Editing Albrecht Dürer (section)

====Dürer and the Reformation====
Dürer's writings suggest that he may have been sympathetic to Luther's ideas, though it is unclear if he ever left the Catholic Church. Dürer wrote of his desire to draw Luther in his diary in 1520: "And God help me that I may go to Dr. Martin Luther; thus I intend to make a portrait of him with great care and engrave him on a copper plate to create a lasting memorial of the Christian man who helped me overcome so many difficulties."<ref>Price (2003), 225.</ref> In a letter to [[Nicholas Kratzer]] in 1524, Dürer wrote, "because of our Christian faith we have to stand in scorn and danger, for we are reviled and called heretics". Most tellingly, Pirckheimer wrote in a letter to Johann Tscherte in 1530: "I confess that in the beginning I believed in Luther, like our Albert of blessed memory ... but as anyone can see, the situation has become worse." Dürer may even have contributed to the Nuremberg City Council's mandating Lutheran sermons and services in March 1525. Notably, Dürer had contacts with various reformers, such as [[Huldrych Zwingli|Zwingli]], [[Andreas Karlstadt]], Melanchthon, Erasmus and [[Cornelius Grapheus]] from whom Dürer received Luther's ''[[On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church|Babylonian Captivity]]'' in 1520.<ref>Price (2003), 225–248.</ref> Yet Erasmus and C. Grapheus are better said to be Catholic change agents. Also, from 1525, "the year that saw the peak and collapse of the [[German Peasants' War|Peasants' War]], the artist can be seen to distance himself somewhat from the [Lutheran] movement..."<ref>Wolf (2010), 74.</ref>

However, Dürer's later works have also been claimed to show [[Protestant]] sympathies. His 1523 ''[[The Last Supper]]'' woodcut has often been understood to have an [[Evangelicalism|evangelical]] theme, focusing as it does on Christ espousing the [[Gospel]], as well as the inclusion of the [[Eucharist|Eucharistic]] cup, perhaps alluding to tenets of Protestant [[Utraquist|utraquism]],<ref>Strauss, 1981.</ref> although this interpretation has been questioned.<ref>Price (2003), 254.</ref> The delaying of the engraving of [[Philip the Apostle|St. Philip]], completed in 1523 but not distributed until 1526, may have been due to Dürer's uneasiness with images of saints; even if Dürer was not an [[iconoclasm|iconoclast]], in his last years he evaluated and questioned the role of art in religion.<ref>Harbison (1976).</ref>