On August 2, 1520, Albrecht Dürer noted in his account book that the audience of the Antwerp procession of our Lady was “on the deliciously dressed”. Dürer is impressed by the length of the candles, the splendor of the procession with drums and trumpets, in which the “gancze instead” was present. Dürer had arrived in the Flemish metropolis three weeks earlier, accompanied by his wife Agnes and the maid Susanna. This would become his base during the year he would spend in the Rhineland and the Netherlands.
Dürer traveled a lot, especially when measured against the standards of his time. But the tour to the Rhineland and the Netherlands from summer 1520 to autumn 1521 had a specific financial reason: Emperor Maximilian I died in 1519. It was therefore unclear whether the annual annuity of 100 Rhenish guilders, which the city of Nuremberg paid to the then 49-year-old on behalf of the emperor, would continue to be transferred. On October 23, 1520, Maximilian’s successor Charles V was coronated in Aachen. Dürer wanted to be there and make sure that the imperial donation was renewed.
Last October it was the 500th anniversary of Dürer’s visit to Aachen. The exhibition “Dürer was here” in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum was supposed to start right on time. The lockdown prevented that. On this Sunday the festive opening takes place after all, the public has access from Tuesday on. And one thing becomes clear very quickly when visiting this great show with its more than 190 exhibits: The delay has not taken any of its monumentality from the spectacular project, which is due to travel on to London’s National Gallery in November.
A bed in Brussels for 50 people side by side
“Dürer was here” is much more than a retrospective. Here there is a comprehensive report on Dürer’s journey, his interaction with contemporaries, his diverse interests and the influence that his work had on his successors. The Aachen show opens with the anonymous portrait of Emperor Maximilian I from the dead, which was borrowed from the Graz Joanneum – the visualization of the travel occasion, as it were. On the basis of correspondence and quotations from the contemporary copy of the (lost) original account book, which Dürer kept like a diary, it is possible to experience the energy with which this painter processed everything he saw – and how much his economic talent with his artistic talent Went hand in hand.
Received with full honors by the painters’ guild in Antwerp, which formed his basis, on August 5th, Dürer made various trips, including to Mechelen, Brussels, Zeeland, Ghent and Cologne. He meticulously records expenses and income, but also repeatedly mentions interesting and curious things, such as the procession of Our Lady or a bed in Brussels, in which supposedly 50 people could sleep next to each other. He meets important contemporaries like Erasmus von Rotterdam and famous colleagues like Quinten Massys, whose style influenced him. And he draws, tirelessly.
One could argue with some justification that the more than 50 drawings that have been brought together from various collections represent the real highlight of this exhibition. It is lucky that so many of these exquisite ink, charcoal, chalk and silver pen works have been preserved. Dürer documents 140 drawings, “about the number of unreported works not mentioned there and the actual loss rate cannot even be assumed”, as Albertina chief curator Christof Metzger put it in his contribution to the 679-page magistral catalog.
One of the first European portraits of a black woman was also by Dürer
There are deeply personal portraits, such as the likeness of the imperial captain Felix Hungersperg. The painter was friends with Hungersperg, who, according to a note on the side, was a “delicious lavtenschlaher”, that is, a virtuoso lutenist. The soldier’s left eye, apparently injured in battle, stares blindly upwards, the rest of the expression on the face signals that one is looking at a self-confident, calm man. No less haunting is the silver pen drawing of a 20-year-old African woman named Katharina, who can be considered one of the first personalized portraits of a black woman in European art history. The lightness and exactness of the hatching, the tenderness of the expression are of a quality that cannot be improved.
Albrecht Dürer, The Imperial Captain Felix Hungersperg, 1520.
(Photo: Albertina, Vienna)
Albrecht Dürer shows an indiscriminate interest in everything he encounters, be it architecture (the octagon of the Aachen Cathedral, which he recorded in silver pen on laid paper from the coronation hall), fashion (women in Dutch and Livonian costumes) or animals (the famous walrus “Portrait” from the British Museum, which he drew from a carpet). Even if you should beware of anachronisms: As a viewer you have the feeling that you can get closer to him than to any other artist of his era.
The exhibition documents how quickly Dürer introduced himself to the wealthiest Antwerp circles. Among other things, he made contacts with the Portuguese trading company Feitoria de Flandres and produced various large commissioned portraits. Suermondt-Ludwig director and chief curator Peter van den Brink has made a particularly impressive loan with a portrait of a man from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The serious man with a fur collar and beret, probably the Portuguese consul in Flanders, Rui Fernandes de Almada, has not left the USA since his acquisition in 1902.
“Hieronymus in the study” also managed to come from Portugal
The fact that such works have found their way here despite pandemic difficulties is remarkable in itself – the whole undertaking with countless top-class lenders, including the Uffizi, the Louvre and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, seems like a wonderful anachronism. The “Saint Jerome in the study” from Lisbon only reached Aachen last Thursday. Due to the rapidly increasing incidence in Portugal, the loan from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga was on the brink until the end.
It would have been a bitter loss, because Jerome is perhaps the most important, but certainly most influential painting that was created during the trip, an extremely generous gift from Dürer to his patron Almada. The deeply furrowed face of the saint is based on a portrait session in Antwerp with a 93-year-old man in January 1521. Dürer refrains from adding symbols of penance, only the traditional memento mori of a skull complies with the motivic convention. A separate room is dedicated to the picture in Aachen, in which the numerous Dutch successors such as Lucas van Leyden and Marinus van Reymerswaele are juxtaposed with the model – a comparison that above all vividly shows what a masterpiece Dürer’s own painting is.
Incidentally, Albrecht Dürer achieved his declared goal: Emperor Karl confirmed his annuity. Dürer was given generous gifts by his Antwerp patrons, highly admired by his colleagues, and received as a veritable star with banquets and wine gifts everywhere he went. However, he also returned from Zeeland with a “disease”, “which I have never heard of from anyone, and I still have this disease”. Even such a detail – the health hazard inherent in travel – helps in Aachen to bring Dürer closer to today’s viewer not only as an artist, but also as an individual.
“Dürer was here – A journey becomes a legend” in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen, until October 24th. www.duerer.2020.de, Catalog 35 euros