Anonymous painter after Albrecht Dürer: The Feast of the Rose Garlands, around 1606–1612, detail, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. Photo: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien Catching an Absent Fly Lubomír Konečný It is a rare occurrence that a seemingly insignificant, and in fact no longer extant detail of a work of art becomes a substantial part of the discourse surrounding it. This, however, is the case of The Feast of the Rose Garlands, painted in Venice in 1506 by Albrecht Dürer – a work found today in the National Gallery in Prague. While other texts printed in this catalogue deal with the circumstances in which this masterpiece was created, as well as its subsequent adventures, the subject of the following pages will be a single detail – the fly which originally rested ‘ on the lap’ of the Virgin in the Prague painting. The ‘presence’ of the fly on that spot in Dürer’s painting is testified by old copies (fig.) and is also hinted at in one remarkable contemporary text. Still, today we would search for it in vain on the panel exhibited in Prague. This discrepancy was fi rst pointed out almost a hundred years ago by the Viennese art historian Arpad Weixelgärtner, and his brief note started a veritable torrent of writing, not just on ’Dürer’s fly’ but also on other painted fl ies (muscae depictae) in the history of painting.1 I shall attempt to show that this marginal theme can prove highly illuminating as to the nature of Renaissance painting. Before we expand on this fly – doubtless the most renowned representative of its species – in more detail, I will try to give a more precise description.2 It is – or rather, we should say, it was – uncommonly striking, and in fact one could not miss it. Dürer painted it in a prominent place near the center of the painting, against the contrasting background of a piece of white cloth, upon which the Virgin holds the infant Jesus on her lap. At fi rst glance it appeared that the fly was depicted sitting on this drapery, and that it is ipso facto an integral part of the scene, but upon closer examination one was forced to modify this view. Though the fly was turned slightly to the le, its limbs were placed symmetrically; it then follows that it was not depicted in keeping with the perspective of the rest of the picture, and the placement of the individual figures within the pictorial space. Moreover, its size was that of an actual living fly (approximately 9 mm long), which meant that it did not correspond to the scale of the painted figures, which are represented at approximately half of their actual life-size.3 It was therefore sitting not on the painted figure of the Virgin Mary, but on the vertical surface of the painting itself. It was not a fly in the picture, but a fly on the picture. It was therefore intended as a trompe-l’œil, or optical illusion. This strategy – whether its mediator is a musca depicta or some other figure or object – has a long tradition of its own in the visual arts, dating back to Antiquity at the very least.4 In the absence of painting from that period, the concept of art as the most faithful possible imitation of nature (imitatio naturae) is represented by a large and varied number of ‘literary’ anecdotes about artists, whose work was able to not only imitate nature, but in fact to surpass it.5 Such anecdotal mentions are found above all in Naturalis Historia – an encyclopedic work authored sometime in the second half of the 1st century AD by Pliny the Elder. The most notorious of these is one where Pliny speaks of a competition which was said to have taken place between two famous Greek painters – Zeuxis and Parrhasius (35: 65): “Zeuxis produced a picture of grapes so successfully represented that birds flew up to the stage-buildings; whereupon Parrhasius himself produced such a realistic picture of a curtain that Zeuxis, proud of the verdict of the birds, requested that the curtain should now be drawn and the picture displayed; and when he realized his mistake, with a modesty that did him honour he yielded up the prize, saying that whereas he had deceived birds Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist. It is said that Zeuxis also subsequently painted a Child Carrying Grapes, and when birds flew to the fruit with the same frankness as before he strode up to the 1 Weixlgärtner, Arpad: Die Fliege auf dem Rosenkranzfest. Mitteilungen der Gesellscha für vervielfältigende Kunst = Beilage der Graphischen Künste 1928, pp. 20–22. For the most faithful of these copies (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, inv. no. 1900), see no. II./4 of the present catalogue. List of copies in Anzelewsky, Fedja: Albrecht Dürer: Das malerische Werk. Berlin 19912, p. 102, cat. no. 93. 2 The only author who gives a detailed description of this fly is Weixlgärtner: Die Fliege auf dem Rosenkranzfest, p. 21. So far as I know, its only detailed illustration, unfortunately misoriented, can be found in: Białostocki, Jan: Dürer and His Critics 1500–1971: Chapters in the History of Ideas Including a Collection of Texts. (Saecula Spiritalia, Volume 7). Baden-Baden 1986, p. 20, fig. 5. The color reproduction of the Prague painting has been reversed in: Chastel, André: Musca depicta. Milan 1984, p. 17. 3 According to Weixlgärtner, Die Fliege auf dem Rosenkranzfest, it is not the ’Stubenfliege’ or domestic fly (musca domestica), but the ’Stallfliege’ (musca vomitoria). Eisler, Colin: Dürer’s Animals. Washington – London 1991, p. 130, identifies it as the black flesh eater (sarcophaga canaria). It is however not certain that the extant copies are so true to Dürer’s original as to allow us to identify the insect portrayed with any precision. 4 Of the rather rich literature this footnote lists only those works that deal with ‘painted’ flies in general; bibliography on the individual works will be cited in respective footnotes. Thus, see above all Pigler, André: La mouche peinte: un talisman. Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 24, 1964, pp. 47–64; Gaskell, Ivan: Gerrit Dou and Trompe l’œil. Burlington Magazine 123, 1981, p. 164; Chastel, Musca depicta, pp. 9–36; Ronen, Avraham: La mosca di Giotto e la testa di Fauno di Michelangelo: Due illustrazioni del pensiero storico del Vasari. Atti e Memorie della Accademia Petrarca di Lettere, Arti e Scienze N. S. 51, 1989 [1991], pp. 105–122; Chastel, André: Addendum muscarium. La Revue de l’Art 72, 1986, pp. 24–25; Kühnel, Harry: Die Fliege – Symbol des Teufels und der Sündhaigkeit. In: Walter Tauber (ed.), Aspekte der Germanistik: Festschri für Hans-Friedrich Rosenfeld zum 90. Geburtstag. Ed. W. Tauber (Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, Bd. 521). Göpping 1989, pp. 285–305; Chastel, André: De la ‘burla’ au lazzo della mosca. In: Scritti in onore di Giulio Briganti. Milan 1990, pp. 235–240; Arasse, Daniel: Le Détail: Pour une histoire rapprochée de la peinture. Paris 1992, pp. 41 117–126; Kemp, Cornelia: Fliege. In: Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Lieferung 106. Munich 1997, cols. 1196–1221; Eörsi, Anna: Puer, abige muscas! Remarks on Renaissance Flyology. Acta Historiae Artium Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 42, 2001, pp. 7–22; Jurkovic, Harald: Die Kunst, eine Fliege zu malen: Untersuchungen zur Funktion und Bedeutung eines Motivs in der europäischen Malerei des 15. bis 17. Jahrhunderts. Diss. Graz 2003; idem: Das Bildnis mit der Fliege: Überlegungen zu einem ungewöhnlichen Motiv in der Malerei des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Belvedere: Zeitschri für bildende Kunst 10, 2004, pp. 4–23; Delbeke, Maarten: The Pope, the Bust, the Sculptor, and the Fly. Bulletin de l’Institut historique Belge de Rome 70, 2000, pp. 179–223 (esp. pp. 180–184 and 214–221). A number of works written for the general readership deal with the questions and history of the trompe-l’oeil and some of these discuss also painted flies: Lecoq, Anne-Marie: “Tromper les yeux, disent-ils: XIVe–XVIe siècle”. In: Le Trompe-l’œil de l’Antiquité au XXe siècle. Ed. P. Mauries. Paris 1996, pp. 63–113, esp. pp. 67, 101, 104, 10; Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille: Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l’Œil Painting. Catalogue. Washington – Aldershot 2002, pp. 21, 163–179. 5 Kris, Ernst –Kurz, Otto: Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment. New Haven – London 1979, pp. 61–71. 6 Pliny: Natural History, Book XXXIII–XXXV (Loeb Classical Library 389). Transl. H. Rackham. Cambridge, Mass. – London 1952, pp. 308–311. 7 Pliny, Natural History, p. 330. The same author (35: 121) mentions a painted snake, which silenced the birds that have disturbed Lepidus in his sleep: Pliny, Natural History, p. 350. 8 The Geography of Strabo. Trans. Horace Leonard Jones. London – Cambridge 1960, pp. 269–271. See Lecoq, “Tromper les yeux”, s. 67; Ebbert-Schifferer, Deceptions and Illusions, p. 20; also infra and note 39. 9 Chastel, Musca depicta, pp. 11, 12 and 14 (note 4), 39–40. 10 Philostratus the Elder, the Younger: Imagines / Callistratus: Descriptions. Transl. Arthur Fairbanks. (Loeb Classical Library 256). Cambridge, Mass. – London 1979, pp. 88–91 (Greek original and English translation). This passage was first cited in connection with the painted fly by Panofsky, Erwin: Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge, Mass. 1953, I, pp. 489–490, note 5. 11 For the hypothetical possibility that Pliny’s text could have influenced the key works of the Beautiful Style in Bohemia, such as the late 14th century Madonna of Šternberk, see Konečný, Lubomír: Prsty krásných madon. Bulletin UHS 11: 3/4, 1999, pp. 1–2. 12 Viz Hahnloser, Hans R.: Villard de Honnecourt: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Graz 1972, p. 37 and plate XIV; also Ronen, La mosca di Giotto, pp. 109 and 110, fig. 2. 13 Several examples are cited by: Kris 42 picture in anger with it and said, “I have painted the grapes better than the child, as if I had made success of that as well, the birds would inevitably have been afraid of it.”6 Classical texts tell an entire range of similar stories of how artists of the time excelled in the imitation of nature, which was the primary aim of painting as well as the chief criterion for the evaluation of the resultant works of art. The anecdote cited above of a competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasius consists of three stages. Firstly, nature (in this case the birds) is deceived, followed by the other artist (Zeuxis), and in the end the painter himself reflects on what is in fact the purpose and meaning of his art. The fi rst two aspects of the story have both analogies and sequels which had already appeared in Antiquity. Thus we learn elsewhere in Pliny (35: 95) of a horse painted by Apelles so faithfully that on beholding it stallions neighed, taking it for a living animal.7 Similarly, Protogenes, another figure of great pride in the world of painting during Antiquity, was said to have captured a partridge so brilliantly that breeders brought their own birds to it, which then reacted to the painting in a lively fashion (Strabo, Geography, 14: 2: 5). 8 Not one of these Classical authors, however, makes mention of a painted fly. That such a painting, or a description of one, probably did not exist seems all the more strange, as one of the most famous authors of Late Antiquity, Lucian of Samosata (ca. 121–184 AD) wrote a parodic panegyric on the fly (Muscae Encomium).9 The sole representative of insects purportedly painted so as to look alive, is mentioned in the Imagines of Philostratus the Elder, who describes a painting which “had such regard for realism that it even shows […] a bee settling on the flowers––whether a real bee has been deceived by the painted flowers or whether we are deceived into thinking that the painted bee is real, I do not know.”10 One could hardly think of a more apt defi nition of the dilemma one experiences when surveying an example of trompe-l’œil. In the Middle Ages, many monastic and other libraries had copies of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, and it was one of the most broadly consulted encyclopedias for its summarizing of man’s knowledge of nature.11 It was at this time that representations of fl ies gained the widest currency, although we can link this to Pliny only indirectly. Perhaps the oldest depiction of a fly can be found in the sketchbook of the French architect Villard de Honnecourt (ca. 1240), but in this case it is not a trompe-l’oeil illusion, and most probably not even a representation laden with any symbolic meaning, but rather a schematic image of a fly seen from above.12 It raises several questions: does this drawing in fact have any symbolic meaning? And if so, can it be derived from Pliny’s panegyric on the illusive representation of details drawn from nature? Or does it belong instead within the Medieval symbolism, where the fly – as we shall presently see – was not discussed in terms of the artist’s skill, but almost invariably provoked a negative interpretation. So far, these questions have not received the attention they deserve. Although we know of a certain number of painted fl ies in 15th and 16th century manuscripts,13 their specific significance mostly eludes us. To remain only in the context of the Czech lands, one can take the Bible of Conrad of Vechta, a Bohemian manuscript dating to 1403 now at the Plantin-Moret Museum in Antwerp, as an example. In two of its folios (201r and 210r) we can fi nd what is perhaps the oldest depiction of a fly in Czech art (fig.). Josef Krása once wrote – perhaps with this very manuscript in mind – that “the illusory imitations of nature in the form of life-size fly […] were derived from Pliny’s anecdotes concerning ancient painters, of Parrhasius, whose still life tricked not only birds, but even his rival Zeuxis.”14 Although I have already mentioned that Pliny’s text was relatively accessible in the Middle Ages, I believe that this interpretation of the fly in terms of 15th century art is somewhat anachronistic. For this period, one should consider instead those interpretations based on the Bible. The Old Testament figure of Beelzebub, the “Lord of the Flies” in Hebrew, is also – according to Matthew 12: 24 – “the prince of devils.” Hence, from this reference as well as from other passages in the Bible (esp. Exodus 8: 20–32) developed the negative connotations which made the fly the bearer of the plague, and as such the symbol of all kinds of sins, impurities and other negative qualities.15 In this way, we may explain for instance the fly seen near the head of the praying King David in the late 15th century miniature in the Catching an Absent Fly Bonat Museum in Bayonne, painted by the so-called Maestro della Mosca, recently identified as Lodovico Gadio.16 This strikingly larger than life-sized insect is painted just to the le above the head of the figure of David, as though it had just “settled” upon the surface of the miniature. From the iconographical point of view, it is probably an illustration of 2 Samuel: 24, which describes David kneeling before the Lord and asking him to stop the spread of pestilence among his people in Jerusalem.17 In general, in the Middle Ages the fly was seen as a symbol of decay, of destruction and death (memento mori). As such, it appears for instance on the skull placed at the base of the Cross in the painting Four Doctors of the Church Contemplating the Crucifixion by Lorenzo di Pietro Vecchietta, dating to the middle of the 15th century (The Art Museum, Princeton University).18 The story of the painted fly is continued under the direction of Giorgio Vasari. In his Le Vite de’più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, fi rst published in 1550 (and in a revised and enlarged edition in 1568), the following anecdote appears, whose protagonist is the founder of ’modern’ European painting – Giotto di Bondone: “It is said that when Giotto was only a boy with Cimabue, he once painted a fly on the nose of a face that Cimabue had drawn so naturally that the master upon returning to his work tried more than once to drive it away with his hand, thinking it was real.”19 This text may lead us to deem this as the fi rst painted fly, and that its author must have been Giotto at some time around the year 1280. However, the fly itself was not found in any of Cimabue’s works, and we would look for it in vain in all of Giotto as well. Moreover, today we have a quite clear idea as to how Vasari constructed his biographies: by far they are not always based on historical sources or personal experience, but are instead oen the fruit of the literary art of storytelling, supported by his knowledge of older (mostly ancient) treatises on the visual arts, as well as of the artistic tradition itself. Still, one thing is beyond doubt: by the mid-16th century, the painted fly had already enjoyed a long career in the fi ne arts and the body of writing on them. By 1506, Albrecht Dürer had something to pick up on. A broader context for the representation of fl ies, and insects in general, can be found in the humanist texts from the dawn of the Quattrocento. The Greek scholar Manuel Chrysoloras, active in Italy, wondered in 1411 that “if we see various creatures – regardless of how strange they may be – we are not surprised, but when we behold a depiction of a horse, or an ox, or a plant, or bird, or even a fly, worm, or mosquito […] we are very much taken aback.”20 A similar view was also expressed only a short while later (in 1426) by his student, Guarino da Verona, who wrote: “Shall we praise Apelles or Fabius or any painter the less because they have painted and revealed details of the body which nature prefers to remain hidden? If they have depicted worms and serpents, mice, scorpions, flies and other distasteful creatures, will you not admire and praise the art and skill of the artist?”21 Hand in hand with appraising the ability to portray even the most common and meager earthly creaturae went the similar efforts to analyze them, and one must look here for the beginnings of the so-called scientific illustration. This said, it is hardly surprising that the source of Vasari’s (most probably apocryphal) story of Giotto’s fly (la mosca di Giotto) is considered to be Pliny’s above-cited account of the contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasius. It was precisely this anecdote that proved extremely popular during the Renaissance and Baroque period. It was cited by several authors of treatises on painting, and also by biographers of famous artists who did not hesitate to use it in ever-new contexts; it even became the source of an entire group of representations of episodes from the lives of famous artists of Antiquity.22 Still, the link between Pliny and Vasari is not as straightforward as it might appear at fi rst glance. For a similar anecdote in fact had appeared already in the Trattato di Architettura, written in the years 1461–1464 by Antonio Averlino, known as Il Filarete. Having praised the skill of Greek painters, he goes on to write: – Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic, p. 64, note 5; Randall, Lillian M. C.: Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley – Los Angeles 1988, passsim s.v. “fly”; Ronen, La mosca di Giotto, p. 111, fig. 3: Kemp, Fliege, esp. col. 1200; Eörsi, Puer, abige muscas!, pp. 8–9, figs. 1–3. 14 Krása, Josef: Rukopisy Václava IV. Prague 1971, pp. 215–216. Also idem, České iluminované rukopisy 13.-16. století. Prague 1990, p. 216. 15 In relation to this, and quoting other sources, see esp. Chastel, Musca depicta, p. 11, note 1; Kemp, Fliege, cols. 1200 and 1215. For the negative interpretation of the fly see generally Kühnel, Die Fliege; and also Royt, Jan – Šedinová, Hana: Slovník symbolů: Kosmos, příroda a člověk v křesťanské ikonografii. Prague 1998, p. 112. Milada Studničková points out the fly in the Bible of Conrad of Vechta in her lecture “The Bible of Conrad of Vechta: Stylistic Change in Bohemian Book Illumination” delivered at the Thirty-Second Annual Saint Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies, which took place at the Saint Louis University, Missouri, 14–15 October 2005. The lecture will be published in Manuscripta: Journal of Manuscript Research. 