Feast of the Rosary

It is recorded as the work of Albrecht Dürer. Materials recorded for it are oil paint, poplar panel and panel. The record gives 1506 as its date of establishment or first appearance. It is associated with German Renaissance and High Renaissance. Recorded genres are religious art. It is recorded in the collection of National Gallery Prague, San Bartolomeo and Sternberg Palace.

• Title — Feast of the Rosary • Artist — Albrecht Dürer • Year — 1506 • Medium — Oil on panel • Height Metric — 161.5 • Width Metric — 192 • Metric Unit — cm • Imperial Unit — in • Museum — National Gallery • City — Prague

• Illustration — Preparatory drawing. Hands of Maximilian. In Feast of the Rosary, Dürer shifted the hands closer together, so that his left hand overlapped his right palm. The work was initially commissioned by Jakob Fugger, an intermediary between emperor Maximilian I and Pope Julius II, during the painter's stay as the banker's guest in Augsburg, though it was produced whilst the painter was in Venice. The contract was renewed in the Italian city by the fraternity of traders from Nuremberg (Dürer's hometown) and from other German cities, the latter being supported by the Fugger family. These traders were particularly active in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and their fraternity had been founded in Strasbourg by Jakob Sprenger in 1474. According to the contract, the painting was to be finished before May 1506 and then hung in the German national church in Venice, San Bartolomeo on the Rialto. It also stated it was to portray the Feast of the Rosary - German expatriates in Venice were particularly devoted to Our Lady of the Rosary. • Illustration — Detail of the landscape Dürer was still working on the painting in September that year, when the Doge, the Patriarch, other Venetian nobles and a number of artists visited Dürer's workshop to see the finished work. Dürer later described the visit in a 1523 letter to Nuremberg's Senate, stating that he had declined an offer from Doge Leonardo Loredan to become official painter to the Republic of Venice the doge had offered him. The artists involved in the visit may have included Giovanni Bellini. The work was acquired by emperor Rudolf II in 1606, who moved it to Prague. It was assigned to the Strahov Monastery and over the centuries was restored several times, damaging the painted surface. It was later moved to the Rudolfinum and then to the National Gallery of the Czech capital.

The style of the work is reminiscent of some Bellini's works featuring the same quiet monumental appearance, such as the San Giobbe Altarpiece (1487) or the San Zaccaria Altarpiece (1505), especially regarding the guitar playing angel in the center. About two-thirds of the work was subject to later repainting, including the great part of the heads and some half of the panel. The work is also seen as a tribute to Maximilian's first wife, Mary of Burgundy. Here the Virgin Mary (representation of Mary of Burgundy) was depicted holding the infant Jesus (representation of Philip the Fair) while placing a rosary on the head of a kneeling Maximilian. When the Fraternity of the Rosary was established in 1475 in Cologne, Maximilian and his father Frederick III were present and among the earliest members. Already in 1478, in Le chappellet des dames, Molinet, as the Burgundy court chronicler, placed a symbolic rosary on the head of Mary of Burgundy. Similarly, in 1518, one year before the emperor's own death, under the order of Zlatko, Bishop of Vienna, Dürer painted The death of the Virgin, which was also the scene of the deathbed of Mary of Burgundy, with Maximilian, Philip of Spain, Zlatko and other notables around the couch. Philip was presented as a young St. John while Maximilian bowed down as one of the Apostles. (The work was last seen in the 1822 sale of the Fries collection.) The Alamire manuscript VatS 160, a choirbook sent to Pope Leo X as a gift, probably by a member of the Burgundian-Habsburg family or a person close to Maximilian, contains numerous references to the connection between the Virgin Mary, the rosary symbol and Mary of Burgundy. David Rothenberg notes that the painting Feast of the Rosary is a "direct visual counterpart" to the motet Virgo Prudentissima by Heinrich Isaac (written in 1507 for the Reichstag in Konstanz and for Maximilian's 1508 coronation as Holy Roman Emperor): "The most prudent Virgin thus crowns the Wise King with a rose garland at the very moment when she herself is about to be crowned Queen of Heaven." Both the motet and the painting reflect the idea that the White King (Weisskunig) claimed his legitimacy directly from the Queen of Heaven and not through mediation by the Church. Bubenik agrees with Rothenberg's assessment and points out that in the painting one can also see a lute.