Minneapolis Institute of Art

The Men's Bath

Albrecht Dürer

Date

c. 1496–97

Medium

Woodcut

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Scantily clad men bathing and socializing was an unusual subject for a print in the 1400s. It may reflect Dürer’s interest in Italian Renaissance anatomical representation. It may also be a paean to homoeroticism. At least some of the men resemble known persons: the chubby beer drinker, Dürer’s humanist pal Willibald Pirckheimer; the foreground men with comb and flower, Nuremberg patricians and future Dürer patrons, brothers Lucas and Stephan Paumgärtner; the man leaning against the pump with the well-placed cock, Dürer himself, and the two musicians, perhaps self-portraits at younger ages. The onlooker in the background mirrors the voyeuristic role that Dürer assigns to those of us looking at this print. Germany, Europe

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