DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52770#0054
The moralizing tendency of this engraving is fairly obvious, and no one has got much
beyond Vasari’s description of it: “A man sleeping in a bath-room [it is an ordinary
room], while Venus is behind him inspiring his dreams with temptation, and Love,
mounted on stilts, capers and sports around him, while the Devil blows into his ear
with a pair of bellows.” The age of the sleeper has been exaggerated by several
writers ; he is still in the prime of life. The nude woman is idealized and influenced
by the antique, not studied so directly from life as the four women in B.75.
A very interesting article on this engraving, by 0. Hagen, appeared in Kunstchronik,
July 30, 1917, p. 453, “ Eine literarische Parallele zu Diirers Traum des Doktors.”
In a letter from Lorenz Beheim, suffering from ” lues ” in 1511, to Pirkheimer, he
sees an allusion to the stove and the woman in Diirer’s engraving, and thinks that
the engraving itself alludes to Pirkheimer suffering from the same disease. It
appears to me that a good case is made out for the suggestion ; there is not space here
even to summarize the argument.
36
beyond Vasari’s description of it: “A man sleeping in a bath-room [it is an ordinary
room], while Venus is behind him inspiring his dreams with temptation, and Love,
mounted on stilts, capers and sports around him, while the Devil blows into his ear
with a pair of bellows.” The age of the sleeper has been exaggerated by several
writers ; he is still in the prime of life. The nude woman is idealized and influenced
by the antique, not studied so directly from life as the four women in B.75.
A very interesting article on this engraving, by 0. Hagen, appeared in Kunstchronik,
July 30, 1917, p. 453, “ Eine literarische Parallele zu Diirers Traum des Doktors.”
In a letter from Lorenz Beheim, suffering from ” lues ” in 1511, to Pirkheimer, he
sees an allusion to the stove and the woman in Diirer’s engraving, and thinks that
the engraving itself alludes to Pirkheimer suffering from the same disease. It
appears to me that a good case is made out for the suggestion ; there is not space here
even to summarize the argument.
36