Masters of Art - Albrecht Dürer Read online

  Albrecht Dürer

  (1471-1528)

  Contents

  The Highlights

  SAINT JOHN’S CHURCH

  SELF PORTRAIT, 1493

  SAINT JEROME IN THE WILDERNESS

  VIRGIN AND CHILD BEFORE AN ARCHWAY

  PORTRAIT OF ELECTOR FREDERICK THE WISE OF SAXONY

  THE SEVEN SORROWS OF THE VIRGIN

  SELF PORTRAIT, 1498

  PORTRAIT OF OSWOLT KREL

  SELF PORTRAIT WITH FUR-TRIMMED ROBE

  LAMENTATION FOR CHRIST

  A YOUNG HARE

  ADORATION OF THE MAGI

  FEAST OF THE ROSARY

  ADAM AND EVE

  MARTYRDOM OF THE TEN THOUSAND

  MELENCOLIA I

  PORTRAIT OF MICHAEL WOLGEMUT

  THE FOUR APOSTLES

  The Paintings

  THE COMPLETE PAINTINGS

  ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PAINTINGS

  The Engravings

  LIST OF ENGRAVINGS

  The Woodcuts

  LIST OF WOODCUTS

  The Memoir

  MEMOIRS OF JOURNEYS TO VENICE

  The Biographies

  DÜRER by Herbert Furst

  DÜRER by M. F. Sweetser

  ALBRECHT DÜRER by T. Sturge Moore

  BRIEF BIOGRAPHY by Sidney Colvin

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2016

  Version 1

  Masters of Art Series

  Albrecht Dürer

  By Delphi Classics, 2016

  COPYRIGHT

  Masters of Art - Albrecht Dürer

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2016.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  The Highlights

  Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany — Dürer’s birthplace

  View of Nuremberg, Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

  The artist’s father, Albrecht Dürer the Elder with a Rosary by Albrecht Dürer, c. 1490 — Dürer the Elder (c. 1427-c. 1502) was a goldsmith in Nuremberg and an immigrant from Hungary. He married Barbara Holper, the daughter of his master, when he himself became a master in 1467.

  Portrait of Barbara Dürer, c. 1490 — the artist’s mother, who was the daughter of Hieronymus Holper, a goldsmith in Nuremberg. She married Albrecht Dürer on 8 June 1467.

  Self portrait, silverpoint drawing by the thirteen-year-old Dürer, 1484

  THE HIGHLIGHTS

  In this section, a sample of Dürer’s most celebrated works is provided, with concise introductions, special ‘detail’ reproductions and additional biographical images.

  SAINT JOHN’S CHURCH

  Albrecht Dürer was born on 21 May 1471, the third child and second son of Albrecht Dürer the Elder, a successful goldsmith, and Barbara Holper, the daughter of his master. Dürer’s godfather was Anton Koberger, who left goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher in the year of Dürer’s birth and quickly became the most successful publisher in Germany, eventually owning twenty-four printing-presses, with numerous national and international offices. Koberger’s most famous publication was the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493 in German and Latin editions, featuring an unprecedented 1,809 woodcut illustrations (albeit with many repeated uses of the same block) by the Wolgemut workshop.

  After a few years of school, Dürer started to learn the basics of goldsmithing and drawing from his father. Though his father wanted him to continue his training, Dürer demonstrated such a precocious talent in drawing that he started in 1486 as an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut at the age of fifteen. Wolgemut was the leading artist in Nuremberg at the time, with a large workshop producing a variety of works of art, in particular woodcuts for books. Nuremberg was an important and prosperous city, well-established as a centre for publishing and luxury trades, with strong links to Italy, especially Venice, a relatively short distance across the Alps.

  The following watercolour is now regarded as one of the earliest landscape paintings in European art to depict a specific location. Dürer is likely to have completed it in the summer of 1489, at the age of eighteen. Inscribed ‘Saint John’s Church’, it depicts the imposing church and a row of houses, laying to the west of Nuremberg. Nearly forty years later the artist was to be buried in the graveyard of this church. Offering an almost bird’s-eye view, the portrayed landscape faces south, with distant hills beyond. There are hints of early struggles in delineation, as the row of houses appears flat rather than three-dimensional. Nevertheless, great care has been taken by the artist to faithfully record the scene in fine detail, in a medium that requires conviction and confidence, with little opportunity to alter a brushstroke once made.

  Interestingly, the painting was looted during the Second World War and lost for nearly fifty years. Owned by the Kunsthalle in Bremen, it was among thousands of Old Master drawings that had been hidden for safekeeping in the cellar of a mansion fifty miles from Berlin. In 1945, the Red Army occupied the house, as soldiers ransacked the art works. Viktor Baldin, a young officer, found Saint John’s Church on the floor, among a mass of works abandoned by the first looters. He preserved the painting, along with 363 other drawings (including 22 works by Dürer), bringing them back to Russia. Baldin later gave the drawings to the architectural museum near Moscow where he worked and the existence of the missing Bremen pictures was kept secret until 1992.

