RA Magazine Autumn 2013

Issue Number: 120

Following a northern star

Albrecht Dürer, consummate printmaker and hero of the northern Renaissance, is celebrated in a show that embraces the extraordinary breadth of his achievement in all media. Christopher Baker reports

_{Albrecht Dürer, 'St Jerome in his Study', 1521. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lissabon.} ‘Dürer’s achievement remains intact... As long as the stars illuminate the heavens,’ wrote his friend, the lawyer Willibald Pirckheimer, after his death in 1528, and due to his technical mastery and artistic brilliance his reputation has never dimmed. It is however difficult to grasp a sense of Dürer’s achievement because of the staggering variety of his work and sheer richness of invention it represents.

Now a rare chance to consider in depth the common threads that run through Dürer’s work is provided by an outstanding exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. Featuring 180 works, it sets out to create an inspiring survey of the artist’s entire career, with major loans from London, Vienna, Lisbon, Florence and Los Angeles complementing the riches of German collections.

Born in 1471 in Nuremberg, Dürer soon excelled as a printmaker, producing woodcuts and engravings that combined startling observational skills with an unerring elegance of design. They brought him a European reputation and he soon exploited and enhanced this through his travels, which involved a seminal visit to Italy. Dürer was equally comfortable exploring secular and sacred themes, such as St Jerome in his Study, working on a microscopic or monumental scale, producing altarpieces and portraits, designs for the decorative arts and glorious natural history studies, all of which are underpinned by sensational draughtsmanship and an unquenchable curiosity about the world. It is little wonder that he enjoyed the admiration of men such as Erasmus and Giovanni Bellini, as well as extensive and distinguished patronage. The Städel show not only explores key themes in his work but also illustrates how he was inspired by and often surpassed the creations of contemporaries, such as Lucas van Leyden and Joos van Cleve. The ambition and breadth of this show are its defining characteristics, as so many recent exhibitions on the artist have analysed individual media or genres he explored. The result offers an ideal opportunity for immersion in the humanism that lies at the heart of Dürer’s achievement, which transcended the circumstances of his life and career.

• Albrecht Dürer: His Art in the Context of his Time is at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, from 23 October–2 February 2014
• The Young Dürer: Drawing the Figure is at the Courtauld Institute, London, from 17 October–12 January 2014

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