The Adoration of the Virgin,

1504

By 1505, Dürer had completed seventeen single-sheet woodcuts illustrating the Life of the Virgin, prints that were widely admired for their elaborate architectural settings and exquisite technique. While traveling in Italy in 1505–06, Dürer was enraged to learn that Raimondi had published engraved copies of the series, and he sued the Italian printmaker in the Venetian courts for copyright violation, declaring the copies to be forgeries. In 1511 the Italian court ruled against Dürer and allowed Raimondi to publish the copies but ordered him to remove Dürer’s fraudulent monogram from his plates.

That same year, Dürer reprinted the woodcuts in Germany in book form with the addition of descriptive Latin texts. The Glorification of the Virgin appeared as the final woodcut in the volume, printed with the text above warning “thieves and imitators of other people’s labor” that his images were protected by imperial privilege, granted by Maximilian I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.