hofkunst um 1500 im Alten Reich, eds. Matthias Müller, Klaus Weschenfelder, Beate Böckem, and Ruth Hansmann, Lukas Verlag, Berlin, 2010, pp. 9–21. 2. Vienna, Albertina Museum, 3108, D 84. See Walter L. Strauss, ed., The Complete Drawings of Albrecht Dürer, 6 vols., Abaris Books, New York, 1974, 2:1507/3, »Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians under Sapor II.« 3. Erwin Panofsky, »Conrad Celtes and Kunz von der Rosen: Two Problems in Portrait Identification,« The Art Bulletin, vol. 24, no. 1 (Mar. 1942), pp. 39–43, was the first to identify Dürer's companion as Konrad Celtis. The close resemblance of Dürer's painted figure to a commemorative woodcut portrait of the German arch-humanist, produced by Hans Burgkmair in 1507, conclusively makes Panofsky's argument. Panofsky further speculated that Dürer may have consulted with Frederick the Wise prior to adding the »posthumous homage« to his 1508 painting. 4. Celtis died on 2 February 1508 in Vienna as Dürer was applying the finishing touches to the elector's picture. For further reference, see Jane C. Hutchison, Albrecht Dürer: A Biography, Princeton University Press Princeton, 1990, pp. 98–100; David Hotchkiss Price, »Conrad Celtis,« Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale Publishing, 1997, 179: 23–33.; and Jörg Robert, Konrad Celtis und das Projekt der deutschen Dichtung: Studien zur humanistischen Konstitution von Poetik, Philosophie, Nation, und Ich, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 2003 5. See Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1943; first Princeton Classic Edition, 2005, p. 121. 6. Christian humanists of the Renaissance period (1400–1600) sought moral and cultural insight into the relationship between God and humanity through the study of ancient and medieval literary sources and artifacts—both pagan and Christian in origin. Greek and Roman culture and learning—exalted above all others by classical humanists—served Christian scholars in Italy and Northern Europe as essential points of departure in their ongoing attempts to divine God's ultimate plan for humanity in the wake of Christ's death and resurrection. Thus, Christian literary sources and artifacts held greater authority for most Renaissance scholars as documentary evidence of the relationship between God and His people as it developed in the Christian era. On Christian Humanism and art in Germany, see David Hotchkiss Price, »Christian Humanism and the Art of Imitation,« Chapter 3 in Albrecht Dürer's Renaissance: Humanism, Reformation, and the Art of Faith, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2003, pp. 66–96; and Christopher S. Wood, »Germany and ‘Renaissance’,« chapter 3 in Forgery Replica Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2008, pp. 61–107. 7. Walter L. Strauss, ed., Sixteenth Century German Artists: Albrecht Dürer, The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 10, Abaris Books, New York, 1981, fig. 117. Hereafter referred to as The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 10; and referenced in image captions as (B.117). 8. The meaning of retrospective form, as witnessed in paintings and reliquaries produced by Albrecht Dürer and others for Frederick the Wise, has been discussed by Klaus Nier, »Dürers Bild der ‘Sieben Schmerzen Mareins’ und die Bedeutung der Retrospektiven Form,« Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenachaft, vol. 36, no. 1 (2009), pp. 117–143. In the 1508 Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians, Dürer's use of the oil medium, meticulous attention to detail, and staging of a multitude of figures within a deep landscape space calls to mind the defining stylistic and formal features first witnessed in Netherlandish religious paintings of the fifteenth century by Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. For further reference to the influence of 15th-century Netherlandish painting on later German art, see Peter Strieder, Tafelmalerei in Nürnberg 1350–1550, Langewiesche, Königstein, 1993. On Frederick the Wise's affinity for the Netherlandish mode of representation, perhaps due to its ability to suggest an historical link to an established tradition and authoritative pedigree , see Ingetraut Ludolphy, Friedrich der Weise: Kurfürst von Sachsen 1463–1525, reprint edition, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig, 2006, Abb. 1 and 2; and Paul M. Bacon, Mirror of a Christian Prince: Frederick the Wise and Art Patronage in Electoral Saxony, 1486–1525, Proquest, Ann Arbor, MI, 2005, figs. 53 and 54. 