St. Barbara.

Although this woodcut is signed with the monogram 'AD' (Albrecht Dürer), the artist is Hans Baldung (later Hans Baldung Grien), who was Dürer's most famous student and who served his apprenticeship between 1503 and 1507. The monogram was added to the second state of the print. Using the master's monogram in this way was a relatively commonplace studio practice. Stylistically the woodcut has been attributed to Baldung since the early 20th century.

St Barbara was a third-century martyr. She was locked away in a tower, symbolised in the miniature structure at bottom left, by her possessive pagan father Dioscurus, to hide her wonderful beauty from potential suitors. The beauty is partly denoted by her amazing, flowing tresses; her expression as she carefully handles a chalice looks serene. Her conversion to Christianity in her father's absence was revealed to her father by her request for a third window to be inserted into the tower, so she could witness the Holy Trinity. Escaping death at her father's hands, she was tortured at the behest of the Roman authorities and was eventually beheaded on a mountain top by her father, who was in turn struck by lightning and consumed in the ensuing fire. Or so the romantic stories tell us. St Barbara became the patron saint of milliners, knights, soldiers, gunsmiths, armourers, architects, builders, miners, firemen and all those in danger of a sudden, unexpected death.

See: Anne Simon, The Cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Late-Medieval Nuremberg  (London, 2016).

Dr Mark Stocker          Curator, Historical International Art              February 2017