The ability of pictures to undermine aesthetic standards and call artistic conventions into question is central to the research projects of the art historian Jürgen Müller, to whom this volume commemorating his sixtieth birthday is dedicated. Numerous essays by longtime colleagues provide new interpretations of well- and lesser-known masterpieces, in which the initial impression is frequently turned into its opposite.
Jürgen Müller has held the professorship of medieval and modern art history at the TU Dresden since 2003. He has written authoritative monographs and studies on Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio, and edited a wide range of scholarly anthologies and exhibition catalogues. He has become known far beyond academic circles through his editing of volumes published by Taschen Verlag about the films of various decades.