Albrecht Dürer and Luther (Der Lutheraner 1869)

      From a blurb in Der Lutheraner vol. 25 (Feb. 1, 1869) p. 87:

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Albrecht Dürer and Luther.

 

In a letter from the famous painter Albrecht Dürer to Georg Spalatin, the court preacher and secret scribe of Frederick the Wise of Saxony, which is in the Basel library and was recently published by the Journal of Fine Arts [Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, vol. 3, 1868, p. 7 ff.], the following is written: “Since I have heard that my most gracious lord has sent me the little books of Luther himself, I therefore ask Your Honor to indicate my most humble gratitude to His Electoral Grace to the highest. In all submissiveness ask that he may let the laudable D. M. L. [Dr. Martin Luther] be commanded by Christian truth, which is more important to us than all the wealth and power of this world, which then passes away with time, but the truth remains eternal, and if God helps me that I come to Doctor Martin Luther, then I will portray him with diligence and engrave him in copper and make a lasting memorial of the Christian man who has helped me out of great anguish, and I ask E. W., where Doctor Martinus is doing something new, which is German, that he would send it to me for my payment.” — This letter is written according to a date of 1520, probably buried by the recipient, thus one year before the known passage in the Dutch diary. (Ref. Kirchenz.)

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As I read the Wikipedia article on the famous German artist, I ran across the predictable opinions of some historians who questioned Dürer's love for Luther's Reformation.  What is truly amazing to me is that even though Dürer acknowledged Luther's help to get him out of "great anguish", his work has "never fallen from critical favour". How it must pain these "critics" to acknowledge Luther's influence on this master artist. — Dürer remains one of my Reformation heros, for he and his work prove that art does have a  place for Christians, even if what passes for "art" today… does not.