9. Humanism in Wittenberg, 1485–1517, B. De Graaf, Nieuwkoop, 1975, pp. 113–31. Hereafter referred to as Grossmann. 10. For further reference, see Grossmann, 1975, pp. 36–75, 100–12, and bibliography. 11. Cranach's earliest known paintings from Vienna, such as the 1502 Penance of St. Jerome (Vienna, Kunsthistorishes Museum), display more expressive forms and dramatic light and shadow effects, exemplifying stylistic traits commonly associated with works in various media produced by members of the so-called Danube School. The Danube School manner, witnessed in the works of Albrecht Altdorfer, Jörg Breu, and Wolf Huber, dominated the visual arts in Bavaria and northern Austria in the first half of the sixteenth century. The 1502 Penance of St. Jerome can be compared to the central panel of Cranach's 1506 Martyrdom of St. Catherine Altarpiece (Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen), produced shortly after Cranach arrived in Wittenberg to become Frederick the Wise's court painter. In the 1506 painting the psychological and dramatic effects are more controlled, the figures and their costumes are more refined, and forms in general are simpler, lending a greater sense of clarity to the busy composition. 12. Bierende, Lucas Cranach d. Ä. und der deutsche Humanismus, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, 2002, pp. 157–78. 13. The classical paragone is concerned with the critical comparison of the arts of poetry and painting (or of painting and sculpture) with the goal of determining which art form might best communicate an idea, theme, or sensual experience to a given audience. 14. Bierende, 2002, pp. 157–58. See also Bierende's extensive bibliography, which provides a useful listing of the pre-2002 scholarship on German humanism and the art of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). For more recent scholarship, see Bodo Brinkmann, ed., Cranach, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2008, in particular, the essays of Mark Evans, »'The Italians, who usually pursue fame, proffer their hand to you’: Lucas Cranach and the Art of Humanism,« pp. 49–61; Dieter Koepplin, »Cranach's Paintings of Charity in the Theological and Humanist Spirit of Luther and Melanchthon,« pp. 63–79; and Elke Anna Werner, »The Veil of Venus: A Metaphor of Seeing in Lucas Cranach the Elder,« pp. 99–109. 15. See Fedja Anzelewsky, Dürer: His Art and Life, trans. Heide Grieve, Alpine Books, New York, 1981, p. 136; and Albrecht Dürer: das malerische Werk, 2 vols., 2nd revised edition, Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin, 1991, pp. 75–77. 16. The Dialogus of Andreas Meinhardi, trans. and ed. Edgar C. Reinke, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI, 1976, pp. 240–52. 17. The Wittenberg Castle Church was severely ravaged by fire in 1760, so the interior of the present-day structure is significantly redesigned. No extant plans or drawings include the relic chamber. For further reference, see Helmar Junghans, Martin Luther und Wittenberg, Koehler & Amelang, Berlin, 1996, pp. 42, 46–47, and 188–89. Hereafter cited as Junghans. 18. See also Johann David Schleuen's 1720 engraving of the interior of Wittenberg Castle Church (#44 marks the location of the Princes’ Choir), reproduced in Junghans, 1996, p. 47. 19. Frederick the Wise belonged to the Ernestine line of the German Wettin dynasty. See Ludolphy, 2006, for a genealogical table of the elector's noble ancestors. 20. Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz Gemäldegalerie. 21. Meinhardi, 1976, p. 263. The author of the Dialogus was a popular young Classics lecturer at the new university in Wittenberg who introduced his work as »a dialogue describing the site, charm, and fame of the illustrious and very august city of Albiorus, commonly called Wittenberg.