Saturday, June 14, 2014

Paintings Of Durer

By Darren Hartley


Echoes of Italian art are apparent in most of Durer paintings, drawings and graphics. Italian influences were slower to show in his graphics than in his drawings and paintings. Albrecht Durer was the central figure in the German Renaissance and one of the most outstanding personalities in the history of art.

The fame of Durer paintings was broadcasted through engravings, and Italian artists started drawing on them for ideas. Albrecht left his native city for a 4 year period, presumably to visit Cologne and the Netherlands. His travels took him to Italy twice, in 1494-95 and 1505-07, visiting Venice and Bologne, and most probably, Florence and Rome.

In the 1950s, Albrecht made a journey to the Netherlands where he met many famous Netherland painters, including Quentin Massys, Joos van Cleve and Lucys van Leyden. He met Erasmus, a humanist scholar in Antwerp. It was then that he sketched his portrait, another sampling of Durer paintings of that period.

It was in 1495 that Albrecht established his own workshop in Nuremberg. Durer paintings consisted of a lot of watercolour landscapes and nature studies throughout Albrecht's life. Most notable of these landscapes are Saint John's Church, House by a Pond, Willow Mill, A Young Hare and The Large Turf.

A monumental print project among Durer paintings is represented by The Triumphal Arch. It was 330 cm or 11" high and composed of 192 woodblocks. It remains to be the largest woodcut print ever made to this day. Emperor Maximilian, who commissioned the huge print, granted Albrecht a pension of 100 florins, which was subsequently stopped upon the Emperor's death in 1519.

Durer paintings consisted of over 350 woodcuts and engravings, which appeared with his famous AD monogram. At least 60 of Albrecht's oil paintings have survived. There are a thousand of his drawings and watercolours, saved on paper, sometimes inscribing them with his monogram, the year it was completed and a few words of explanation about the subject matter.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment