A color lithograph depicting a young child playing the piano in a domestic setting, while a woman looks over the child’s shoulder

Romare Bearden’s The Piano Lesson

Romare Bearden’s Out Chorus

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
The Triumph of Maximilian (Triumphal Arch)
Woodcut, 1799
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection

The Triumph of Maximilian (Triumphal Arch)

Albrecht Dürer’s Triumphal Arch, commissioned by Emperor Maximilian, is one of the largest prints ever produced. The emperor sought a piece that could be pasted onto the walls of city halls or the palaces of princes. The arch is a work of imperial propaganda, with complicated iconography alluding to the emperor’s ancestry, lands, accomplishments, deeds, talents, and interests. Comprising over 200 individual prints, it is also a work of staggering complexity, one that demanded the combined labors of Dürer and a workshop of assistants for more than two years. After its initial printing in 1517, Triumphal Arch was reprinted in two more editions. The Library owns two copies, including a rare, but incomplete, first edition. The one shown here is complete and belongs to the third and last edition.

Holding Division: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Co…

Currently on View at Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

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