« (p.193) The Dialogus, a student guidebook to Wittenberg, the university, and its noble patronage, also functioned as a Latin primer. As such, it now provides the modern-day reader with a wealth of information concerning what a Wittenberg liberal arts student would have been expected to know of classical and medieval literature and Latin discourse. Meinhardi quoted extensively from Virgil's Aeneid (29–19 BCE) and Boethuis’ Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524 CE), and included numerous other references to Roman history and classical mythology (Meinhardi chapters 3–5, 208–38). However, this type of information was carefully grounded in the Christian tradition via reference to the piety of the university's noble patrons and distinguished faculty. 22. Meinhardi, 1976, pp. 259–63 and 347–48. See also notes 38–40, 42, and 55. The conversion of the Slavs under King Henry the Lion followed their earlier conversion by the Ottonians, after which the Slavs had reverted to paganism. 23. In chronological order: the 1496–97 Dresden Altarpiece (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister); the 1497–98 Seven Sorrows of the Virgin (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister); the 1500 Hercules Killing the Stymphalian Birds (Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum); the 1503–04 Three Kings’ Altarpiece, which consists of the Adoration of the Magi (Florence, Uffizi Gallery) and the so-called Jabach Altar wings (Munich, Alte Pinakothek; Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut; and Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum); and the 1508 Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians. For further reference to the altarpieces and other works Dürer contributed to the decorative program of the Wittenberg Castle and Castle Church, see Bacon, 2005, pp. 142–89; Meinhardi, 1976, pp. 254–64; Junghans, 1996, pp. 45–9; and Hans-Joachim Krause, »Die Kirche des ‘Neuen Stifts’ in Halle und die Schlosskirche in Wittenberg: Zur Geschichte und ursprünglichen Gestalt beider Bauten,« in Cranach: Meisterwerke auf Vorrat, ed. A. Tacke , Siemens, Munich, 1994, pp. 33–34. 24. Although this work bears Dürer's monogram and the date 1500, some have speculated that it was in fact a workshop product, possibly by Hans von Kulmbach. See Kurt Löcher, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg: Die Gemälde des 16. Jahrhunderts, Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997, p. 201; and Matthias Mende, »Dürer—das zweite Apelles,« in Dürer heute, eds. Willy Bonnard and Mende, Inter Nationes, Bonn, 1970, p. 31. 25. Meinhardi, 1976, p. 264, describes an extensive decorative program for the private apartments of Elector Frederick and Duke John the Steadfast that included paintings on themes from ancient Roman history, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the Bible (e.g., David and Bathsheba). Unfortunately, it appears that Dürer's Hercules canvas was the only painting from this cycle to survive the fire that destroyed the residential wing of Wittenberg Castle in 1760. 26. In 1507, when Andreas Meinhardi was at work on his Dialogus, Dürer had yet to complete his Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians painting for Frederick the Wise. 27. The Illustrated Bartsch, 1981, vol. 10, fig. 127. For further reference, see Giulia Bartrum, ed., Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy: The Graphic Work of a Renaissance Artist , exh. cat., Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2002, pp. 116–17, cat. no. 49; Erika Simon, »Die Rezeption der Antike,« in Albrecht Dürer 1471–1971, exh. cat., Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 1971, pp. 263–78; and Anzelewsky, 1981, 61, fig. 44 and caption. 28. The Illustrated Bartsch, 1981, vol. 10, fig. 73. For further reference, see Bartrum, 2002, p. 245, cat. no. 197; Panofsky, 1943, pp. 73–76; and Anzelewsky, Dürer-Studien: Untersuchungen zu den ikonographischen und geistgeschictlichen Grundlagen seiner Werke zwischen de beiden Italienreisen, Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin, 1983, pp. 66–68. 29. P. Cornelius Tacitus, Tacitus on Britain and Germany, trans. H. Mattingly, Penguin Books, New York, 1954. For further reference to Hercules as a key figure in German humanist history writing and the construction of Renaissance origin myths, see Frank Borchardt, German Antiquity in Renaissance Myth, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD, 1971, pp. 98–176 (see Index for individual page references). 