Albrecht Dürer
Today we start our special month with Boijmans Van Beuningen from Rotterdam. We hope you will like their amazing collection! Enjoy!
Like his Italian contemporaries Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer was a versatile and influential Renaissance artist. He traveled widely, visiting among other places the Netherlands and Northern Italy. In the course of those journeys, he encountered the principles of humanistic philosophy and the innovative artistic idiom of the Early Renaissance. Dürer is best known for his woodcuts and engravings. Prints of his work were widely disseminated and had a profound influence on other artists.
From 1507 to 1509, he painted a large panel depicting the Assumption of the Virgin and the Coronation of the Virgin for his patron Jacob Heller, a wealthy textile merchant. It was to form part of an altarpiece for a Dominican church in Frankfurt, but the altarpiece has unfortunately been lost. From his correspondence with Heller, we learn that Dürer spent more than a year preparing the work. He made several studies for various parts of the painting. They were all drawn in the same manner, with the brush in black ink, heightened with white, on paper with a colored ground. Twenty of those studies have survived, including this famous drawing. It shows the two feet on which Dürer based the feet of the kneeling apostle Paul, at lower right in the center panel of the Heller Altarpiece. In the drawing, we also see the hem of a cloak over the right foot.
P.S. Curious about Dürer's Italian contemporaries? Check out our Italian Renaissance 50 Postcards Set and find out what artworks influenced Albrecht Dürer during his Italian trip!
P.P.S. Museum collections often hide surprising lesser-known works, even if painted by famous artists. We asked people working in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen about their favorite ones from their collection. Here are their staff picks!
P.P.P.S. We’re looking for native English speakers to join our team of proofreaders at DailyArt Magazine—if you have a passion for art and a sharp eye for detail, we’d love to have you on board!