Abstract
In 1547, the Nuremberg writer Johann Neudörffer (1497-1563) wrote an account of the lives of seventy-nine of the city's most eminent artisans, and sent them to the merchant Georg Römer.1 His text was never published, but it went on to influence important seventeenth-century German compilations of artists' lives, and the art-historical categories they created. Most importantly, the art-history reception of Neudörffer's text valorized the figure of Albrecht Dürer, and the sixteenth-century city of Nuremberg as his home. This chapter reconsiders Neudörffer's text as the historical artifact of a very different kind of city, in which entangled communities of artisans worked in highly collaborative ways, and contributed to a specific materiality of the early modern city.
As a calligrapher and mathematician himself, Neudörffer considered artisans to be central to the city. His text, which he referred to as the Verzeichnis (or list), provides a thick description of connections between artisans, commonalities in their work processes, and practical collaborations in their outputs. In so doing it illuminates the
relationship between "artisanal epistemology" and the early modern city, showing how
proximity, social networks and kin structures facilitated the development of craft expertise. This expertise fed back into the cityscape, as practical collaborations between artisans continuously changed the material landscape and cultural identity of Renaissance Nuremberg. In his attention to artisanal communities, the processes of their making, and their influence on the early modern city, Neudörffer provides not only an important historical account of artisanal collaboration at a moment of great change, but a specifically artisanal style of history as well.
As a calligrapher and mathematician himself, Neudörffer considered artisans to be central to the city. His text, which he referred to as the Verzeichnis (or list), provides a thick description of connections between artisans, commonalities in their work processes, and practical collaborations in their outputs. In so doing it illuminates the
relationship between "artisanal epistemology" and the early modern city, showing how
proximity, social networks and kin structures facilitated the development of craft expertise. This expertise fed back into the cityscape, as practical collaborations between artisans continuously changed the material landscape and cultural identity of Renaissance Nuremberg. In his attention to artisanal communities, the processes of their making, and their influence on the early modern city, Neudörffer provides not only an important historical account of artisanal collaboration at a moment of great change, but a specifically artisanal style of history as well.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Knowledge and the Early Modern City |
| Subtitle of host publication | A History of Entanglements |
| Editors | Bert De Munck, Antonella Romana |
| Place of Publication | London |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781138337718 |
| Publication status | Published - 3 Sept 2019 |