Session: Frankfurt and the Art Market in the Sixteenth Century

What role did Frankfurt am Main play in the rise of printmaking and the commercial art market? Although today’s Frankfurt Book Fair is a major publishing event, art historians have not focused on its Renaissance precursor, the Frankfurt fair, an important location for the purchase and exchange of prints. Agnes Frey Dürer sold her husband’s prints there, and others found steadier work in Frankfurt. Jost Amman and Virgil Solis worked for printer Sigmund Feyerabend, following the example of Sebald Beham and Christian Egenolff, the first printer to settle permanently in Frankfurt. Frankfurt patricians supported book culture, embraced humanism, and enticed leading artists with their commissions. Albrecht Dürer painted his Heller Altarpiece for the owner of a building that housed many who traveled to the fair.

We seek papers that address Frankfurt in the sixteenth century, especially with regards to printing and the fair. What figures – printers, patricians – and what motives brought artists to the city? Where did visitors stay, and how might they have experienced the city? Who intersected with the art market in such areas as commerce or book and intaglio printing? What did elite culture in the city look like, and how did it tie Frankfurt to wider intellectual and artistic circles?

Please submit a proposal abstract (150 words max.) and brief C.V. (300 words) by May 20, 2014, to Alison G. Stewart (astewart1@unl.edu), Lisa Kirch (mhkirch@una.edu), and Birgit Münch (muench@uni-trier.de). For additional details on submission materials and the RSA Berlin 2015 conference, visit www.rsa.org/?2015Berlin