A German Vasari? Johann Neudörffer’s “Notes on Nuremberg’s Artists and Craftsmen” (1547)

The earliest German collection of artistic biographies, Johann Neudörffer’s “Notes on Nuremberg’s Artists and Craftsmen” (1547) has frequently (and not always favourably) been compared to Giorgio Vasari’s seminal “Lives of the Artists”, as the two texts appeared within three years of each other. This lecture will highlight how the format, scope and purpose of Neudörffer’s manuscript differed from its Italian print cousin and re-contextualise the “Notes” in both Nuremberg’s literary traditions and sixteenth-century historiography.

Susanne Meurer received her PhD from the Warburg Institute, University of London. She has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Houghton Library and a postdoctoral fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Max-Planck Institute), Florence and the Warburg Institute in London.  As a senior lecturer in the History of Art at UWA (School of Design) she teaches classes on Renaissance and Baroque Art and Curatorial Studies.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Archaeology