“Dürer’s Journeys”, the title of the exhibition at London’s National Gallery, sounds simple. But just the fact that the artist Albrecht Dürer traveled sets him apart from his contemporaries. Of course, other painters and sculptors were also on the move, moving from job to job, competing for jobs with bishops or at princely courts. Only Dürer, who was born in Nuremberg in 1471, traveled in the hope that the last stage would bring him back to his hometown. Which seems almost peculiar from a bird’s-eye view of art history. Even if Nuremberg was not only a major economic and cultural center in Europe, the master somehow remains alone there – while the art seemed to be connected to the places he was to travel for centuries, especially Venice and Antwerp.
The reason for the trip was the outbreak of the plague in Nuremberg
“Dürer’s Journeys” is the second station in a joint exhibition project between the National Gallery and the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen, which should have started exactly half a millennium after Dürer’s last trip to the north, but had to be postponed due to the pandemic. However, the huge five-hundred-year gap is shortened anyway when you know that Dürer’s departure in 1520 was also motivated by the outbreak of the plague in Nuremberg. In general, the show in Aachen seemed to make it accessible to people for the first time: director Peter van den Brink not only brought together rare items on loan, but also evaluated the diaries and reported on the everyday life of a traveler in the early modern period.
The first thing that struck me was the discrepancy between someone whose genius artistically opened up the Renaissance that was just beginning to flourish in Italy for northern Europe and who masterfully empathized with the precision and concentration of Flemish painting, but whose diary primarily documented the daily receipts and expenses. From the ten cents that a fried chicken costs to the price of socks. Dürer remained monosyllabic when noting that he was driving past an execution, but noted that particularly long candles were carried in a procession through Antwerp. And while he meticulously recorded the costumes of the Dutch women, or the octagon of Aachen Cathedral, he recorded the acquisition of shark fins, shells and arrows. The critics agreed that one had never come so close to the artist.
Even as a journeyman, who had traveled as far as Basel and Strasbourg, Dürer had internalized the value of direct contemplation in times when one had to seek out art. In the years 1495 and 1496 he crossed the Alps for the first time, between 1505 and 1507 he stayed in Venice. His almost scientific interest in painting was paired with an intuitive love for everything exotic, foreign and rare, which he assimilated as a collector and appreciated as a connoisseur. It says a lot about the curiosity of such a globetrotter that he paints his first lion, inspired by the sculptures in St. Mark’s Square – and many years later completely recreates his depiction after a visit to the Brussels Menagerie.
The painter met scholars such as Erasmus of Rotterdam
The fact that the last big tour to the north was a business trip, in the literal sense, broadens the perspective on art. The reason for this was Dürer’s – successful – attempt to ask Karl the Fifth after his coronation to continue to pay out the annual annuity that his father had granted him. And like a traveling salesman in matters of the Renaissance, the artist armed himself with woodcuts and prints, books and painting utensils. He was then received by guilds, met clients and artists, diplomats and scholars such as Erasmus of Rotterdam. He was able to inspect the Arnolfini Wedding, Jan van Eyck’s already famous painting, in the bedroom of the governors of Austria in Mechelen.
With the necessary generosity and prudence, Dürer planned meetings such as a dinner with João Brandão, the representative of the King of Portugal, in Antwerp. As gifts he brought books with woodcuts, including the famous engraving of Adam and Eve. His diary then records a box of candy, marzipan, peaches, coconuts and a small green parrot for his wife Agnes in return. In the end, Dürer was to paint a whole new version of Saint Jerome for the king in Antwerp, as an old man in his studio. While sketches show the 93-year-old model with his eyes lowered, in the last version the saint looks directly at the viewer, his finger, which seems to be gently touching a skull, has dirt under its nail. It is just as finely colored as the reflective inkwell, the velvety binding of the books or the grained wooden desk. Because the picture remained in Antwerp until 1548, it became a model for generations.
Dirt under the nail: Albrecht Dürer’s “Saint Jerome” (1521).
(Photo: Instituto Portugues de Museus, Minstero da Cultura, Lisbon)
The English version of the exhibition shifts the focus of the show to Italy. Perhaps because Dürer’s enthusiasm for the port city of Antwerp, which he saw as a gateway to the world, does not seem quite as fascinating in London, which itself can look back on centuries of colonialism. In any case, critics in Britain happily quote Roger Fry, an artist from the Bloomsbury group, who almost despaired of the artist’s notes and disliked customs duties and the cost of socks. In general, it is noticeable that the receptionist rarely mentions “Northern Europeans” but “Nuremberg”, which sounds odd and grumpy. A good two-thirds of the exhibits were exchanged.
The sea monsters with which the young artist decorates his apocalyptic scenes are interpreted with fascination as a reflection of impressions from the south. Jonathan Jones describes the fact that Dürer brought back more from his travels than artistic inspiration in his careful interpretation in the Guardians. The artist, who had first-hand experience of the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, was the first to understand not only the genius of their art, but what genius is all about. “It was up to Dürer, who had experienced the Italian Renaissance as an outsider, to recognize that,” notes Jones.
Returning to Nuremberg, where he still sent his mother to the market every day to sell his woodcuts, he no longer saw himself as the obliging craftsman his father had been, a goldsmith. His self-portraits show him as a godlike spirit of mystical, creative power. It was Dürer who thus completed the claim of the Renaissance. And that’s also why it’s deeply regrettable that none of his three self-portraits, which hang in Munich, Madrid and Paris, were allowed to travel.
Durer’s Journeys. Travels of a Renaissance Artist. Until February 27th. National Gallery, London. The catalog costs 30 pounds. The catalog for the Aachen exhibition “Dürer war hier” costs 60 euros.