Albrecht Dürer

German, 1471 - 1528

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Albrecht Dürer, Hans Krafft the Elder, Coat of Arms on a Double-headed Eagle [reverse], 1521, silver, Gift of Drs. Yvonne and A. Peter Weiss, 2013.160.1.b

Coat of Arms on a Double-headed Eagle [reverse]

Albrecht Dürer, Hans Krafft the Elder · 1521 · silver ·  Accession ID  2013.160.1.b

Albrecht Dürer, Hans Krafft the Elder, Charles V, 1500-1558, King of Spain 1516-1556, Holy Roman Emperor 1519 [obverse], 1521, silver, Gift of Drs. Yvonne and A. Peter Weiss, 2013.160.1.a

Charles V, 1500-1558, King of Spain 1516-1556, Holy Roman Emperor 1519 [obverse]

Albrecht Dürer, Hans Krafft the Elder · 1521 · silver ·  Accession ID  2013.160.1.a

Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned, clean-shaven man looks off to our left against a moss-green background in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s shoulders and face are angled to our left, and he looks up and in that direction with silvery-blue eyes under flat, thin brows. The end of his short nose is slightly flattened, and his thin, pale pink lips are pressed together in an uneven line. He has the suggestion of a cleft chin set in a square jaw. Auburn-brown, wavy, chin-length hair and bangs frame his face under a black floppy cap. His dark garment has a high neck and falls in vertical folds down his chest. The earthy green background darkens around the edges. The artist signed and dated the painting, 1516, near the top right corner with a monogram of a capital letter D tucked between the wide, long legs of a capital A.
Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of a Clergyman (Johann Dorsch?), 1516, oil on parchment on fabric, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.2.17

Portrait of a Clergyman (Johann Dorsch?)

Albrecht Dürer · 1516 · oil on parchment on fabric ·  Accession ID  1952.2.17

A man and two women walk on a dirt path through a verdant landscape, carrying packs, walking sticks, and other provisions, while in the distance fiery explosions spew flames and plumes of smoke sky-high in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale skin, and the women’s blond hair is bound up. Close to us and at the bottom center of the composition, the man and women walk to our right with their eyes cast down. The man walks at the front of the line, holding a stick with a canteen dangling from a cord over his right shoulder. In other left hand, he carries a basket filled with shiny silver disks. The man has wrinkled skin and a long gray beard. He wears a royal-blue coat lined with white fur over a brown tunic, black tights, and gray shoes. His head is wrapped in a turban with yellow coils beneath a purple and green split crown. The two women walk side-by-side behind the man. The woman farther from us holds two sticks in her left hand. A sack is looped over one stick that rests back across her shoulder. The other staff is vertical and is topped a skein of yarn with a spool. She holds a small saffron-orange chest with a silver handle and lock by her side with her right hand. She wears a long, voluminous, amethyst-purple dress bunched up in front to show a forest-green skirt underneath and three silver keys hanging at her knees. The second woman balances a lapis-blue, bulbous pack on her head with one hand. She wears a red dress with a high, white collar. She lifts the red skirt with her other hand to show a royal-blue skirt underneath. The path is lined with plants and a few rocks to each side. The land rises to steep, rocky outcroppings lined with trees. The shadowy form of a person walks away from us on the path where it winds back to the cliffs. The land dips down to a body of water in the near distance beyond the path. Lemon-yellow and crimson-red flames rise out of a town along the water’s edge in the distance. Streaks of black, rose-pink, and slate-blue smoke billow into the air. Another town burns along the horizon, which comes two-thirds of the way up the composition. The artist signed the work with his initials as if he had painted a rock face next to the path to our left, “AD” in a monogram.
Albrecht Dürer, Lot and His Daughters [reverse], c. 1496/1499, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.2.16.b

Lot and His Daughters [reverse]

Albrecht Dürer · c. 1496/1499 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.2.16.b

Shown from the hips up in a room on the far side of a ledge, a young woman props up a naked baby so he stands on a cushion in this vertical painting. The woman’s left hand, to our right, supports the baby’s neck, and her other hand holds him upright. Both have pale skin tinged with pink and shaded with cool gray, and they face us at the center of the composition. The woman wears a royal-blue hooded garment that comes low over her forehead. Light blond curls catch the light under her hood, near her left cheek, to our right. She looks into the distance, as if over our right shoulder, with unfocused, pale brown eyes. She has a straight yet soft nose, flushed cheeks, closed pink lips, and a slight double chin. The nude baby has blond hair and blue eyes. His torso and limbs have the rolls and dimples of a toddler, and the woman’s hands press gently into the flesh. One of his elbows hooks up over the woman’s shoulder, next to his head. He points at the woman with his middle finger near her high neckline. The other arm, to our right, hangs by his side and he holds a piece of green and red fruit, possibly an apple. The child stands on one foot on the green cushion, which has red tassels. The pine-green pillow has sea glass-green highlights, suggesting a sheen or texture. His other foot rests against that standing calf, toes splayed. The wall behind the pair is marbled with green or red against tan, and a bright, scarlet-red cloth hangs behind the woman. A window on the back wall opens onto a landscape to our left. There, a plain of green grass is interrupted by a winding pathway, which leads to a walled fortification and gate. Beyond the gate are trees and mountains, hazy green and blue in the deep distance. Thick white clouds drift across the bright blue sky above. A sliver of a window in the upper right corner next to the baby has round, bull’s eye glass. In the lower corners of the painting are two heraldic coats of arms. The shield-shaped symbol to our left is of a knight’s helmet with red and white scrolls and vines. In the lower right corner a miniature man kneels behind a shield and holds a long cylindrical object.
Albrecht Dürer, Madonna and Child [obverse], c. 1496/1499, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.2.16.a

