Albrecht Dürer, Saint Anthony Reading, 1519, engraving on paper. The Clark, 1968.106

An artist did not need to make a city the primary focus of a print for it to fulfill a specific narrative goal. When included as features in the background of a work, artists used cities to transport historical moments to their own era or ground mythological or allegorical subjects in reality. Artists enhanced socio-political messages or undertones purported by a work by anchoring specific sites in the background, especially those that were broadly recognized as a political, religious, or social symbol. These objects illustrate how cities and their architectural features were employed in significant ways as part of the background.