Das Bildnis bei den altdeutschen Meistern bis auf Dürer by Alfred Lehmann
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"Das Bildnis bei den altdeutschen Meistern bis auf Dürer" by Alfred Lehmann is an art-historical study written in the early 20th century. It investigates how the human image in German art developed from typified figures to true portraits before the Renaissance, focusing on manuscripts, wall and panel painting, sculpture, medals, woodcuts, and engravings up to Dürer. The work defines key portrait categories (from “typical” to fully “portrait”) and pays special attention to
donor images within altarpieces as well as emerging independent likenesses. The opening of the study presents its origin as an expanded doctoral dissertation and sets a broad scope: tracing the human image from the Carolingian era through the later Middle Ages, with the main body devoted to three strands of portraiture—holy or secular figures in altarpieces, donor portraits, and autonomous portraits—followed by a synthetic cultural analysis. It clarifies terminology by sharply distinguishing “typical,” “individual,” “individual-characteristic,” “portrait-like,” and “portrait.” The introduction argues that German art’s core drive is individualization and characterization, contrasts Cologne’s mystical idealism with later realism, explains the long post–16th-century decline by foreign influence and war rather than the Reformation alone, and notes a modern revival of a distinctly German manner marked by inwardness, simplicity, richness, movement, and love of nature. At the start of the first part, the author outlines how images evolve from types to individuals, illustrates this with classical examples (from Pericles to Euripides), and then tracks early medieval book illumination from symbolic figures toward more individualized imperial portraits (such as Charlemagne, Lothar, and Henry II), noting technical shifts and the significance of Reichenau, Trier, and works like Herrad of Landsberg’s compendium. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Lehmann, Alfred, 1853- |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | g01000590 |
| Title | Das Bildnis bei den altdeutschen Meistern bis auf Dürer |
| Original Publication | Leipzig: Verlag von W. Hiersemann, 1900. |
| Credits | Peter Becker, Alpo Tiilikka and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | German |
| LoC Class | N: Fine Arts |
| Subject | Portrait painting -- Germany |
| Subject | Portrait painters -- Germany |
| Subject | Portrait painting |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 77422 |
| ISBN (HTML) | 979-8-238-77422-0 |
| Release Date | Dec 8, 2025 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 347 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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