Dürer’s <i>Victoria</i> : Contending with the Uncertainty of Measurement

The Victoria woodcuts from Albrecht Dürer’s Instruction on Measurement (1525) activated the uncertainty of measurement in art and social life amid the mensural controversies of the Commoners’ Revolt (1524–26). In situating this so-called peasant column and its antecedents from Dürer’s oeuvre alongside contemporary writings on measurement in artistic and agrarian spheres, I argue that the monument figured and evoked mensuration’s multifaceted incertitude. In so doing, I show how works like Victoria made measurement uncertainty a subject of art, model a method for scrutinizing images that thematize mensural incertitude, and propose an art history that embraces uncertainty.