Albrecht Dürer. Christof Metzger, ed. Exh. Cat. Munich: Prestel, 2020. 488 pp. $65. - Albrecht Dürer . An exhibition at the Albertina Museum, Vienna, 29 September 2019–6 January 2020

• Published in: Renaissance quarterly Vol. 74; no. 1; pp. 215 - 220
• Main Author: Grebe, Anja
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.04.2021
• Subjects: Artists; Biographies; Creative process; Essays; Inventory; Museums; Provenance; Renaissance period; Watercolor painting
• ISSN: 0034-4338; 1935-0236
• DOI: 10.1017/rqx.2020.317

Dr. Christof Metzger, curator of German art, head of the curatorial department, and an internationally renowned expert on German Renaissance art, spent several years of intense research on the museum's rich Dürer holdings. Visitors who had been to the 2003 Albrecht Dürer exhibition in Vienna or had read its catalogue might have been surprised to see nature studies on vellum like the Violets (cat. no. 45) or the Small Piece of Turf (cat. no. 49) now reattributed to the Nuremberg artist. Since the Albertina's own groundbreaking exhibition on Albrecht Dürer and the Animal and Plant Studies of the Renaissance, curated by Fritz Koreny in 1985, both pieces, as well as many other nature studies that had been considered to be authentic works by Albrecht Dürer for centuries, were then sorted out and regrouped as “German school, second half of the 16th century” (Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance [1985], 180, 218). According to Metzger, the majority of the drawings that once belonged to the Imhoff and Granvelle albums sold to Rudolph II were more than simple study material commonly used in an artist's workshop. [...]their highly finished character; their rather large formats; the use of costly materials, such as parchment or gold; the fact that many of the drawings bear monograms, dates, and further inscriptions; along with the overall good condition of the sheets showing very few signs of wear, has often led art historians to question their function.