Albrecht Dürer, The Four Apostles, 1526, oil on wood, 7′ 1″ x 2′ 6″ (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re in the Alte Pinakothek, a museum in Munich in Germany, and we’re looking at Albrecht Dürer’s monumental diptych. It’s actually two panels, “The Four Apostles.”
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:15] This is such an interesting painting, because it’s at this very moment that the Protestant Reformation is taking place, and Dürer, the artist, converted to Protestantism. That is, he converted from a Catholic, from being a follower of the pope in Rome, to being a follower of Martin Luther.
Dr. Zucker: [0:33] I’m not sure that that would be clear to just anybody looking at this painting, so how do we know that?
Dr. Harris: [0:39] Dürer’s depicted in the foreground the two apostles who were the favorites of Martin Luther, Paul and John, and he’s depicted behind John the apostle who is most associated with the papacy, with the pope — Peter.
Dr. Zucker: [0:53] He’s the one who’s holding that large gold key, which is the key to kingdom of heaven.
Dr. Harris: [0:58] Right there, we have the Reformation, because the Reformation was about Luther’s idea that we go back to the Bible, to the original source, to learn about God and how to achieve salvation. Not the Church and its practices, but the Word of God.
Dr. Zucker: [1:14] The idea that the average person would have to have heaven unlocked by the papacy was no longer relevant. We all had access to the Bible.
Dr. Harris: [1:22] Exactly. We could have a personal relationship with God by reading the Bible and through prayer.
Dr. Zucker: [1:28] This is only 50 years after Gutenberg had invented the printing press in the West, and the Bible was being printed and distributed. It was being translated by Luther actually into German, no longer only in Latin, but now in the common languages.
Dr. Harris: [1:43] Before that, Bibles were in the hands of the monks and the priests. We see Luther’s translation of the Bible. Actually, in this painting, at the bottom, we see the words of the four apostles.
Dr. Zucker: [1:54] Let’s just go through this so we know who everybody is. On the left panel in red closest to us is John, and we know it’s John because of the sense of serenity that is so associated with him. We’ve already established that the man in back of him — older, bald, and holding the key — is Saint Peter, but on the right side in the foreground, that’s Saint Paul. As we might expect, Paul is holding a book and he’s holding a sword.
Dr. Harris: [2:18] Right. He was killed by the sword and he holds a book because he’s also the author of the letters in the New Testament.
Dr. Zucker: [2:25] In back of him is Saint Mark, who can be seen holding a scroll.
Dr. Harris: [2:29] With Saint Paul, we have another apostle who was very important to Luther. It was Paul’s words that inspired Luther. Paul wrote, “The just shall live by faith alone,” that it was by faith, not by good works that one gets to heaven, and this was a central idea of the Protestants.
Dr. Zucker: [2:49] But I want to spend a moment looking at what the artist achieved, what Dürer achieved. These men are so powerful. There’s such a sense of monumentality.
Dr. Harris: [2:57] And they’re each so different. With John, there’s a sense of calm as he reads.
Dr. Zucker: [3:02] Peter, on the other hand, is older, and he seems to be reading almost over John’s shoulder, looking at what John has been showing him, learning.
Dr. Harris: [3:10] And I think a sense of subservience to John, too.
Dr. Zucker: [3:14] Well, his attribute, the key, is almost forgotten. All of their attention is on that book.
Dr. Harris: [3:19] And in fact the Bible is open to a passage that reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So this idea of not looking to the Church, but of looking to the very Word of God, and then on the right, two very different personalities again. Mark, who seems to be on the lookout for some kind of danger on the horizon.
Dr. Zucker: [3:41] Whereas Paul looks as if he has completely come to terms with the danger that he puts himself in.
Dr. Harris: [3:47] He looks defensive.
Dr. Zucker: [3:48] There’s almost a kind of anger.
Dr. Harris: [3:50] All of these different personalities speak in different ways to this incredible moment of conflict.
Dr. Zucker: [3:55] Well, this was a tremendously dangerous moment. Luther is rebelling against the Church. These are states that are breaking away from the Church.
Dr. Harris: [4:04] And wars are going to be fought and people are going to die. People really had to decide which path to take, to follow the Church’s path to salvation or follow the Protestant path to salvation, and think about it — the fate of one’s very soul depended on this decision.
Dr. Zucker: [4:21] There was also practical considerations because Dürer, as an artist, by giving up the Catholic faith was giving up the patronage of the Church as well.
Dr. Harris: [4:30] That’s right. Because one of the things that Luther’s followers had — and Luther himself was concerned about was the role of the image in the Church. They were concerned that people were worshiping the images instead of God, and so in the areas that converted to Protestantism in Europe, the Church doesn’t commission works of art, and the Church was the main patron of art.
Dr. Zucker: [4:50] In fact, this was not a commission. These two paintings were made by Dürer on his own, and then he gave it to the town elders and they were placed in the town hall in Nuremberg.
Dr. Harris: [5:00] We have written into this painting the perilousness of the time that Dürer lived. In those four passages below, we have the writings of the four apostles warning of false prophets, warning that human beings could easily go astray, and the importance of listening to the Word of God and not to human interpreters.
[5:21] There is something in that compressed space that these figures occupy that focuses us on that idea of these figures transmitting the Word of God.
Dr. Zucker: [5:32] What a moment. People’s religious understanding is being reinvented, and Dürer here is reinventing the way painting would respond.
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