16 Levi d’Ancona, Mireila: “Il Maestro della mosca”. Commentari 26, 1975, pp. 145–152. On identification of this illuminator see Ronen, La mosca di Giotto, p. 122. Most recently see S. P. [Susanna Partsch], in: SAUR: Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker 47. Munich – Leipzig 2005, p. 131. 17 As for the connection of the fly and the plague – with reference to Pliny, Nat. hist., 10: 75; and Ex. 8: 24–32 – see esp. Levi d’Ancona, “Il Maestro della mosca”, pp. 148 and 150; Kemp, Fliege, col. 1200. 18 See Chastel, Musca depicta, p. 24 and figs. on pp. 68–69. 19 Vasari, Giorgio: Le Vite de’più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 a 1568. Ed. Rosanna Bettarini. Florence 1987, II, p. 121. 20 See Baxandall, Michael: Guarino, Pisanello and Manuel Chrysoloras. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28, 1965, p. 198; also idem, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition 1350–1450. Oxford 1971, p. 80. A further bibliography of secondary sources is cited by Eörsi, Puer, abige muscsas!, p. 19, note 16. 21Baxandall, Guarino, p. 189; idem, Giotto and the Orators, p. 40. 22 See Konečný, Lubomír: Zeuxis in Prague: some Thoughts on Hans von Aachen. In: Prag um 1600: Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. Freren 1988, pp. 147–155; Gilbert, Creighton E.: Grapes, Curtains, Human Beings: The Theory of Missed Mimesis. In: Künstlerischer Austausch / Artistic Exchange: Akten des XXVIII. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte. Berlin, 15–20 Juli 1992. Hg. von Thomas W. Gaehtgens. Berlin 1993, II, pp. 413–422. 43 23 Filarete’s Treatise on Architecture. Ed. & transl. John R. Spencer. New Haven – London 1965, I, p. 309. According to Creighton Gilbert, Grapes, Curtains, Human Beings, p. 414, this Bolognese artist was Marco Zoppo. The relation between Vasari and Filarete was pointed out already in Kris – Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic, p. 64, note 4. Further see Chastel, Musca depicta, p. 14; Eörsi, “Puer, abige muscas!”, pp. 16 and 21, note 43. 44 “I too was once in the house of a Bolognese painter in Venice who invited me to take refreshment and put some painted fruits in front of me, and was actually tempted to take one, but held back in time […]. And one reads of Giotto that as a beginner he painted flies, and his master Cimabue was fooled by them, thinking they were alive, and wanted to chase them away with a cloth.”23 The painter and theoretician Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo also tells a similar story in his Libro de sogni, which was written in 1563, but only published more than four centuries later. As part of the fictitious dialogue between Phidias and Leonardo, Lomazzo writes: “It is well-known that when Andrea Mantegna was a painter’s apprentice in Mantua, he painted a fly on the eyelash of a lion in his master’s painting of St. Jerome when his master Bible of Konrad of Vechta, 1403, Vol. I, fol. 201r, detail, Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus. Photo: Museum Plantin-Moretus/Prentenkabinet, Antwerpen: Collection museum Catching an Absent Fly went to eat. The fly was so true-to-life that upon his return the master began to shoo the fly away with his handkerchief. Then, realizing it was painted, he was jealous of Mantegna and dismissed him. Mantegna went to Venice where he charmed Giovanni Bellini with his works.”24 We could cite a number of similar cases which we read of in the biographies of Renaissance artists, both in Italy and across the Alps.25 Far more important than their number is the fact that this type of encomium, in praise of artists whose painted flies fooled their masters and fellow artists in order to prove that they were equals of the famed masters of Antiquity, has a direct counterpart in surviving works of art. Leaving aside the illuminations in Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, the amount of panel paintings known to us today that feature a ‘painted fly’ and date before 1506 numbers over thirty. Let us therefore have a closer look at least at the most significant ones, or the ones most relevant in relation to Albrecht Dürer.26 The portrait of an unknown Carthusian, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and signed by Petrus Christus of Bruges dates to 1446. The history of the attempts at identifying the person portrayed is rather long, and it seems that unless some reliable document is found, it will probably remain without any defi nitive solution.27 In the context of the present essay, however, it is of more substance to establish what was the exact function of the fly in Christus’ painting. Is it a ‘real’ fly, which settled on the painted frame, or a fly painted on a ‘real’ frame? By portraying it in profi le, the artist has eliminated the barrier between the viewer and the person portrayed. Further scrutiny reveals that the frame is itself not real but illusory – i.e., painted – but the musca depicta, which has settled on it, serves to intensify the impression that it is exactly the other way around. We fi nd ourselves at a critical turning point in the history of European painting, when artists, conscious of their mimetic abilities, have begun to play with the possibilities of viewers perceiving and interpreting the images they created. That it is a ‘matter of art’ is clear also from the fact that the fly in this picture appears to be part of the artist’s signature, as it ‘sits’ exactly above the space between the painter’s fi rst name and his surname. As we shall see again later, such an intimate relationship between the fly and the signature is by no means an exception.28 Perhaps it indicates that the artist in question is a particularly skillful imitator of nature. But whatever the case might have been, the fi rst attempt to paint a fly in a panel painting took place before the middle of the 15th century in the Southern Netherlands. The initiator in this respect was one of the founders of early Netherlandish painting, the Master of Flémalle, now generally identified as Robert Campin; an opinion developed by the German art historian Felix Thürlemann, based on a somewhat risky but by no means implausible argument. 29 Thürlemann’s principal witness is the so-called Master of Frankfurt (Henrik van Wueluwe?), in whose Self-portrait with Wife of 1496 (Koninklijke Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp) there is not only one, but two fl ies. It is remarkable that their Realitätscharakter is absolutely contrary: while the fly near the bowl of cherries is part of the representation itself, and probably carries a negative meaning corresponding to the established tradition of Medieval symbolism, the fly we see on the impeccable snowwhite headwear of the artist’s wife is not part of the scene portrayed in the painting, but instead, it is something that has settled on the painting.30 24 Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo: I Sogni e raggionamenti. Ed. Roberto P. Ciardi. Florence 1974, I, pp. 93–94. The same author notes in his Trattato dell’arte della pittura. Milan 1584, p. 188, the already cited contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasius, adding that “Andrea Mantegna deceived his master with a fly which he painted on the eyelid of a lion.” See Eörsi, “Puer, abige muscas!”, pp. 17 and 21–22, notes 52 and 53. 