30. Borchardt, 1971, pp. 98–176; and Kenneth C. Schellhase, Tacitus in Renaissance Political Thought University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1976, pp. 31–65. 31. See Albert Werminghoff, Conrad Celtis und sein Buch über Nürnberg, J. Boltze, Freiberg im Breisgau, 1921; Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993, pp. 128–202; and Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Vintage Press, New York, 1996, pp. 75–81. Incidentally, Celtis repeated this statement in his dedication to Frederick the Wise in the 1501 Works of Roswitha of Gandersheim. 32. Schedel, Chronicle of the World: The complete and annotated Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, ed. Stephan Füssel and trans. Ishbel Flett, Taschen, Cologne, 2001, folio 112 verso. 33. See »Fourteen Holy Helpers,« in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, ed. David Farmer, 4th edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, pp. 190–91; and Hiltgart L. Keller, »Nothelfer,« Reclams Lexikon der Heiligen und biblischen Gestalten, 9th edition, Philipp Reclam Jr., Stuttgart, 2001, pp. 450–52. A contributing factor in Dürer's choice of subject could also have been popular accounts of the 1480 Siege of Otranto that were then circulating in the European press. These accounts, whose details bear a marked similarity to the legend of the Ten Thousand Christian Martyrs, reported that 800 to 1,000 Christians, including a local bishop, were slaughtered on a hill near Otranto by Gedik Ahmed Pasha and his army of Ottoman Turks for refusing to convert to Islam. For further reference, see Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004, p. 158. 34. See Farmer, 1997, »Acacius,« p. 2; and Keller, 2001, »Achatius,« pp. 21–22. 35. Johannes Jahn, 1472–1553 Lucas Cranach d. Ä.: Das gesamte graphische Werk , Rogner & Bernhard, Munich, 1972, pp. 489 and 504. Jahn reproduces all of Lucas Cranach the Elder's woodcut illustrations for the 1509/10 Wittenberger Heiltumsbuch, complete with text. 36. Ludolphy, 2006, p. 352; Bacon, 2005, p. 57; and Reinhold Röhricht and Heinrich Meisner, »Hans Hundts Rechnungbuch, (1493–1494),« Neues Archiv für Sächsiche Geschichte 4, 1883, pp. 37–100. 37. This panel remains in situ. The Church of St. Mary in Torgau is located a short distance from the Schloss Hartenfells, which stands on the site of the Wettin family residence where Frederick the Wise and his brother, Duke John the Steadfast, were born. It was the regular recipient of Ernestine Wettin patronage, and Duke John's first wife, Sophie von Mecklenburg (d. 1503), the mother of Elector John Frederick of Saxony (r. 1432–47), is buried there. 38. Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. 39. See Bacon, 2005, p. 119, note 40; and pp. 151–54, notes 31–46. Among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, St. Catherine was venerated as a defender of the faith, and of purity. 40. See Severin Rüttgers, ed., Der Heiligen Leben und Leiden: anders genannt das Passional, 2 vols., Spamerschen Buchdruckerei, Leipzig, 1913, 2:154–60; and Keller, 2001, ,,Zehntausend Märtyrer,“ pp. 587–88. 41. See Schedel, 2001, fol. 16r. 42. Schedel, 2001, fols. 12v.–13r. Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle divides the history of the world into seven ages. The Second Age began with the Flood and continued up until the birth of Abraham. For further reference, see Schedel, 2001, Appendix, 634–67. 43. Frank Borchardt, 1971, pp. 28–176 (and Index), has demonstrated that the myth of Noah's descendants—in particular, Japheth—as the ancient biblical ancestors of the Germans and other European peoples was almost universally accepted in Renaissance humanist culture, as well as in the minds of educated fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Christians. 