Object Image

The Brenner Road in the Eisack Valley

In 1494, the young Albrecht Dürer set off for Italy. Driven by boundless curiosity and blessed with astonishing skills of observation, he wanted to paint everything the world could offer. Dürer meticulously and convincingly captured regions in paint for the very first time, such as the South Tyrolean Brenner Road in the Eisack Valley. Watercolors like this one encapsulate Dürer’s radically new way of looking at the world. They were not commissioned and reveal an individual response and a freedom in art that was hitherto unknown. Dürer went on to import the Italian Renaissance’s classical body ideal and perspective to the North, spreading these ideas across Europe via his prints....
c. 1495
20.5 x 29.5cm
Image © Belvedere, Vienna, 2021

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