What role did Frankfurt am Main play in the rise of printmaking and the commercial art market in general? Although today's Frankfurt Book Fair is a major publishing event, art historians have not focused on its Renaissance precursor, the Frankfurt fair, an important location for the purchase and exchange of prints. Agnes Frey Dürer sold her husband's prints there, the Antwerp publishing house Plantin-Moretus as well. Others found steadier work in Frankfurt. Jost Amman and Virgil Solis worked for printer Sigmund Feyerabend, following the example of Sebald Beham and Christian Egenolff, the first printer to settle permanently in Frankfurt. Frankfurt patricians supported book culture, embraced humanism, and enticed leading artists with their commissions. Albrecht Dürer painted his Heller Altarpiece for the owner of a building that housed many who traveled to the fair.

We seek papers for a volume that address Frankfurt and its art market(s) from 1500-1800, especially with regards to printing and the fair. What figures – printers, patricians – and what motives brought artists to the city? Where did visitors stay, and how might they have experienced the city? Who intersected with the art market in such areas as commerce or book and intaglio printing? What did elite culture in the city look like, and how did it tie Frankfurt to wider intellectual and artistic circles? We plan to publish a volume on the research topic "Frankfurt and the Art Market" in the artifex series of the Trierer Arbeitsstelle für Künstlersozialgeschichte (www.kuenstlersozialgeschichte-trier.de/tak-sharc/artifex/; director: Prof. Dr. Dr. Andreas Tacke) of the Imhof-Verlag. In order to publish this book, we would need your completed article by the end of January 2016. Only when the text and images are complete will it be possible to realize the volume within the framework of the EU project.

Please submit a proposal abstract of 1/2 page with the title of the planned text and a brief cv by August 20, 2015 to the editors team:

Lisa Kirch, Birgit Münch, Alison Stewart

kirchaustin@aol.com / birgitumuench@yahoo.de / astewart2@inebraska.com

Authors of our volume will be informed at the beginning of September with all information, stylesheet etc.