44. For example, in his Norimberga, Celtis claimed to have come upon the sculpted portraits of ancient druid priests, dressed »in the Greek fashion«, while he and a traveling companion were exploring a monastery located deep in the German forest north of Regensberg. Although the poet laureate must have realized that this was highly unlikely, such a claim was necessary, according to Yale art historian Christopher S. Wood, in order to promote Celtis’ theory that Greek druids—and not the Romans—were the first monotheists in Germany. See Wood, Forgery Replica Fiction: Temporalities in German Renaissance Art, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2008, pp. 1–24. 45. For further reference to the Late Medieval and early Renaissance practice of using images in meditative prayer rituals, as developed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and ultimately based on St. Augustine's three stages of vision, see Eugène Honée, »Image and Imagination in the Medieval Culture of Prayer,« in The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300–1500, ed. Henk van Os, Merrell Holberton, London, 1994, pp. 157–74; Hans Belting, »The Dialogue with the Image: The Era of the Private Image at the end of the Middle Ages,« chapter 19 in Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott, University of Chicago Press, Chivago, 1994, pp. 409–57; and Susie Nash, »Meditation and Imagination,« chapter 18 in Northern Renaissance Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008, pp. 271–88. 46. See Anzelewsky 1991, pp. 75–77. Also, Rüttgers, 1913, pp. 154–60, provides a verbatim transcription of the 1480 Lübecker Passional text ,,Von de Zehentausend Marteren,“ complete with the aforementioned woodcut illustration. 47. See Hutchison, 1990, pp. 27–39. 48. For further reference to the familiar themes of pain and punishment as witnessed in Christian imagery produced in northern Europe during the late medieval and Renaissance periods, see Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999. 49. What follows is my own summary account of the Ten Thousand Martyrs legend based on a reading of Rüttgers, 1913, pp. 154–60. 50. Incidentally, this detail of the Ten Thousand Martyrs legend accurately reflects imperial policy enacted under Emperor Hadrian, when Eusebius tells us many Christians were being persecuted and put to death without the benefit of due process, as it then existed under Roman law. For further reference, see Eusebius, The History of the Church, revised edition, trans. G.A. Williamson and ed. Andrew Louth, Penguin Books, New York, 1989, book 4: 3–11.5. 51. Panofsky, 1942, p. 39, characterized the various tortures witnessed in Durer's 1508 painting as illustrations of the traditional Imitatio Christi theme in Christian art. 52. Dürer's familiarity with the imperial coronation regalia, which had been housed and annually displayed in Nuremberg since 1424, can be confirmed by his 1513 panels depicting emperors Charlemagne (r. 800–14) and Sigismund (r. 1410–37), now to be found in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, which originally decorated the cabinet in the Church of the Hospital of the Holy Ghost, where the imperial relics and regalia were kept until 1525. 53. For a comparison of stock landscape elements from Dürer's early attributed graphic works, see Willi Kurth, ed., The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, Dover Books, New York, 1963, nos. 87 and 90. 54. Anzelewsky, 1991, 1: 75–76. This painting is one of at least three works in the Wallraf-Richartz collection depicting St. Achacius and the Ten Thousand Martyrs. For example, reference to the exterior left wing panel of the c. 1500 Holy Kinship Altarpiece (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum), by the anonymous Cologne Master of the Holy Kinship, suggests that the bishop being tortured with a hand drill is St. Leodegar, bishop of Autun (c. 616–78), who was martyred in this manner and locally venerated in the Rhineland along with St. Achacius. For further reference, see Farmer, 1997, »Leger,« pp. 300–01; and Keller, 2001, »Leodegar,« p. 377. 