Madonna and Child [obverse]

Albrecht Dürer · c. 1496/1499 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.2.16.a

A clump of leaves with a few stems of tall, yellow blossoms are painted on a vertical sheet of tan-colored parchment. The leaves are long and rounded, with prominent, textured veining. A few blades of grass and sprigs of clover are interspersed among the dense clump of leaves. The cowslip blossoms are clusters of bell-shaped yellow petals at the end of a starburst-like formations of pale green tubes. The ground is painted an earthy gray, and the background is left blank. The artist dated the work, 1526, in the lower right corner over a monogram of his initials, AD.
Albrecht Dürer, Tuft of Cowslips, 1526, gouache on parchment, The Armand Hammer Collection, 1991.217.1

Tuft of Cowslips

Albrecht Dürer · 1526 · gouache on parchment ·  Accession ID  1991.217.1

Created with fine black lines printed on cream-white paper, this vertical engraving shows a man facing our left, wearing a cap and voluminous robe as he writes on a sheet of paper. Closest to us and along the bottom edge of the composition, a table or shelf is spread with several books, some upright, some on their sides, and one thick tome laid open. The open book has writing on the pages, but the words are not legible. Beyond the books, the man is shown from the waist up with his body angled to our left. A few curls peek out from the soft, rounded cap that covers his head down to his neck and his forehead, and nearly reaches the top edge of the paper. His face and jowls are deeply lined, and he has deep-set eyes, a long, sloped nose, and his lips are closed. His robe rides high on his shoulders and around his neck, parting at the throat to show a high-collared garment beneath. He gazes down at his hands, which rest on the paper on which he writes. One thick-fingered hand holds the inkwell and the other the pen. The paper and a book underneath it rest on a lectern that angles up toward the writer. The lectern sits on a desk that also holds a short urn with a small bunch of leaves and flowers at the front corner closest to us. Two packets or pieces of folded paper sit next to the lectern. Densely spaced, fine lines create dark shadows in the deep folds of the man’s garments and on the wall behind him. A panel on the wall behind the man reads, in Latin, “IMAGO ERASMI ROTERODA MI AB ALBERTO DVRERO AD VIVAM EFFIGIEM DELINIATA,” which is followed by a Greek inscription, and then, “MDXXXVI.” The artist signed the work with his monogram, consisting of an upper case D straddled by the legs of a wide, upper case A at the bottom center of the panel.
Albrecht Dürer, Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1526, engraving on laid paper, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.3554

Erasmus of Rotterdam

Albrecht Dürer · 1526 · engraving on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1943.3.3554

Albrecht Dürer, Justice, Truth and Reason in the Stocks with the Seated Judge and Sleeping Piety, probably 1526, woodcut, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.3689

Justice, Truth and Reason in the Stocks with the Seated Judge and Sleeping Piety

Albrecht Dürer · probably 1526 · woodcut ·  Accession ID  1943.3.3689

Albrecht Dürer, The Teacher, the Clergyman, and Providence, probably 1526, woodcut, Rosenwald Collection, 1951.10.21

The Teacher, the Clergyman, and Providence

Albrecht Dürer · probably 1526 · woodcut ·  Accession ID  1951.10.21

Albrecht Dürer, Time and a Fox Turning the Wheel of Fortune with People of all Ranks to the Right, probably 1526, woodcut, Rosenwald Collection, 1951.10.22

Time and a Fox Turning the Wheel of Fortune with People of all Ranks to the Right

Albrecht Dürer · probably 1526 · woodcut ·  Accession ID  1951.10.22

Bibliography

1943

  • Panofsky, Erwin. _Albrecht Dürer _. 2 vols. Princeton, (1943).

1971

  • Anzelewsky, Fedja. Albrecht Dürer Das malerische Werk. Berlin, 1971.

  • Mende, Matthias. Dürer-Bibliographie. Wiesbaden, 1971.

1982

  • Anzelewsky, Fedja. Dürer. His Art and Life. Translated by Heide Grieve. London, 1982.

1993

  • Hand, John Oliver, with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1993: 49-51.