Release Date: April 16, 2007
"Fabulous Journeys and Faraway Places: Travels on Paper, 1450–1700" on
View at
the National Gallery of Art, Washington, May 6– September 16,
2007
Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil (detail),
1513
engraving
Rosenwald Collection
Washington, DC – Today's travelers capture their memories with digital cameras, sharing them with friends near and far on the Internet. A new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Fabulous Journeys and Faraway Places: Travels on Paper, 1450 – 1700, on view from May 6 through September 16, 2007, takes us back to a time when European artists depicted real and imagined places and distributed their marvelous images to an intensely curious audience in the only way possible—through prints on paper.
The exhibition presents more than 60 printed works documenting mythological and fanciful travel, pilgrimages to holy sites, and voyages of discovery to real, faraway places. A highlight is The Ways and Fashions of the Turks (1553), by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a 16-foot-long panorama of a trip to Constantinople. Another is the Gutiérrez Map (1562), a rare early plan of the new world by Hieronymus Cock, embellished with sea monsters, cannibals, and fearsome beasts.
"It’s difficult today to imagine a time when so few people ventured far from where they were born and when prints on paper were the only source of information about remote lands," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "This exhibition provides a glimpse at exquisitely rendered, early travel images which had a tremendous impact on Europeans and the future of exploration."
Nearly all the works are part of the National Gallery’s collection.
The Exhibition
The first room of the exhibition is devoted to early fantasy and allegorical travel. It presents allegories of life and death as a journey, a medieval map of the world with bizarre creatures inhabiting its fringes, and happy travelers who have discovered such worldly paradises as the Fountain of Youth and the Garden of Love. Images of real, earthly travel dominate the second room, with prints of pilgrims on their sacred journeys and maps showing their travel routes. There are views of sacred sites in Rome and the ruins of classical antiquity, along with printed illustrations made by travelers to Constantinople and the Holy Land. Europeans were fascinated with Islamic customs and costumes, cities, people, and rulers, and magnificent prints of these subjects appear in this part of the exhibition.
On view in the last room is a series of prints and drawings related to 16th- and 17th-century European excursions around the edges of Africa and into the Americas. Large-scale, beautifully decorated maps are the focal points of this room. With them appear prints of exotic animals, the human or semi-human beings believed to occupy these newly-discovered habitats, and the unexploited commercial marvels of North and South America that beckoned Europeans to these countries.
Curator and Related Works
The exhibition curator is Virginia Grace Tuttle, associate curator of old master prints, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Works related to Fabulous Journeys and Faraway Places are available for viewing by appointment in the National Gallery of Art’s prints and drawing collection, which includes nearly 100,000 western European and American works on paper and vellum dating from the 11th century to the present day. Call (202) 842-6380 to make an appointment.
Related Activities
Gallery talks in the exhibition are held at 12 noon on May 11, 16, June 12, September 10 and 14; and at 1 p.m. on May 22, July 10, and September 12. These meet in the West Building Rotunda.
On July 8, the National Gallery Chamber Players perform a concert of Renaissance and baroque chamber music in connection with the Salve to Stilo fantastico: Washington Early Music Festival Time Travel Weekend.
# # #
