The Adoration of the Magi

Johan Nepomuk Strixner’s lithographic copies of the ink drawings by Albrecht Dürer for the margins of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian’s 1515 Book of Hours, which appeared in 1808, established his reputation as a reproductive print artist. Printed just nine years after the invention of lithography, this publication was highly influential and helped usher in the revived popularity of this medieval master among Romantic artists. The volume of lithographs itself quickly became an icon of Romantic printmaking.

This later lithograph by Strixner dates to the period when he was engaged in his last great print project, devoted to the Alte Pinakothek (Old Painting Gallery) in Munich. The holdings of this royal collection had been enlarged in 1827 by King Ludwig I of Bavaria with his purchase of an extraordinary body of German and Flemish paintings. These works were assembled originally as a private collection in Heidelberg in the years following the French closure of many German churches and monasteries during the Napoleonic invasions.

In this early stage of the medium, lithography had not been developed sufficiently to reproduce colors, and so print artists contented themselves with the addition of one (as in this example) or two tone-stones, from which highlights had been scraped down to reveal the white of the paper. But to an audience educated in the traditional painting gallery publication, where the works were reproduced in black-and-white engraving, even this light touch of color would have been a surprise.