* The Rev. Mark A. Loest discovered the fine art prints by the 16th-century German artist in the archives of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in 1997.
It's a curator's job to burrow into a collection and discover its treasure. With 3 million items in the five-story Concordia Historical Institute, the department of archives of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Rev. Mark A. Loest sometimes gets sidetracked for hours as he searches for one thing and finds something better.
In 1997, shortly after he began his job, Loest made a special discovery filed in aisle "D." His find of fine religious art prints by renowned early 16th century German artist Albrecht Dürer goes on public exhibition at 8:30 a.m. Monday at the institute, on the synod's Concordia Seminary campus at 801 DeMun Avenue in Clayton
Loest was looking for a letter in the archives catalog that Dürer wrote to Philip Melanchthon - a colleague of Martin Luther's - when he came upon the woodcuts. The letter, a photocopy of the original letter, was in a white box on a shelf of floor-to-ceiling metal shelving. That was when Loest noticed a large manila envelope marked: "Dürer woodcuts."
"I wondered if there could be a couple original Albrecht Dürer woodcut prints inside," he said this week as he stood in the same narrow aisle.
He found 41 woodcut prints, each with the distinctive AD signature. The letter D is tucked under the "legs" of the larger A. All the woodcuts were on pristine, thin, white water-marked paper.
A set of 22 four-by-five-inch prints depicted scenes of Jesus' passion and death. The envelope also contained a book - bound, ribbed and tooled in worn, loden green leather - with 19 images from a series of 20 prints called "The Life of Mary." Each of these images
"It's sort of like PBS' 'Antiques Road Show,'" Loest said. "(The institute) didn't know what it had, but they took good care of it."
Loest, 39, is the assistant director for reference and museum at the institute. He is also acting pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Nashville, Ill. Fifty years ago, another Lutheran pastor, the Rev. J. Frederick Wenchel of Washington donated the "Life of Mary" set to the archives. The St. Louis Art Museum experts authenticated the Dürers in the 1950s.
Loest does not know their monetary value today. What is more important to him is the strong evangelical and storytelling aspect of Dürer's prints.
Renaissance man
Dürer was the most famous Renaissance artist in what is modern-day Germany. He was born in Nuremberg in 1471 and provided links between the Renaissance art of Italy, where he lived for two extended periods, and the still Gothic art of northern Europe. He witnessed artistic, religious and political upheaval during the seminal years of the Protestant Reformation.
Dürer wrote that his artistic talent was a gift from God and that he needed to serve God and spread the Gospels with his gifts.
This week, Loest stood before a print of the Magi's visit to the infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph as workmen hung the exhibition.
"Here's an example of that evangelistic spirit," Loest said, gesturing toward a print in which a Magi beckons to a man in Muslim clothing in the background to come see Jesus. At the time, the Turks were at Vienna's door. Europeans feared that the survival of European Christendom was at stake.
Loest has hung a reproduction of a Dürer self-portrait oil painting on the exhibition's informational pillar. Even a casual observer will notice that Dürer's own bearded image and the image of the crucified Jesus are the same in many of the prints.
"Dürer felt he had suffered, but he saw that Jesus suffered for him," Loest said.
A generation before Dürer, Johann Gutenberg had taken the Chinese invention of printing and made moveable type. Within a few decades, printed Bibles, some illustrated with woodcut prints, had become affordable to the growing northern European middle class.
Religious woodcut prints were also sold separately for display at home. People no longer had to visit a church to see religious stories told in art. From his 20s until his death at age 57, Dürer elevated the art of the woodcut and used the new medium to reach out to a wider audience. Through his work, he attempted to inspire them to learn more about Scripture and their faith.
"Dürer's time was similar to our time," said Loest. "A generation ago, the Internet was mostly used by the military and universities. Now people all over the world call up information, art, communicate and do business on the Internet." Italian influence
The Mary series was carved in 1500-1505, when Dürer was strongly influenced by a half-year visit to Italy. He returned to Italy for a year and a half before making the Passion of Christ series, published in 1511 with Latin verses by Chelidonius, a Benedictine monk. Dürer would have grown up attending liturgical plays about Christmas, Easter and other holy days that had plenty of humor to keep the audience awake. Dürer's prints often included whimsy. In one scene, Mary, Joseph and the toddler Jesus are in Egypt - an Egypt adorned with Rhineland-style castles. Joseph is doing carpentry work. With a bit of humor, Dürer carved a small angel who sweeps up wood curls from the carpenter's bench. In a print of the pregnant Mary visiting her elderly, pregnant cousin Elizabeth, Dürer has carved a dog as cuddly as a modern shih-tzu.
Dürer was very much a European, in addition to his extended stays in Italy, he visited Strasbourg, in what is now France; Antwerp, in what is now Belgium; and the Netherlands. He met and worked for many of the leaders of his era. In 1515, he exchanged work with the Italian painter Raphael.
It's ironic that Dürer, so revered by Germans today as one of the greatest German artists, wrote that he was held in higher esteem in Italy than at home. In 1506 from Venice, he wrote to friend Willibald Pirkheimer: "O how cold I will be away from the sun; here I am a gentleman; at home, a parasite."
Many Lutherans claim Dürer, but he never renounced his Catholic faith. Dürer died a couple years before the writing of the Augsburg Confessions, the authoritative Lutheran founding document.
After the discovery in aisle D, Institute director, the Rev. Daniel Preus raised funds for the exhibition.
"We want to share these beautiful Dürer prints so many people can relate to them," Preus said.