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Master I.B.

Bookplate of Willibald Pirckheimer

1529
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
15 × 8.5 cm (5.9 × 3.3 in)

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In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

This engraved bookplate was made for Albrecht Dürer’s best friend, the Nuremberg humanist Willibald Pirckheimer. The artist created a circular preparatory drawing of an allegory of three women pounding a heart on an anvil in 1528. When Dürer died prematurely that year, leaving the work unfinished, his student the Master I. B. adapted it into the final printed design. Pirckheimer used the print as an ex libris along with Dürer’s portrait of him at least twice, in a 1502 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Terze Rime) now at the New York Public Library, and in a copy of Johannes Oecolampadius's Grammar held at Yale's Medical Historial Library.

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