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  Saint John’s Church, Nuremberg, today

  SELF PORTRAIT, 1493

  After completing his term of apprenticeship, Dürer followed the common German custom of taking Wanderjahre — a gap year of sorts — in which the apprentice learned skills from artists in other areas. He was ultimately to spend about four years away, leaving Nuremberg in 1490, possibly to work under Martin Schongauer, the leading engraver of Northern Europe. However, Schongauer died shortly before Dürer’s arrival at Colmar, in the Alsace region of north-eastern France. It is unclear where Dürer travelled in the intervening period, though it is likely that he went to Frankfurt and the Netherlands. In Colmar, Dürer was welcomed by Schongauer’s brothers, the goldsmiths Caspar and Paul and the painter Ludwig. In 1493 the young artist went to Strasbourg, where he would have experienced the sculpture work of Nikolaus Gerhaert. Dürer’s first painted self portrait, now housed in the Louvre, was painted at this time, most likely to be sent back to his fiancée, Agnes Frey, in Nuremberg.

  The canvas is the earliest known self portrait in European art to be produced as an independent painting, as earlier artists had only portrayed themselves among figures in an altarpiece or fresco. On the back of the painting, a sketched self portrait, dated 1493 could well have been an early study for the oil painting.

  In the top centre, Dürer has inscribed: “Things with me fare as ordained from above”, suggesting the artist’s strong faith. The composition presents Dürer as a youthful subject, his innocent face framed with lank, ginger hair and a red tasselled cap. His strong nose, heart-shaped upper lip and long neck are clearly emphasised in the painting. Beneath his grey cloak, fringed with red, he wears an elegant pleated shir
t with pink ribbons.

  Dürer holds a sprig of sea holly, a thistle-like plant and the German name for this plant means ‘man’s fidelity’; it was also regarded as an aphrodisiac, sparking the suggestion that the canvas was intended as a gift for his fiancée. While Dürer was on his travels, his father had arranged for Agnes Frey to become his wife and they eventually married on 7 July 1494, two months following his return to Nuremberg. However, it is also possible that the self portrait was a gift for his parents, whom he had not seen for nearly four years.

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  SAINT JEROME IN THE WILDERNESS

  Housed in London’s National Gallery, the following double-sided oil on panel painting was completed in c. 1496, though it was not attributed to the artist until much more recently in 1957. The resemblance between the lion and a similar animal on a membrane drawing from the artist’s second trip to Venice, now at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, led to the generally accepted claim. The lion was almost certainly drawn from St. Mark’s Lion depictions in the city.

  Saint Jerome was a common subject of art at the time and Dürer was likely inspired by similar depictions by Giovanni Bellini or Andrea Mantegna. Jerome is depicted during his hermitage, surrounded by the symbols traditionally attributed to him, including the tamed lion, his hat and the cardinal garments on the ground (a symbol of rejection of earthly honours), the book (as Jerome was a translator of the Vulgate), the stone he used to hit himself and the crucifix for the prayers. Jerome’s eyes stare upwards, beyond the small crucifix lodged in the tree trunk. The image teems with realistic depictions of the natural world, as seen in the small birds, the white butterfly in the lower part, as well as the fine rendering of the trunk’s bark and the delineation of grass spear by spear. The dramatic rock formations were probably based on sketches that Dürer made of the quarries near Nuremberg. On the reverse of the panel an intriguing image of what appears to be a meteor or comet, portrayed as a red star on a streaking golden disc. Dürer’s inspiration may have been the depictions of comets in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, though these woodcuts are highly stylised and not intended to depict historical comets, while Dürer’s image is much closer to actual observation. A similar object to this body of light was featured in the engraving of Melencolia I, some twenty years later.

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  The reverse of the panel

  ‘St. Jerome Reading in the Countryside’ by Giovanni Bellini

  ‘St. Jerome in the Wilderness’ by Andrea Mantegna, c. 1449-1450

  VIRGIN AND CHILD BEFORE AN ARCHWAY

  Within three months of his marriage, Dürer left for Italy, alone, perhaps due to the outbreak of plague in Nuremberg. He made watercolour sketches as he travelled over the Alps. In Italy, he went to Venice to study its more advanced artistic world, where Giovanni Bellini was still regarded as the greatest of the Venetian artists. Also known as the Bagnacavallo Madonna, the following canvas was created during the artist’s first sojourn in Italy. It represents the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child sitting in her lap, while a space opens to right side behind them, giving the view of a bordering interior courtyard. The composition is a particularly intimate scene, as Christ reaches for his mother’s hand and their eyes meet in silent regard. The plant held by Christ has only two leaves in the strawberry three-leaf configuration. The missing leaf on the plant indicates the last person of the Trinity in the Child.

