The Art Bulletin

Although Albrecht Altdorfer (1484-1538), like Albrecht Dürer, is often celebrated as a breakthrough artist who anticipates the modern virtuoso, his works remain predominantly religious narratives, situated in sacred wilderness groves. Moreover, the skies of Altdorfer’s works contain celestial phenomena (comets, coronas) that reveal the intimate nexus between heaven and earth, either as portents of catastrophe (associated with the Crucifixion) or as glowing celebrations (Nativity). Altdorfer’s known connections with learned astrologer-prognosticators, such as Joseph Grünpeck, link him with a wider humanist network, including Sebastian Brant, whose woodcut broadsheets also promulgated similar linkages between celestial and terrestrial events.

This study argues that Benvenuto Cellini’s casting of the Perseus and Medusa allowed new speculation about the nature of the sculptural act. Focusing on the statue’s staging of violence and drawing on the writings of the artist and his contemporaries, it suggests how Cellini’s sense of vocation, the conditions of his commission, and the responses his work provoked from contemporaries together gave significance to the artist’s use of his medium. The study offers terms for a pyrotechnical conception of Renaissance bronze sculpture.