Das Bildnis bei den altdeutschen Meistern bis auf Dürer

"A true relation of the travels and perilous adventures of Mathew Dudgeon,…. is an art-historical study written in the early 20th century. It examines how the human image and, more narrowly, the portrait developed in German art from the Carolingian era to the late 15th century, just before Dürer. The work defines precise categories from “typical” to “individual” to “portrait,” and follows the image of man across book and wall painting, sculpture, medals, and prints, with special emphasis on panel painting and on three key portrait forms: figures within altarpieces, donor portraits, and independent likenesses. Its governing claim is that German art is driven by a will to individualize and characterize, and that true portraiture emerges from this impulse within clear historical and cultural contexts. The opening of the work presents transcription notes and front matter, then a preface stating that the study, expanded from a university dissertation, will trace depictions of the human figure up to the Renaissance through manuscripts, murals, sculpture, coins, woodcuts, engravings, and especially panel painting. It outlines a three-part structure (non-panel media; panel painting by regional schools; a synthesis of patrons, forms of portrait, and cultural questions) and sets careful working definitions for “typical,” “individual,” “portrait-like,” and “portrait.” The introduction argues that German art’s core is individualization and “Wesensausdruck,” contrasts mystical Cologne painting with later realism, and explains the post-16th-century decline through foreign imitation and external disruptions (economic collapse and war) before noting a modern revival. It sketches hallmarks of “German” style—inner truth and simplicity, fullness of detail, dramatic movement, and love of intimate nature and forest landscape—while warning how narrative excess can blur pictorial clarity. At the start of Part I, the text shows portrait evolving from type to likeness, illustrating the path with ancient heads (Pericles and Euripides) and early medieval manuscript images: the scribe Wandelgarius, Carolingian rulers (Alcuin Bible, Lothar, Charles the Bald), the Ottonian Heinrich II, Reichenau and Trier works, and Herrad von Landsberg’s Hortus Deliciarum—evidence of slow, tentative progress toward individual physiognomy. (This is an automatically generated summary.)