pick of the month: albrecht dürer
The year 2021, marking the 550th anniversary of the birth of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), sees the opening of 12 months of exhibitions celebrating his artistic genius. Dürer was perhaps the greatest star of the Northern Renaissance, famous throughout Europe for his perfection at imitating nature in drawings, woodcuts, watercolours, oils and, especially, engravings. He was born in Nuremberg, one of largest cities in Europe at the time and a hub of technological innovation and humanist scholarship. Despite an apprenticeship with his father, who was a goldsmith, Dürer decided to become a painter. He was nevertheless interested in the potential for innovation offered by metal work, and soon followed in the footsteps of the Alsatian engraver Martin Schongauer whose prints were already popular as far away as Spain. He also went to Italy twice, where he studied the works of painters such as Andrea Mantegna (himself a great print-maker) and classical texts being rediscovered by Renaissance scholars. He would later go on to write his own texts such as Four Books on Human Proportion.
Returning to Nuremberg after his first trip to Italy, Dürer produced several altarpieces, such as the Adoration of the Magi (1504). These public commissions enabled him to establish a reputation with high profile patrons and a market for the prints that would bring him fame and fortune. His woodcuts, produced for a mass market, include the widely-distributed and still popular Rhinoceros (1515), a creature he knew only from a description. His extraordinary engravings – more complicated to produce but elevating print-making into an independent artform - include Melancholia, Adam and Eve, and Knight, Death and the Devil.
A new exhibition at The Clark Museum in Williamstown MA, explores his brilliance as a printmaker and its influence on countless generations of artists.
Dürer is also known for his beautiful drawings and watercolours, many of which are conserved today at the Albertina in Vienna. This exhibit by Google Arts and Culture and the Albertina shows a selection of some of the 140 drawings and watercolours in the museum’s collection.
ZOOM IN ON DÜRER AT THE ALBERTINA
Albrecht Dürer, Wing of a European Roller, 1500 or 1512, watercolor and body color, heightened with white body colour on vellum, Vienna, Albertina.
Almost all Dürer’s works bear his distinctive AD monogram, a key element in his quest for recognition and financial success. In his engraving of Adam and Eve, it hangs off a branch above Adam’s shoulder, as if Dürer himself were present in the Garden of Eden. His stunning self-portraits also reflect his obsession with status: in the one he painted aged 26 he appears as a gentleman; in the one he painted two years later (pictured below), he is Christ-like, looking directly at us and raising his hand as in a gesture of blessing.
Dürer is one of few artists of this period to write a detailed diary, giving us a unique insight into the way he worked, where he travelled, who he met, and how passionate he was about painting from life – no doubt part of the secret of his amazing ability to capture the natural world. A new exhibition in Aachen (travelling to London in early 2022) uses this account to focus on Dürer’s journey to the Netherlands in 1520/1521. There he drew exotic birds and animals such as parrots, lions and camels, and witnessed some of the Aztec booty being brought back from New Spain to Emperor Charles V:
I saw the things which have been brought to the King from the new land of gold, a sun all of gold a whole fathom broad, and a moon all of silver of the same size, also two rooms full of armor of the people there, and all manner of wondrous weapons of theirs, harness and darts, very strange clothing, bed-covers, and all kinds of wonderful objects of human use, much better worth seeing than prodigies. These things were all so precious that they are valued at 100,000 florins. All the days of my life I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these things, for I saw amongst them wonderful works of art, and I marveled at the subtle Ingenia [ingenuity] of men of foreign lands.