After Albrecht Dürer (Nuremberg 1471-1528)

This is a copy after a fascinating drawing by Dürer from circa 1500 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, a satire on the good and bad thoughts (represented by angels and demons) of the clerics seen along the sides of the composition (Strauss, op. cit., no. 1500/7, ill.; J. Remond in exhib. cat., Nuremberg, 2012, op. cit., pp. 256, 477, no. 156, ill.). It is not entirely clear what Dürer made the drawing for; in an inscription inside the cartouche, he addresses a patron or collaborator (‘here you can write what you want’). The Bonna drawing may have played a role in this project, and in modern times, it has been attributed to Dürer’s assistant Hans Süss von Kulmbach as well as to Dürer himself (see Winkler, Oehler, Butts, op. cit.).