25 See Kris – Kurz, Legend, Myth and Magic, pp. 64–66. The most well-known of the Transalpine variants is one where Karl van Mander writes how Herman van der Mast ridiculed his master Frans Floris with a painted spider, boasting, that while Zeuxis only deceived birds, he deceived his master. See Mander, Karel van: The Lives of the Illustriuous Netherlandish and German Painters, from the first edition of the Schilder-boeck (1603–1604). With an Introduction and Translation and Edited by Hessel Miedema. I: Text. Doornspijk 1994, pp. 230–231 (fol. 243r1-15); IV: Commentary on Lives. Doornspijk 1997, p. 47 (with reference to Pliny 35: 65 and Vasari’s Life of Giotto). It is likely that in this case Mander’s source was Scheurl’s ’report’ on the cobweb, purportedly painted by Albrecht Dürer. 26 References and illustrations include the works cited in note 1 supra, of those esp. Pigler, La mouche peinte; Chastel, Musca depicta; Kühnel, Die Fliege; Kemp, Fliege; Eörsi, Puer, abige muscas!; Jurkovic, Das Bildnis mit der Fliege; Lecoq, “Tromper les yeux”; Ebert-Schifferer, Deceptions and Illusions. 27 According to Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, I, pp. 489–490, note 5, who cites the view of Meyer Schapiro, it is the Carthusian theologian Dionysius, or Denys Van Leeuwen, who died in 1471. As to the painting see Scholtens, H. J. J.: Petrus Christus en zijn portreet van een kartuizer. Oud-Holland 75, 1960, pp. 59–72; Schabacker, Peter H.: Petrus Christus. Utrecht 1974, pp. 24 and 81–83, cat. no. 3; Chastel, Musca depicta, pp. 12–16; Upton, Joel M.: Petrus Christus: His Place in Fieenth-Century Flemish Painting. University Park – London 1990, pp. 25–26; Ainsworth, Maryan W. with contributions by Maximiliaan P. J. Martens: Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges. Catalog. New York 1994, pp. 93–95, cat. no. 5; EbertSchifferer, Deceptions and Illusions, pp. 164–165, cat. no. 24 (author of entry John Oliver Hand). 28 For the relationship between painted fly and signature see Chastel, Musca depicta, p. 18; Arasse, Le Détail, p. 125; Thürlemann, Felix: Das LukasTriptychon in Stolzheim: Ein verlorenes Hauptwerk von Rogier Campin in einer Kopie aus der Werkstatt Derick Baegerts. Zeitschri für Kunstgeschichte 55, 1992, pp. 541–543, esp. p. 543; Eörsi, Puer, abige muscas!, pp. 10 and 17–18; Jurkovic, Das Bildnis mit der Fliege, p. 6. 29 Thürlemann, Das Lukas-Triptychon in Stolzheim, p. 543. Bible of Konrad of Vechta, 1403, Vol. I, fol. 210r, detail, Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus. Photo: Museum Plantin-Moretus/Prentenkabinet, Antwerpen: Collection museum 45 30 On this painting see Goddard, Stephen H.: The Master of Frankfurt and His Shop. (= Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunste van Belgie, Klasse der Schone Kunsten, Jaargang 46, Nr. 38). Brussels 1984, pp. 129–131, cat. no. 2, fig. 2; Chastel, Musca depicta, pp. 12–14; Lecoq, “Tromper les yeux”, p. 106; Thürlemann: Das Lukas-Triptychon in Stolzenheim, p. 543; Jurkovic, Das Bildnis mit der Fliege, p. 10. 31 Eörsi, Puer, abige muscas!, especially pp. 10–13 and 16. 32 Reproductions most easily accessible in: Chastel, Musca depicta, pp. 24–50; also Eörsi, Puer, abige muscas!, pp. 12–13, figs. 6–8. 33 On this painting see Zampetti, Pietro: Carlo Crivelli. Florence 1986, pp. 270–279, cat. no. 42; Lightbown, Ronald: Carlo Crivelli. New Haven – London 2004, p. 265, fig. 107. For its most thorough analysis see Land, Norman: Giotto’s Fly, Cimabue’s Gesture and a Madonna and Child by Carlo Crivelli. Source 15: 4, Summer 1996, pp. 11–15. 34 Arasse, Daniel: On n’y voit rien: Descriptions. Paris 2000, pp. 47–48. 35 Land, Giotto’s Fly, p. 14. Another group of paintings where we may fi nd the musca depicta was created in the second half of the same century in Northern Italy. The Hungarian art historian Anna Eörsi therefore believes that it is these paintings that the passages cited from the tracts of Filarete and Lomazzo refer to.31 Three or four were painted by Carlo Crivelli, three by Giorgio Schiavone, and some others by Francesco Squarcione and Cima da Conegliano; furthermore, we must also mention the works of Francesco Benaglio and the so-called Master of Edinburgh.32 Crivelli’s Virgin and Child from the late 1470s, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, has received the most attention so far.33 One is touched by the reminiscence of the recently deceased French art historian Daniel Arasse, who – even though he dedicated an entire chapter of his book on detail to the portrayal of fl ies – describes how he was taken in by a Crivelli fly in New York, and was momentarily scandalized by the appearance of a live insect in one of the world’s foremost museums.34 Compared to the figures in the painting, Crivelli’s fly is disproportionate in size, evoking in the viewer an impression that it is not an integral part of the composition, but instead sits on the painting. But why then does the infant Jesus react to it – whether his reaction is fright or curiosity? The spatial placement of the fly is also ambiguous: if it is indeed sitting on the painting, then it should not be, together with its shadow, oriented slightly to the right, i.e., in keeping with the parapet on which the infant Jesus is seated. Similarly ambiguous is the placement, and therefore the status of the slip of paper (the cartellino) which bears the inscription: “Opus karoli crivelli veneti.” This cartellino appears to be fastened onto the surface of the painting, but it can also be perceived as being attached to the fabric slung over the parapet. This means that as with the painting by Petrus Christus, there exists a peculiar relationship between the fly and the artist’s signature. Thus one cannot but agree with Norman Land, who most aptly remarked: “Crivelli’s picture (and this is typical of Renaissance painting in general) moves in two related but different directions. It asks to be read as lifelike, even as an illusion within an illusion and as an illusion on an illusion. But the painting also presents itself as an example of the artist’s skill in depicting objects that appear to be like their counterparts in nature.”35 36 On the following see Lecoq, “Tromper les yeux”, p. 105; and esp. Jurkovic, Das Bildnis mit der Fliege, pp. 4–8. 