Gerson's Opera

Jean Gerson (1363–1429).
Opera.
Nuremberg: George Stuchs, 1489. (07042/A)

The handsome illustration in this Nuremberg edition is the earliest woodcut that has been associated convincingly with Albrecht Dürer. If Dürer did provide the design, it would have been while he was an eighteen-year-old apprentice in Michael Wolgemut’s workshop. The woodcut depicts the author Gerson as a wandering Christian pilgrim. The lone figure in the expansive landscape prefigures the stately set of Apostles that Dürer would engrave in later decades.