  Dürer’s Madonna owes much to the Late Gothic German convention of representation, while the Christ Child is reminiscent of Italian models. Half length figures such as this canvas were widespread in Italy and the Netherlands, and the depiction of the arch and its impression of spatial depth indicate Flemish influence. The figural structure, including the impressive triangular composition of the two figures, signals the influence of Italian art, especially by Giovanni Bellini.

  Virgin and Child before an Archway was discovered after World War II in the Capuchin female convent of Bagnacavallo, in the province of Ravenna. In 1961 the Italian art historian Roberto Longhi recognised the canvas as a genuine Dürer work and a few years later, it was acquired by the Magnani-Rocca Foundation of Traversetolo, in the province of Parma, Italy.

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  ‘Madonna and Child’ by Giovanni Bellini, c. 1488

  PORTRAIT OF ELECTOR FREDERICK THE WISE OF SAXONY

  Frederick III (1463-1525), also known as Frederick the Wise, had became Elector of Saxony in 1486 and would become Dürer’s first major patron. The following plate was probably completed when Frederick visited Nuremberg in April 1496. For this portrait, Dürer used quick drying tempera paint, instead of oil paint, most likely so that the picture could be taken away soon after completion.

  Aged thirty-three at the time, Frederick the Wise is represented from the waist up, dressed in rich garments and set against a murky background, allowing our focus to remain on the sitter. Frederick’s folded arms rest on a ledge, while in his left hand he holds a small scroll. His frown and intense expression, demonstrated at its strongest in the piercing eyes, connote a sense of authority and power that would have been requested by the patron to be conveyed. Frederick was clearly pleased with the portrait as Dürer was subsequently commissioned to paint a series of important altarpieces for the church at the Elector’s palace in Wittenberg.

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  ‘Frederick the Great’ by Lucas Cranach the Elder

  Wittenberg in medieval times

  THE SEVEN SORROWS OF THE VIRGIN

  Currently held in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the central panel of this polyptych features the grieving Virgin after the Crucifixion, originally framed with seven surrounding panels, which are now housed separately in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of Dresden. The panels were commissioned by Frederick the Great soon after the completion of the previous portrait in Dürer’s newly established Nuremberg workshop in April 1496. Stylistic considerations suggest that the artist started to work on the painting only from c. 1500. Modern scholars only attribute to Dürer the central panel, believing the others were executed by his pupils based on his designs.

  The altarpiece was originally much larger, close to three meters in width, with the right half portraying the Seven Joys of the Virgin. However, these scenes are now lost, with the extant left half presenting the Seven Sorrows, while the Seven Joys are only known through copies. The central image depicts the grieving Virgin, gripping a golden sword, about to pierce her heart. Surrounding the Virgin are seven smaller panels with detailed scenes from the life of Christ, beginning anticlockwise on the top left with the Circumcision, followed by the Flight into Egypt, Christ among the Doctors, the Bearing of the Cross, the Nailing to the Cross, the Crucifixion and the Lamentation.

  The whole altarpiece was acquired in the mid-sixteenth century by the artist Lucas Cranach the Younger, whose illustrious father had served as court painter in Wittenberg. Cranach the Younger is believed to have cut the work into separate panels, causing the original division of the polyptych.

  The central panel, portraying the Sorrowing Mother, arrived in the Bavarian museum from the Benediktbeuren convent of Munich in the early nineteenth century. It was restored in the 1930’s, removing overpaintings and additions, to reveal previously unseen elements. The shell-shaped niche, the halo and the sword on the right allowed scholars to identify the correct subject of the piece. In 1640 the other panels were moved from Wittenberg to the Kunstkammer of the Prince of Saxony.

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  Detail: Circumcision of Jesus

  Detail: the Flight to Egypt

  Detail: Via Crucis

  Detail: Christ Nailed to the Cross

  Self portrait of Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586) — Cranach was a German Renaissance painter and port
raitist, also known as the son of Lucas Cranach the Elder.

  SELF PORTRAIT, 1498

  Dürer’s second extant self portrait is dated to 1498, bearing the inscription: “I have thus painted myself. I was 26 years old. Albrecht Dürer.” Although during the Middle Ages artists were still considered as mere craftsmen in Germany, Dürer refused to accept such status, portraying himself in a haughty and aristocratic manner. Making a notable contrast with the 1493 self portrait, the artist’s pose appears self confident, as he stands upright, turning slightly to lean his right arm on a ledge. His figure fills the picture plane, with his hat close to the top. Light streams into the room from the right, highlighting his prominent features, while his long curly hair is depicted in fine detail. Dürer now has a full beard, unusual among young men at that time. His clothing is flamboyant, as demonstrated by the elegant jacket, edged with black, and the white, pleated shirt underneath, which is embroidered along the neckline. Dürer’s fashionable kid gloves also comment upon the artist’s burgeoning wealth in the late 1490’s.