If you want to train your eye, you can download the Schedelsche Weltchronik online and fish out that of the young Dürer from the many woodcuts from the Wolgemut workshop.

They do not stand out through signatures, but even more so through artistic conciseness.

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the features section.

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    Such a search can also be carried out in Crailsheim in the north-east of Baden-Württemberg: In the Johanneskirche there is a main altar from the late fifteenth century from the Wolgemut workshop in Nuremberg, dedicated to the patron of the church, in which Dürer more or less a " Teaching ”received.

    Since the celebrations marking the four hundredth anniversary of Dürer's death in 1928, art historians have repeatedly suggested that Dürer worked on the altar when he was around seventeen.

    No new attribution, but now one emphatically by researchers from Nuremberg

    Above all, the figure of the executioner (and not of the "executioner", as all news agency reports wrongly read), who cuts off John's head with the sword, comes from the future superstar of German painting. In the dancing Mauresque step typical of the late Gothic period, the latter turns away from the corpse and places the severed head on the silver bowl, the so-called Johannessschüssel, which Salome has given him. As a sign of his inner depravity, the pubic capsule pushes itself outwards; his fashionable clothes reveal him as a vain dude, on his petrol-colored doublet the silk changes as salmon-colored as on the headscarf with the exalted bow. When swinging the heavy two-handed sword between corpse and leg, blood should get on his leg warmers,but the muscular arms can be trusted to hold the long sword with confidence. From the body of the Baptist in a camel hair coat, blood spurts into a bucket-shaped loop of his red martyr's robe, a form-finding that is characteristic of Dürer's always unusual pictorial innovations. In order to show a certain regret of the bailiff for the man who was executed by him, in addition to the compassionate expression on the executioner's face, Dürer sticks his bone-breaking right foot under the robe of Johannes, as a kind of material solidarity against Herod at the table.In order to show a certain regret of the bailiff for the man who was executed by him, in addition to the compassionate expression on the executioner's face, Dürer sticks his bone-breaking right foot under the robe of Johannes, as a kind of material solidarity against Herod at the table.In order to show a certain regret of the bailiff for the man who was executed by him, in addition to the compassionate expression on the executioner's face, Dürer sticks his bone-breaking right foot under the robe of Johannes, as a kind of material solidarity against Herod at the table.

    In view of all the subtleties that are unusual for the piece goods in the Wolgemut workshop and the similarity of the face with the strikingly long nose to Dürer's portrait of his father from 1490, the presumed time the altar was erected, an attribution to him seems valid. The fact that the attempts at attribution seeped away again after 1928 is presumably due to the fact that the late Gothic winged altar is usually open and the left outer wing with the Johannestod can only be seen very rarely, as it folds backwards into the choir room away from the believers. In addition, the panel with the Moorish executioner remains the only recognizable one created by Dürer, while the John in the "Baptism of Christ in the Jordan" above it is likely to come from another hand, as well as the predella below,the painted altar pedestal with "Christ and the twelve apostles", on which the youthful John as the Lord's favorite disciple in a green and white robe is very imperturbably raised from the ranks of his much older fellow apostles.

    Since Thursday, Dürer has also been the object of party political volts. The Baden-Württemberg member of the state parliament Stephen Brauer (FDP / DVP) demanded in a letter from State Secretary for Culture Petra Olschowski (Greens) in Stuttgart, “that the state support enables the proof of authenticity to be provided beyond doubt by an infrared examination.” In fact, Dürer's Participation can only be achieved via an infrared image, because this would show the signature through which the artists betray themselves, while stylistic peculiarities are leveled out with the painted figures. For Crailsheim near the lovely Taubertal with its many Riemenschneider factories, Dürer's early work would always be a tourist magnet.