37 Chastel, Musca depicta, pp. 56–57. In order to be able to take a painted fly for a real one, that is, for a trompe-l’œil, three interrelated conditions must be met:36 (1) the representation is of a high degree of naturalism; (2) the painted insect is of the actual life size of the species, approximately 5–15 mm in length; (3) the fly is portrayed in parallel to the surface of the painting. It is here, however, that the problem arises. It is no exception when the fly in the image ‘sits’ on an object that is ‘parallel’ to its surface, as for instance upon a wall. Furthermore, if the painted fly is to carry a symbolic meaning, this has to be recognizable within the painting, which would be impossible if its size corresponded to the proportions of the figures and objects in small-format paintings (such as Crivelli: 18 x 24, 4 cm). In many instances it is therefore difficult to establish whether the artist intended to paint the fly on the painting or in the painting. It seems that at the outset, that is to say in the second half of the 15th century, far from all artists were ready or able to seize the opportunity which presented itself, but as the possibilities of mimetic painting grew, some of them were able to consciously exploit the potential ambiguity of the painted fly in order to accentuate the sophisticated concept of their works as well as their own acumen. That is why we fi nd very few absolutely unambiguous representations of fl ies. This is perhaps the case of the painting of Saint Catherine from 1491, at the National Gallery in London, which is ascribed either directly to Crivelli, or to his workshop.37 On the le on the aedicula there is a fly approximately half the size of the face of the portrayed saint, and beyond any doubt it is depicted as having settled on the painting. We may thus assume that this is truly an optical illusion, and that in his paintings Carlo Crivelli tested diverse possibilities of painting the fly. Albrecht Dürer might have become aware of the Italian vogue for painted fl ies already during his fi rst sojourn to Italy in the years 1494–1495. However, he could also have been initiated to it by the Venetian Jacopo de Barbari, whom he met in Wittemberg in 1504, and who kindled in him an interest in the Italian theories of art – and in particular, of 46 Catching an Absent Fly the study of proportions. In this respect it is probably no accident that in 1495 Barbari painted a fly sitting on a cartellino of a painting portraying the Italian theorist of perspective, Luca Pacioli (Naples, Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte).38 It has been suggested that the “oldest known Renaissance still life in its own right”, Barbari’s 1504 Still Life with Partridge, Gloves and Crossbow Arrow (now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich) had been inspired by the above-cited account by Strabo of the partridge purportedly painted by Protogenes.39 It is also possible that Dürer was familiar with at least some of the late Medieval and predominantly Franco-Flemish manuscripts, whose illuminators were certainly not economical in their depiction of fl ies. During his travels in Germany and Switzerland in the years 1490–1494, he might also have seen fl ies depicted by Transalpine artists, such as the already mentioned Master of Frankfurt, or several others.40 Neither is there any doubt that the Nuremberg master was well-versed in current Italian, and in particular Venetian, painting. Regarding this, Colin Eisler believes that the fly on The Feast of the Rose Garlands represents Dürer’s response to the fly portrayed on the Annunciation which Cima da Conegliano painted in 1495 for the church of the Knights of the Cross in Venice.41 Dürer thus had at his disposal a wide range of existing iconographic traditions, both visual and literary. His fascination with them must be understood within a twofold context. Firstly it is the renewed interest in Classical literature, including Pliny and Lucian. As mediated by the appearance of Guarino da Verona’s translation sometime in 1441 or 1442, Lucian’s Muscae Encomium in fact inspired Leon Battista Alberti to write his own sarcastic panegyric concerning the fly.42 Secondly, there is the heightened preoccupation of the artist with both animate and inanimate nature, which showed itself in a large number of his works dating to the period aer 500.43 If we start to inquire as to the genesis and specific meaning of his ‘Rose Garland fly’ we should realize that it also has relatives in the artist’s extensive œuvre. A mere two years before the painting now in Prague, in his Adoration of the Magi (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) Dürer painted a horsefly, whose connotation is unambiguously a negative one.44 The same as the ‘Marian’ fl ies in the Italian painting of the second half of the Quattrocento, it refers to the future death of the infant Jesus. In the years 1512–1513, the Nüremberg humanist Willibald Pirckheimer translated Horapollo’s treatise Hieroglyphica, and his friend Dürer provided the translation with accompanying small drawings, one of which shows a fly (fig.).45 The relevant passage in Horapollo’s Greek original, dating to the fi  h century AD, informs the reader that the Egyptians “to indicate impudence, they draw a fly, which when suddenly driven off, none the less comes right back [Pertinanciam vero ostendentes, muscam pingunt quoniam sepius repulsa iterum tamen recurrit].”46 And, last but not least, the Nüremberg master was beyond any doubt familiar with the Classical literary tradition of the painted trompe-l’oeil, as noted by Pliny and the other authors already mentioned. Their texts formed the framework for the praise of Dürer’s work by Erasmus of Rotterdam, Konrad Celtis, Willibald Pirckheimer and others, who compared him to the most illustrious artists of Antiquity – Apelles, Zeuxis, and so forth.47 While some of these invocations are perfectly conventional, the humanist and lawyer Christoph Scheurl not only called Dürer the “alter Apelles” in 1508, but he also listed specific reasons for this.48 He argues with a literal reference to Pliny’s Naturalis Historia (35: 65) that just as Zeuxis deceived the birds, and was himself deceived by Parrhasius, “ita Albertus meus canes decepit.” Scheurl writes that Dürer painted his self-portrait so faithfully, that his dog nuzzled up against the painting (“tabula oscula fixisse”) and the consequences are “me teste” – still visible – on it.49 It should be noted, however, that the source of the motif of the dog nuzzling up against the image of its master can be found already in one of the epigrams of the so-called Greek Anthology (9: 604).50 As proof of the artist’s masterful 38 Ibid, pp. 32–33; Zampetti, Carlo Crivelli, p. 137 and fig. 128; Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli, p. 464, fig. 224; EbertSchifferer, Deceptions and Illusions, pp. 168–169, cat. no. 26 (author of entry David Allan Brown). 