There is an obvious problem about making recommendations for holiday reading for art historians: most of the books they are eager to read are simply too big – too heavy for a holiday suitcase and too unwieldy for the beach. The following suggestions for books to take on holiday are therefore based not solely on merit but also on them being either in a relatively compact format or available as an e-book.

The banners and flyers advertising this exhibition, like the cover of its beautifully designed catalogue, depict a watercolour of a resting hare by Hans Hoffmann (c.1545/50–1591/92), but instead of the artist’s monogram, ‘Hh’, it is signed with the well-known ‘AD’ of his famous Nuremberg predecessor Albrecht Dürer. This is a predictable choice by the museum’s press department, since Hoffmann is known first and foremost as a copyist of the works of Dürer, especially of his drawings and watercolours. Nonetheless, in the exhibition Yasmin Doosry, the recently retired head of the museum’s department of prints and drawings, sets out to correct, or at least question, Hoffman’s abiding reputation as a mere epigone of the so-called Dürer Renaissance.