“Albrecht Dürer: Impressions of the Renaissance,” an exhibition organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, will feature 41 works celebrating the world of Albrecht Dürer, one of the greatest artists of the Northern Renaissance. All except one of the prints will be drawn from the permanent collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.
The exhibition will open to the public from Saturday, November 14, through Thursday, December 24. On Thursday, November 19, exhibition curator Patricia Phagan, the Philip and Lynn Straus curator of prints and drawings at the art center, will give a lecture about Dürer and printmaking, with a reception to follow.
The exhibition will illustrate the relatively then-new art of printmaking, in which Dürer injected “a profound pictorial flair and emphasis on original design, marking a new stage in the history of the medium,” according to Phagan. With his virtuosic technique and painterly eye, Phagan noted, “Dürer raised the level of engraving and woodcut to new heights that stunned his European contemporaries.”
Included in the exhibition will be 19 prints by Dürer, which feature several fresh impressions by the artist from the art center’s Felix M. Warburg collection of Old Master prints, given to the college in the early 1940s. Engravings by several of Dürer’s contemporaries also will be on view, including the “Little Masters” of German printmaking and Italian printmakers, such as Marcantonio Raimondi.
Some of the themes, which will be illustrated within the exhibition, include the revival of interest in classical antiquity, with prints including “Hercules at the Crossroads”; portraits of intellectuals, including Willibald Pirckheimer, Erasmus and Philip Melanchthon; writing by contemporary theological scholars, including Desiderius Erasmus and by Dürer’s neighbor and friend Lazarus Spengler; and illustrations of biblical and allegorical stories, including Adam and Eve, St Jerome in his Study and Melencolia I.
Phagan will also pair fragmentary sculptural reliefs from the ancient classical period (also from the permanent collection) with some of the classically inspired prints. In addition, the Latin edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 and one other early printed book, both on loan from Special Collections, Vassar College Library, will be on view.
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is at the entrance to Vassar College campus. For information, 845-437-5632 or www.fllac.vassar.edu .
