Albrecht Altdorfer (c.
1480 near
Regensburg –
February 12,
1538 in
Regensburg) was a German
painter and
printmaker, the leader of the
Danube School in southern
Germany and a near-contemporary of
Albrecht Dürer. He is best known as a significant
pioneer of
landscape in art
Painting
He most often painted
religious scenes but is mainly famous as the first frequent
painter of pure landscape.
Taking and developing the landscape
style of
Lucas Cranach the Elder,
he shows the hilly landscape of the Danube valley with thick
forests of drooping and crumbling firs and larches hung with
moss and often dramatic colouring from a rising or setting
sun.
His Landscape with
Footbridge (National
Gallery, London) of 1518-20
is claimed to be the first pure landscape in oil.
He also made many fine finished drawings, mostly landscapes,
in pen and
watercolour.
His best religious scenes are intense, sometimes verging on
the expressionistic and often depict moments of intimacy
between Christ and his mother or others. He often distorts
perspective to subtle effect. His donor figures are often
painted completely out of scale with the main scene as in
paintings of the previous centuries. He also painted some
portraits; overall his painted oeuvre was not large.
Paintings in Munich
His rather atypical
Battle of Issus
(or of
Alexander)
of 1529 was commissioned by
William IV, Duke of Bavaria
as one of a suite by various artists. It is his most famous and certainly one of his best works. He renounced the office
of Major of Regensburg to accept the commission. Few of his
other paintings resemble this apocalyptic scene of two huge
armies dominated by an extravagant landscape seen from a
very high viewpoint, which looks south over the whole
Mediterranean from modern Turkey to include the island of
Cyprus
and the mouths of the
Nile
and the
Red Sea
(behind the isthmus to the left) on the other side. However
his style here is a development of that of a number of
miniatures of battle-scenes he had done much earlier for
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor
in his
illuminated manuscript
Triumphal Procession in 1512-14.
The Battle is now in the
Alte Pinakothek,
which has the best collection of Altdorfer's paintings,
including also his small St George and the Dragon,(1510)
in oil on
parchment where the saint and the dragon are small figures almost
submerged in the dense forest that towers over them.
A
Susanna and the Elders (1526) set outside an Italianate
skyscraper of a palace shows his interest in architecture.
Another small oil on parchment, Danube Landscape with
Castle Wörth (c 1520) is one of the earliest accurate
topographical paintings of a particular building in its
setting, of a type that was to become a cliché in later
centuries.
Printmaking
He was a significant
printmaker
with numerous
engravings
and about ninety-three
woodcuts.
These included some for the Triumphs of Maximilian
where he followed the overall style presumably set by
Hans Burgkmair,
although he was able to escape somewhat from this in his
depictions of the more disorderly baggage-train, still
coming through a mountain landscape.
However most of his
best
prints
are
etchings,
many of landscapes; in these he was able most easily to use
his drawing style.
He was one of the most successful early etchers, and was
unusual for his generation of German printmakers in doing no
book illustrations. He often combined etching and engraving
techniques in a single plate and produced about 122
intaglio prints altogether.
Public Life
He was a member of the ruling town council in Regensburg for
many years as well as the city
architect and he presumably participated in the Council's decision to
expel the city's Jewish community in 1519. He made
two famous etchings of the
synagogue
just before it was destroyed after the expulsion. It was
replaced with a church which Altdorfer designed, at least
in part.
Later he became a Protestant, and helped to steer Regensburg
to
Lutheranism.
Albrecht's brother,
Erhard Altdorfer,
was also a painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving
and a pupil of
Lucas Cranach.
References
Alte Pinakotek, Munich; (Summary Catalogue
-various authors),1986, Edition Lipp
ISBN
3874907015
CS Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape,
1993, Reaktion Books, London ISBN 0948462469
