The World in Time

Philip Hoare

Friday, September 17, 2021

Back of Saint Jerome, by Albrecht Dürer, c. 1496. National Gallery, London.

“Hidden round the back of Albrecht Dürer’s St. Jerome of 1494, one of his first paintings…is this enormous star,” Philip Hoare writes in Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World. “You would have seen it only if you knew its secret: the galactic event going on, on the other side. Radiating orange-red rays, careering through the perpetual night. A thing of darkness created in light.” Why did Dürer paint it? “On the night of November 7, 1492, a large meteorite fell to earth outside the village of Ensisheim, accompanied by crashing thunder and lightning as it hurtled through the clouds. It was visible and audible 150 kilometers away. Only one witness, a young boy, saw it actually plunge into the field; but Dürer, abed nearby in Basel that night, could certainly have heard it…I don’t know if Dürer visited it, but his emperor Maximilian did; he declared it a wonder of God and chipped off a piece for himself. The meteorite might have been the rock with which Jerome beat himself, or an emblem of the New World. But more than anything, it was a sign of Dürer’s genius, as if that little panel he had painted was an announcement of his explosive talent.”

 

In this episode of The World in Time, Lewis H. Lapham and Philip Hoare discuss Dürer’s brilliance, what his art meant to people throughout history, and the centuries-long ubiquity of his woodcut of a rhinoceros—an animal the artist had never seen.

 

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Philip Hoare, author of Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World.

 

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Discussed in this episode

Cover of Albert and the Whale by Philip Hoare

More Podcasts

February 12, 2021

The World in Time:

David S. Brown

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams. More

Maris Pacifici, the first printed map to depict the Pacific Ocean, Abraham Ortelius, 1589.

August 04, 2017

The World in Time:

Simon Winchester

Lewis Lapham talks with Simon Winchester, author of Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers. More

October 01, 2021

The World in Time:

Michael Knox Beran

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of WASPS: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy. More

March 20, 2020

The World in Time:

Peter Fritzsche

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich. More

November 12, 2021

The World in Time:

Nicholas Crane

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Latitude: The True Story of the World’s First Scientific Expedition. More

February 18, 2022

The World in Time:

Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University. More