Anyone familiar with Joseph Leo Koerner’s book on Albrecht Dürer, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), will approach this new work with high expectations. The earlier one offered a philosophical, yet also poetic, interpretation of one of the best-known artists of the Northern Renaissance. With its powerfully articulated thesis—that Dürer’s self-portrait of 1500 was responsible for creating “the age of art”—supported by engaging, erudite, and convincing arguments,...