ALTDORFER, ALBRECHT

Altdorfer, Albrecht: translation

(c. 1480-1538)

   Painter from the Danube School, active mainly in Regensburg, where he became a citizen in 1505. Little is known of Altdorfer's activities up to that year. The number of properties he owned in Regensburg attest to the fact that he had a successful career. He also played an important role in civic affairs. He was a member of the council of Regensburg in 1519, 1526, and again in 1533 when Lutheranism was officially adopted in the city. In 1526, he was appointed official architect, his charge to build wine cellars and slaughterhouses, and in 1528, he was invited to serve as mayor, an offer he is known to have refused. Altdorfer's first signed painting is the Satyr Family (1507; Berlin, Staatliche Museen), a work that shows his keen interest in the depiction of the landscape. The nude female with her back turned to the viewer recalls the nudes rendered by Giorgione. Though no concrete evidence exists, it is possible that Altdorfer may have traveled to Italy in the early years of his career, where he would have seen Italian works of this kind. By 1515, Altdorfer's style became more heroic, with larger figures, a more vivid choice of colors, and greater contrasts of light and dark. His works in the Monastery of Sankt-Florian near Linz, Austria, demonstrate this change in his style. Here, he painted a series depicting the Passion of Christ and the life of St. Sebastian. One of these works shows the Agony in the Garden,a scene with a reddish sky that forecasts the turbulent events that await Christ. The foreshortening of the apostles in the foreground again betray Altdorfer's knowledge of Venetian art, as these elements are also found in the work of Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna, though the intense, dramatic colors come from Matthias Grünewald.Sharp foreshortenings are even more prevalent in the Beating of St. Sebastian, also part of the Sankt-Florian series. In this work, the architectural background recalls the architecture of Donato Bramante, which suggests that Altdorfer may have had engravings of the architect's works, while the sculptural solidity of the figures again suggest his familiarity with Mantegna's style. By 1520, Altdorfer abandoned the use of intense color contrasts and the movement of his figures also diminished. This is exemplified by his Finding of the Body of St. Florian of c. 1520 (Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum). The subject of Altdorfer's Danube Landscape near Regensburg (c. 1522-1525; Munich, Alte Pinakothek) is simply the landscape. There are no figures or religious implications in the painting. Nature here is poeticized, as it is in one of his greatest masterpieces, the Battle of Alexander (1529; Munich, Alte Pinakothek), commissioned by Duke William IV of Bavaria. In this work, the horror of war is emphasized by the cataclysmic sky and barren setting. In spite of the large number of figures engaged in battle, it is the engulfing landscape that lends the emotional content to the work. In 1537, Altdorfer painted Lot and His Daughters (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), a Northern version of the Venetian reclining nude type. The anatomical excellence of the Venetians is here lost, particularly in the awkwardness of the female form, which confirms that Altdorfer was at his best when he focused on the landscape.

ALTDORFER, Albrecht: translation

Albrecht Altdorfer, one of the first true landscape painters, was born in or near Regensburg in Bavaria, where he spent most of his life, and where he was a leading member of the Danube school of painting. A man of property, he was active in civic affairs, for several years serving both as city architect and as a member of the Regensburg city council. Altdorfer was a councillor when Re­gensburg adopted Lutheranism in 1533. But Regensburg had earlier demon­strated other sympathies. After expelling the Jews in 1519, the city demolished their synagogue and in its place erected a shrine to the Madonna, selling im­ages—some of which were made by Altdorfer himself—and encouraging pil­grimages. Martin Luther* criticized the city, writing that this shrine and several others must be leveled.Albrecht Dürer* also commented in 1523 that a "specter against Holy Scripture" had arisen at Regensburg. Altdorfer's small painting of The Danube near Regensburg (c. 1530) is often cited as the first true landscape painting, but his work also reflects popular interest in the customs and way of life of the ancient Germanic inhabitants, ideas based on the Germania of Tacitus. Altdorfer included exotic architecture along with natural forms in several paintings; because he was city architect of Regensburg, this is perhaps not surprising. Probably his best-known painting is Battle of the Issus of 1529, depicting the battle in 333 b.c. between Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia, which can also be read as a political commentary on an event in Altdorfer's own time, the defeat of the Turks at Vienna in 1529. Altdorfer's contribution to painting was innovative and long-lived, for he helped establish a school of romantic landscape painting that would influence European artists for generations, particularly the Dutch, German, and British landscape painters of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

S. Schama, Landscape and Memory, 1995.

C. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, 1993.

Altdorfer, Albrecht: translation

(ca. 1480-1538)

   German painter, active at Regensburg in Bavaria, where he became town architect in 1526. He was a close student of nature and one of the earliest artists to paint landscapes containing no human figures and recounting no story. Influenced by Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer, he attracted the patronage of the Emperor Maximilian I and the duke of Bavaria. His best-known work, The Battle of Issus, a colorful, swirling battle scene set into a spectacular landscape of sky, lakes, and mountains, was labelled an illustration of a famous classical event but actually depicted an imaginary encounter of contemporary armies.