The Prints of Albrecht Dürer

The Prints of Albrecht Dürer provides a rare opportunity to view the work of one of the world’s most famous and influential artists. Windsor is a key stop on the national tour of 53 master prints circulated by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Albrecht Dürer is the most celebrated artist of the Northern Renaissance, a cultural shift that began in the late fifteenth centur, primarily in what are now the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France. Dürer was born in 1471 in Nuremburg and achieved great fame as an artist while still in his twenties.

The exhibition spans Dürer’s career from the late 1400s through the 1520s. During this time, the invention of the printing press revolutionized not only the dissemination of texts, but also the ways people made and related to works of art. Dürer was among the first and most successful artists to produce woodcuts and engravings on paper. He made prints for more often that he painted. Printmaking was an ideal medium to higlight his mastery of line, keen observation of nature, and his skill at portraiture and landscape. The great availibility of his images helped him earn his acclaim as the first artistic ‘genius’ outside of Renaissance Italy. Many of the works in the exhibition portray Christian stories or symbols, continuing longstanding European art traditions. Also featured are heraldic and pattern works, as well as mythological subjects. The exhibition includes his most celebrated prints such as  Melancholia, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Adam and Eve and The Knight, Death and the Devil.