Uno sconosciuto autoritratto di Dürer e il più antico ritratto di una donna in tipografia

Abstract

Josse Bade’s mark depicting the printing workshop is proposed in three variants, for some of which one can hypothesise, in the likeness of the draughtsman, the depiction of the master and one of his sons-in-law, in those of the composer, the portrait of his wife (the oldest image of a woman in the printing workshop) and daughter, also active in the workshop, and above all in the figure of the typographer, the self-portrait (hitherto unknown) of a famous artist such as Albrecht Dürer, the author of the engraving and intimately linked to the history of typographic art in its early days. The typographer is presented in his workshop next to the printing press, at the climax of the printing process, with the people working there and the working tools, in a setting carefully designed in every detail. Next to the magister, the female presence, both as wife and life companion and as daughter and work colleague, gives these images a more intimate and affective dimension, helping us to get to know the protagonists of the history of European typography in the first centuries of printing better.