55. The historical works of Ammianus Marcellinus were known to the Alsatian humanist Jacob Wimpheling (1450–1528), who cited them in his Epitoma Germanicarum rerum (1505). For further reference, see Borchardt, 1971, pp. 100–03; and Michel Mulder, »Ammianus Marcellinus about Constantius II,« retrieved November 4, 2009 from the Ammianus Marcellinus Online Project, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen: http://odur.let.rug.nl/~drijvers/ammianus/contributions/constantius.html. 56. See R. Gerberding and J.H. Moran Cruz, Medieval Worlds, Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2004, pp. 55–57. In the years 339–361 CE, Emperor Constantius II was constantly at war with the Persian king Sapor II over Armenia. Bishop Simon of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in Persia (Iran) was forced to watch as five bishops and one hundred priests were put to death. Then he himself was beheaded. 57. See Keller, 2001, »Zehntausend Märtyrer,« p. 588. 58. Fedja Anzelewsky's survey of the research that has been conducted into the visual tradition of the Ten Thousand Martyrs theme in the art of Late Medieval and Renaissance Germany reveals that local preferences generally determined the identity of the bishop-martyrs who frequently appear in the company of St. Achacius and his men. For example, Anzelewsky names a popular bishop-saint named »Agacius« (d. 305), who was often confused with the leader of the Ten Thousand, as well as bishop-saints Leodegar, Adrianus, Hermolaus, and Januarius who were traditional companions of the military leader St. Achacius. Strangely, St. Simon (or Simeon) Barsabae is never mentioned, perhaps since he appears to be more popular in the Eastern Orthodox cult of saints. For further reference, see Anzelewsky, 1991, 1: 75–77 and notes 372–86. 59. Wood, 2008, p. 255. My brackets. 60. Here the term »anachronic« has been appropriated from Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, Zone Books, New York, 2010, pp. 7–19, to express the visual phenomenon of plural temporalities existing within a single work of art. 61. The Illustrated Bartsch, 1981, vol. 10, fig. 28. 62. The Illustrated Bartsch, 1981, vol. 10, fig. 42. 63. On the significance of clothing and manners of dress in the visual arts as a means of constructing cultural identity during the Renaissance, see Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010, pp. 125–209. Chapters 4 and 5 deal specifically with the themes of »Nationhood« and »Looking at Others«. 64. Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode , Islamic Art Publications, London, 1982. 65. In particular, see »Wise Men in the East,« chapter 5 in Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008, pp. 203–37. 66. Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks, 2004. 67. See Ludolphy, 2006, pp. 351–54; and Bacon, 2005, pp. 40–58. 68. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, , 1943;, p. 121. 69. The potential for such a reading is latent within the image. Celtis made it widely known among his friends and readers that Virgil was his favorite classical writer, and one can be certain that by the sixteenth century Dante's Divine Comedy was a familiar and frequently referenced work in learned Christian culture throughout Italy and Europe. One can therefore argue that this reading of the iconography and interpretation of the visual discourse of Dürer's 1508 Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians has merit. Unfortunately, neither Dürer nor any of his contemporaries appear to have spoken or provided any further insight on this issue. 70. »Nature and Nature's God: Landscape and Cosmos of Albrecht Altdorfer,« The Art Bulletin 81.2, June 1999, p. 197. See also, Larry Silver, »Forest Primeval: Albrecht Altdorfer and the German Wilderness Landscape,« Simiolus 13, 1983, pp. 4–43. 71. E.G. Schwiebert, Luther and his times, Concordia University Press, St. Louis, 1950, p. 205. 72. Raby, 1982, pp. 21–52, and figs. 14 and 15. 73. See Georg Spalatin, Friedrichs des Weisen Leben und Zeitgeschichte, eds. Christian Gotthard Neudecker and Ludwig Preller, Jena, 1851, pp. 24–5 and 56; and Ludolphy, 2006, pp. 252–81. 74. Ludolphy, 2006, p. 143. 75. Ludolphy, 2006, pp. 174 , 233–34, and 374. In 1518, when papal representatives attempted to promote the selling of a special indulgence in Electoral Saxony to finance a Turkish crusade, Frederick the Wise withheld his support. 76. See Bisaha, 2004, pp. 136–66; and Mark U. Edwards, Jr., Luther's Last Battles: Politics and Polemics 1531–46, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1983; reprint ed. 2005, pp. 97–114.