Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim

Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim (c. 935–c. 975).
Opera Hrosvite, illustris virginis et monialis Germane, gente Saxonica orte, nuper a Conrado Celte inventa.
Nuremberg: Sodalitas Celticae, 1501. (AFM4742)

Dürer designed two woodcuts for this first edition of the Latin plays of Hrotsvitha, a tenth-century Benedictine nun from Gandersheim. Her dramas, modeled on the comedies of Terence, had been discovered by the humanist scholar Conrad Celtes in a monastic library in Regensburg seven years earlier. The two woodcuts by Dürer are the frontispiece, showing Celtes presenting the new edition to Friedrich III of Saxony, and the exhibited image of the author Hrotsvitha presenting her plays to Emperor Otto I. The Abbess of Gandersheim, who was Hrotsvitha’s aunt, looks on from behind the kneeling playwright.