39 Ebert-Schifferer, Deceptions and Illusions, p. 20. Quoted from Levenson, Jay A.: Barbari, Jacopo de. In: The Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. London 1996, III, p. 200. Gilbert: Grapes, Curtains, Human Beings, pp. 417 and 419, note. 13, who draws attention to the fact that Strabo is indirectly quoted in the autobiography of Pope Pius II.: Commentaries, VI–IX. Northampton, Ma. 1951, p. 544. 40 Jurkovic, in Das Bildnis mit der Fliege, especially pp. 16–23, argues that the flies painted in these pictures, mostly portraits, were intended as an allusion to the fact that the persons portrayed were already dead. 41 Eisler, Dürer’s Animals, p. 130; Peter Humphrey: Cima da Conegliano. Cambridge 1983, pp. 106–108, cat. no. 59, fig. 43. 42 Chastel, Musca depicta, pp. 11–12, 14 (note 5), 20 and 45–58. 43 From the rich bibliography on this theme see at least the papers from the symposium “Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance” as published in: Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 82/83 (NF CLVI/XLVII), 1986/87; also Eisler, Dürer’s Animals. 44 See Anzelewsky, Albrecht Dürer, pp. 188–189, cat. no. 82. It was pointed out by Eisler, Dürer’s Animals, p. 130. Regarding this I must mention the view of Arasse, Le Détail, p. 122, that the object protecting the infant Jesus bottom le on the central panel of the Dresden Altarpiece of 1496–1497, ascribed to Dürer, is a kind of flyswatter (chasse-mouches, Fliegenwedel), on which see Kühnel, Die Fliege, p. 291. This identification may be correct, but Anzelewsky, Albrecht Dürer, pp. 26–27, most recently regards this painting as not being by Dürer, considering it to be a Netherlandish work, possibly by Jan Joost van Kalkar. 45 Giehlow, Karl: Die Hieroglyphenkunde des Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissance, besonders der Ehrenpforte Kaisers Maximilian I. Ein Versuch. Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 32, 1915, pp. 1–229, esp. p. 202. This was first pointed out by Chastel, Addendum muscarium, p. 24; see also Eisler, Dürer’s Animals, p. 130. 46 The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo. Translated and introduced by George Boas. With a new foreword by Anthony T. Graon (Bollingen Series XXIII). Princeton 1993, p. 66 (I, 51). This interpretation of the fly is derived from Homer’s Illiad 17: 570 (quoted by Lucian, Muscae Encomium, 5); see Kemp, Fliege, cols. 1197 and 1204. 47 Humanist comparisons of Dürer to classical painters (especially to Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius) are cited and analyzed above all in Panofsky, Erwin: Nebulae in pariete: Notes on Erasmus’ Eulogy on Dürer. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14, 1951, pp. Albrecht Dürer: A Fly, 1512–1513, Willibald Pirckheimer’s translation Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, fol. 60v, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. Reproduced from: Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 32, 1915 47 34–41, esp. pp. 36–37; Wuttke, Dieter: Unbekannte Celtis-Epigramme zum Lobe Dürers. Zeitschri für Kunstgeschichte 30, 1967, pp. 321–325, esp. pp. 324– 325; Panofsky, Erwin: Erasmus and the Visual Arts. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32, 1969, pp. 200–222, esp. pp. 223–227; Mende, Matthias: Dürer – der zweite Apelles. In: Bongard, Willi – Mende, Matthias: Dürer heute. Munich 1971, p. 23; Wuttke, Dieter: Dürer und Celtis: Von der Bedeutung des Jahres 1500 für den deutschen Humanismus. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 10, 1980, pp. 73–129; Białostocki, Dürer and His Critics, pp. 15–35: Alter Apelles. For the respective quotations see Dürer: Schrilicher Nachlaß. Hg. Hans Rupprich. Vol. 3, Berlin 1956–1969, passim. 48 See Scheurl, Christoph: Libellus de laudibus Germaniae et ducum Saxoniae. Lipsiae 15082, fol. h 5. The first edition of this treatise (Bologne 1506) does not include the passage on Dürer. See Dürer. Schrilicher Nachlaß I, 1956, pp. 290–292. 49 The dog deceived by Dürer’s self portrait had already been the prior subject of Celtis’ epigram 70 (“De cane eiusdem”), on which see Wuttke, Unbekannte Celtis-Epigramme, pp. 323 and 325; Dürer, Schrilicher Nachlaß, III, pp. 460 and 461; English translation by William S. Heckscher printed in Białostocki, Dürer and His Critics, p. 18. 50 Greek Anthology. Trans. W. R. Patton (= Loeb Classical Library). Cambridge, Mass. 1948, p. 337. See also Kris – Kurz, Legend, Myth and Magic, p. 69; Białostocki, Dürer and His Critics, p. 18. 51 Dürer, Schrilicher Nachlaß. III, p. 461. This text is cited together with the French translation in Chastel: Addendum muscarium. See also Machilek, Franz: Georgius Sibutus Daripinus und seine Bedeutung für den Humanismus in Mähren. In: Studien zum Humanismus in den böhmischen Ländern. Hrsg. von Hans-Bernd Harder und Hans Rothe unter Mitwirkung von Jaroslav Kolár und Slavomír Wollman. Cologne – Vienna 1988, pp. 207–241, esp. 224–225; Kühnel, Fliege, p. 296; and Kemp, Fliege, col. 1211. 52 Citing Praxiteles as a painter is naturally an error of Sibutus. Chastel, Addendum muscarium, p. 24, note A, makes a speculative comment that the mentioned “Ernestus Traiecti pictor in vrbe” could be identical with the socalled Master of Frankfurt (Henrik van Wueluwe?). On his Self-Portrait with Wife of 1496, see supra p. 46 and note 30. Another idenfitication of this Netherlandish painter (Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar, active in Cologne around 1510) is suggested by Schade, Werner: Die Malerfamilie Cranach. Dresden 1974, p. 379, note 136. 53 Koepplin, Dieter – Falk, Tilman: Lukas Cranach: Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik. Cat. Basel – Stuttgart 1974, I, p. 252, cat. no. 163 (and p. 217, fig. 118); Schade, Die Malerfamilie Cranach, p. 25; Chastel: Addendum muscarium, p. 24, fig. 1. 54 Osten, Gerd von der: Hans Baldung Grien: Gemälde und Dokumente. Berlin 1993, pp. 49–53, cat. no. 6, pl. 6a. This fly was pointed out by Schade, Die Malerfamilie Cranach, p. 26. 