bavarikon4UDescription
Albrecht Dürer's Instruction on Measurement (Vnderweysung der messung / mit dem zirckel vn(d) richtscheyt, in Linien ebenen und gantzen corporen) appeared in print in Nuremberg in 1525. The design and print of the book in the Gothic print drawn by Johann Neudörfer and cut by Hieronymus Andreä had been supervised by Dürer himself. It was conceived as a textbook of practical geometry for artists, since - as Dürer writes in his dedication letter to the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer - it is "recht der grundt ist aller mallerey" (the foundation of all painting). He already planned a new edition in the same year, for which the Nuremberg painter entered numerous changes and supplements as well as additional drawings, in a copy of the first edition by hand. This book with the signature 4 L.impr.c.n.mss. 119 is precisely this handwritten copy by Albrecht Dürer for the new edition which only appeared in 1538, so 10 years after his death. There are numerous bound sheets between the 89 printed sheets. Various notes in the volume tell us the further history of ownership. When King Ludwig I of Bavaria acquired the book in Rome in 1839, the authenticity of the piece was highly disputed but the watermarks on the paper, among other things, refute any doubt. Datum: 2019
Author
Bavarian State Library, Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books