ALBREHTA DĪRERA DARBU ATBALSIS Rīgas 17. gadsimta grāmatu ilustrācijās

Latvian book and art historians (Aleksejs Apinis, Silvija Šiško, Valdis Villerušs, Elita Grosmane et al.) have concluded that the matrices for book illustrations published in Riga in the 17th century were not made locally but were imported from abroad and could have been made by imitating the graphic works of 16th century German artists. This article is devoted to some examples that show the influence of the works of the German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) on the illustrations of books published in Riga. These are various religious publications, especially the Lutheran Church Handbook. Its first edition was published in Riga by the city printer Niclaes Mollijn in 1615. Then, under the title Lettisches VADE MECUM, re-editions by other publishers followed in 1631, 1643 and 1673. Latvian book historians emphasize that Riga typographers often used the same image to illustrate different books in order to compensate for the increased costs of inserting woodcuts into the text. The content of the Lutheran Church Handbook is described according to a copy published in 1673, which is kept in the Turaida Museum Reserve and is accessible online (https://e. turaida-muzejs.lv/book/konvoluts-vademecum/pdf). It is a convoluted book of seven printed works with religious content (published in Riga in 1671, 1762 and 1673) bound in one cover – there are gospel chapters, the life story of Jesus, hymns, etc. It was published by the Riga typographer Heinrich Bessemesser. There are texts, about one thousand pages in total, which are supplemented with almost a hundred illustrations. Their arrangement is not uniform; in the gospel texts an illustration can be seen in almost every opening, but the hymnbook has only one image at the beginning. So far, four Dürer’s woodcuts have been identified that have been used as prototypes for book illustrations: two compositions “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem” (c. 1503) and “The Ascension” (c. 1510) from Dürer’s cycle “Small Passion”, as well as “The Visitation” (c. 1503–1504) and “The Annunciation” (c. 1503) from his cycle “The Life of the Virgin” (all dates according to the British Museum online catalogue). These works by Dürer have been copied or imitated by other artists but the name of the book illustrator is unknown. In the Riga books, each of the three woodcuts (“Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem”, “The Ascension” and “The Visitation”) was used in seven editions between 1615 and 1699. Compared to Dürer’s prototypes, the proportions of the book illustrations have been changed; by choosing a landscape instead of a portrait format, the images are significantly reduced. Dürer’s woodcuts from the “Small Passion” cycle are about 127 x 98 mm but from “The Life of the Virgin” – about 298 x 210 mm. The three illustrations in the Riga books are only 44 x 53 mm and therefore look compressed; there is no longer a sense of depth in the composition, because the action takes place on one plane. There is one more image – Dürer’s woodcut “The Annunciation” and its lower part has inspired book illustrations printed in Germany in the mid-16th century. Spanish researchers Julio I. González Montañés and Juan A. Gómez Sánchez have concluded that the illustration with the initials HB was made by the German artist Hans Brosamer and was used in religious books published in Frankfurt in 1547, 1548, 1551, 1553 and 1554. A copy of this image with minor changes was printed in books published in Wittenberg in 1561 and 1562. It is thought that the matrix from Wittenberg came to Riga in the late 16th or in the first half of the 17th century. It was used to illustrate books published in 1654, 1671 and 1699. The illustration’s format is close to a square, 62 x 70 mm. Therefore, the structure of the space is simplified, and the points of perspective are changed. Although in the 17th century Riga book illustrations the number of figures depicted has been reduced, their arrangement simplified, the execution of the figures naive, less significant details omitted etc., the composition of Dürer’s prototypes is still easy to recognize. For Latvian book readers, illustrations of religious texts provided not only a visualization of biblical events. They also created an idea of Christian iconography – the principles of depicting images and attributes; the central perspective used in drawing allows for the depiction of the depth of interior space on a plane. At the same time, the illustrations demonstrate the enormous influence of the works of the great German artist Dürer, which did not fade over the centuries. On the contrary, his graphic works became a source of inspiration for many other artists and craftsmen in near and far off lands long after his death.