48 imitatio naturae, Scheurl adds the anecdote of a cobweb painted with such perfection that the housemaid tried to sweep it away when cleaning. Humanist scholars writing on Dürer eulogize the artist’s deception of his dog and servant with his drawings. Only one of them mentions a fly – this being Georgius Sibutus (around 1480 – aer 1528), aer 1505 the court poet in Wittemberg, who in the spring of 1507 published in Leipzig an “Ode to Kilian’s Fly, Composed in Three Hours” (Carmen in tribus horis editum de musca Chilianea).51 The occasion of this minor work is the following event: Sibutus’ former student Kilian Reuter saw in his master’s possession an ex-libris with the motif of a warbler (silvia curruca) holding a fly in its beak. He tried to draw the fly, but nobody recognized what his drawing represented. The poem therefore ends in a recommendation to Kilian to abandon all such attempts for good, for only a true master can draw a fly: “Just as Praxiteles was master of the art of painting, Or many other established artists known to our time, The pride among them was this Lucas [Cranach] in the reign of our ruler. The revolting hag he painted deceived our sense of sight. His paintings show many girls, too, whom I had known long before. His art taught me, a poet, to recall their faces and their forms. In my opinion, he thoroughly penetrated the art of painting. In the entire world, no equal to him can be praised. Still he would scarcely attempt to paint the daring fly. Hardly could paint it, Albrecht too, Dürer by surname, Whose painting in our time surpassed the Venetians. Hardly would painter Ernst in the city of Utrecht, Who once composed poetry with me, When as an exile I sojourned in foreign lands.”52 It has to be said that Sibutus’ text – perhaps in keeping with this kind of Humanist versification – is rather contradictory. The poet considers Cranach to be the greatest living painter, and yet he observes that the artist could not paint a fly. This, however, is controverted with the fact that the frontispiece of the printed edition of Sibutus’ poem, with the depiction of a warbler and a fly, is the work of this very same artist (fig.).53 And purportedly, neither would Dürer be up to painting a fly whose artistic rendering surpassed the Venetians. It is almost out of the question that the connection fly – Dürer – Venice referred to anything else but The Feast of the Rose Garlands. So whatever the intention pursued in Sibutus’ poem, it is evident that Dürer’s Venice painting was – thanks to the fly – already well known merely a year aer its creation. There then begins the long series of painted fl ies in German art. No later than 1507, Hans Baldung Grien painted one on the right calf of the archer in the foreground of the central panel of his Saint Sebastian altarpiece in Nuremberg.54 Lucas Cranach painted his fi rst fly only in 1509, in his Driving the Money Changers From the Temple.55 With regard to everything said here, it is hardly surprising that in 1609, the German painter Johann König created a miniature portrait representing Albrecht Dürer and his fame in eloquent shorthand: the Nuremberg master is portrayed here based on his self-portrait in The Feast of the Rose Garlands (fig.). The sheet of paper he holds in his hand, however, does not bear his signature, but the famous fly, which at the beginning of the 17th century still ‘sat’ on the cloth in which the infant Jesus is wrapped. It is therefore once again the fly as signature.56 This fly also entered the biographies of the Nuremberg master. In 1769, for instance, David Gottfried Schöber relates how Dürer mixed paints incognito in Michelangelo’s workshop in Rome, and was revealed only aer he painted a fly on the wing of the Archangel Gabriel on the Master’s unfi nished painting of the Annunciation.57 What can be said by way of conclusion? Perhaps only that those who prefer the simple solution of ‘one motif = one meaning’ have no choice but to come to terms with the fact that the musca dureriana has a “polysemic status” at the least.58 On one hand, The Feast of the Rose Garlands continues the tradition of paintings of the Virgin and Catching an Absent Fly Lucas Cranach the Elder: titel page Georgius Sibutus, Carmen in tribus horis editum de musca Chilianea, published in Leipzig 1507. Photo: archive of the author 49 55 This fact is pointed out again by Schade, ibid., p. 26. See, however, also Hentschel, Walter: Ein unbekanntes Cranach-Altar. Zeitschri für Kunstwissenscha 2, 1948, pp. 35–42, esp. p. 40 (with thorough discussion of the motif of the painted fly). Some time later (1532) Cranach painted a fly on the Scene with Procuress at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (Chastel, Musca depicta, p. 75). 56 Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del Cinquecento, II: Palazzo Vecchio: commitenza e collezionismo medicei. Cat. Florence 1980, p. 204, cat. no. 385 (entry by Silvia Melloni Trkulja); Chastel, Addendum muscarium, p. 25, fig. 2; Eörsi: Puer, abige muscas!, p. 18, fig. 15. 57 Schöber, David Gottfried: Albrecht Child from the second half of the 15th century, where this impure insect, in keeping with the Medieval symbolic tradition, signifies death and evil. Among those belong also the South German The Virgin andChild at a Window in the Museum of the Diocese of Cologne, dating from ca. 1480, where the infant Jesus, as in Dürer, holds a rosary as protection against the fly (fig.).59 On the other hand it is evident that the fly in The Feast of the Rose Garlands has to be read with regard to the strong accent which Humanist art theory placed on imitatio naturae and its Classical models. We therefore cannot identify only one meaning of Dürer’s fly, to the exclusion of all other readings. Through the means of such a ’nothing’ as the fly artists of the Renaissance demonstrated their superior skill in imitating nature, so that – as André Chastel wrote – the painted fly became “an emblem of the avant-garde in painting.”60 The one painted by Albrecht Dürer in 1506 on his The Feast of the Rose Garlands is the ultimate proof of this. Dürers, eines der größesten Meister und Künstler seiner Zeit, Leben, Schrien und Kunstwerke. Leipzig – Schleiz 1769, pp. 20 and 24–25. See Hampe, Theodor: Düreranekdoten. Der neue Pflug 3, 1928, pp. 3–7, esp. p. 5; Białostocki, Dürer and His Critics, p. 20. 58 Arasse, Le Détail, p. 125. 59 Kühnel, Die Fliege, pp. 289–290 and 299, fig. 2. Both fly and rosary feature also in the Portrait of Archduke Sigismund of Tyrol of ca. 1490–1496 in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, now ascribed to Ludwig Konraiter: Jurkovic, Das Bildnis mit der Fliege, p. 5, fig. 1. 60 Chastel, Musca depicta, p. 18. I am indebted to Olga Kotková for providing the impulse for writing this essay. A number of friends or colleagues contributed to its fruition and its final version in varying ways and degrees, some unwittingly: Johana Gallup (Berlin), Seth Hindin (Harvard University), Jakub Hlaváček, Petra Kolářová, Jaroslava Lencová, Martin Mádl, Sergiusz Michalski (Universität Tübingen), Ivan P. Muchka, Ivo Purš, Avraham Ronen (Tel Aviv University) and Milada Studničková. 50 Johann König: Portrait of Albrecht Dürer, 1609, Florence, Galleria degli Ufizzi. Photo: Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Fiorentino Catching an Absent Fly South German painter around 1480: The Virgin at a Window, Cologne, Diözesan-Museum, Cologne. Photo: Kolumba, Köln 51