Christian Art and Iconography Guide: Durer

To celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of Albrecht Durer's birth at Nuremberg in 1471,the Department of Prints and Drawings decided some time ago to arrange an exhibition of his prints,drawing axclusively upon the fine collection of his work in the Museum of Fine Arts,Boston.This exhibition,"Albrecht Durer:Master Printmaker",follows the point of view of the 1969 exhibition,Rembrandt:Experimental Etcher,in which multiple impressions and comparisons between prints of fine and lesser quality were shown.

Durer's crowning achievement was in the graphic media-drawing and printmaking.The only names that come to mind as his peers in these are Rembrandt and Goya,and he preceded the Dutchman by a century and the Spaniard by three.In discussing a master artist one picture is worth a thousand words, and one need only turn to the engraving of "Melancolia I"to see why the Italian Renaissance writer Giorgio Vasari said it was "the most delicate work an engraver could possibly bring off".

Translation of Sämtliche Holzschnitte.
Description: 42 pages [107] pages of illustrations 31 cm
Other Titles: Sämtliche Holzschnitte.
Responsibility: Edited by Willi Kurth.

By the time he had reached his early twenties, Durer had absorbed all that could be learned in Nuremberg. Feeling the absence among German artists of artistic conformity rooted in tradition, and the lack of a recognized Germanic style, he turned to travel abroad. The evolution of Durer's artistic self was intrinsically linked to his travels and study in Italy. There he came under the influence of Leonardo, Mantegna, Bellini, and the Bolognese masters of perspective. He absorbed the influences of many traditions, and through a synthesis of schools and techniques created a style that was uniquely his own. Durer became the main channel through which Renaissance forms and ideas were introduced in the North and is credited with accelerating the artistic development of the German states. He was an artist whose fertile imagination and flawless rendering traveled the fine line known as genius.