Story of the Wunderkind: An Erlangen Drawing from the Circle of Albrecht Altdorfer

Abstract The depiction of the apocryphal infancy stories of Christ is an important subject in the history of western art, and yet it is rarely investigated. This paper reveals the unidentified subject of an early sixteenth-century drawing at Erlangen by an artist from Albrecht Altdorfer’s circle. It represents the apocryphal stories of Christ gathering pools, animating clay birds, and reviving a fallen child named Zeno. In this paper, the context of this drawing is discussed, along with the history of depicted apocryphal infancy stories in German art and the reception of the Apocrypha in early sixteenth-century Germany around Altdorfer’s circle.