The Men’s Bath

Albrecht Dürer’s strikingly modern woodcut of men relaxing at an open-air bath boasts deep, dark ink and a warm, creamy paper tone suited to its celebration of naked flesh. This impression looks much the way it would have when it came off Dürer’s press around 1497. While others might have been posted on walls, perhaps at bathhouses, this particular Men’s Bath appears to have largely escaped handling until close to the present day. While ostensibly a genre scene, the print may protest the Nuremberg Council’s 1496 edict forbidding the town’s residents to visit bathhouses after an outbreak of syphilis and a drought.