Fellow awarded literary prize for ‘captivating’ biography of Renaissance artist

A St John’s historian has won a prize for her book about Albrecht Dürer, Germany’s eminent Renaissance painter, printmaker and theorist.

The Einhard Foundation in Germany has awarded the 2025 Einhard Prize to Professor Ulinka Rublack, Professor of Early Modern European History and a Fellow of St John’s, for her book, Dürer’s Lost Masterpiece: Art and Society at the Dawn of a Global World (Oxford University Press, 2023). This year the book has been translated into German as Dürer in the Age of Wonders – Art and Society at the Dawn of the Global World and published by Klett-Cotta.

Professor Rublack said she is ‘deeply honoured’ to receive the prize. “I hope that my biography helps to contribute to his lasting recognition and to recognising the importance of supporting the arts through learning about how art is made in our own society.”

In the book, she explores the genesis of Dürer’s famous Heller Altar. This work was commissioned by the Frankfurt merchant, Jakob Heller, in 1509. The centre panel was destroyed in a fire in Munich in 1792 and a copy can be found in the Historical Museum in Frankfurt.

The Einhard Foundation’s board of trustees, which selects the prize-winner, praised Professor Rublack for writing a ‘book that is as surprising as it is captivating’. Instead of telling Dürer’s life as a success story, they were impressed that defeat is taken as a starting point – and said the decision to take the lows just as seriously as the highs is a ‘gift to all readers’. The judges go on to describe the biography as ‘easily accessible’, a ‘brilliant cultural history of the art market’, and an ‘amazing look at the German Renaissance’. The Einhard Prize has been awarded every two to three years since 1999 for an outstanding biography of a person whose scientific, religious, political, artistic or economic life’s work is closely related to Europe.

The Einhard Foundation is based in Seligenstadt, Hesse, Germany, a town founded by the Frankish scholar and courtier Einhard, who is famous as a biographer of Charlemagne. “Einhard’s biography of Charlemagne tells us much about the everyday-life and attitudes of one of the most important rulers in the European past,” said

rofessor Rublack. “I have tried to take a fresh view at Dürer as one of Europe’s most significant and innovative artists by paying attention to his love of a new Renaissance material world, ranging from fashionable clothing to the oils he painted with, and the powerful ideas as well as experiences which arose from this. “I recover what it meant for Dürer to paint rather than to make prints – which is how we often think of his work – and how challenging it was even for the best European artists to navigate emerging art markets and gain a living with their creativity. “Dürer looked ahead 500 years when he painted and wanted us to value his work as art rather than as an aid to spirituality in a church setting.”

Professor Rublack will receive the €10,000 prize at the Einhard Foundation in Seligenstadt on 29 March 2025.