Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist

Excellent exhibition at the National Gallery looking at how Durer’s travels influenced his work and the art of the artists he met on them.

The show looked at his four journeys one around Germany from 1490-94, two to Venice in 1495 and 1505-07 and around the Low Countries from 1520-21. There were lots of stunning works by Durer and carefully selected works by artists he saw or met. I was pleased that I had done a short course on these journey’s as well as a curators talk so I was very excited to see the exhibition and already knew it’s narrative which helped.

It was a lovely touch to include a print by Schongauer, who Durer aimed to visit on his first journey but he arrived after the artist had died, that was one of three prints by the artist that Durer himself owned. Also to see a book frontispiece of St Jerome by Durer which he was commissioned to produce to pay his way.

From the two Venice trips there were some of the stunning watercolours of his journey across the Alps which he continued to refer back to throughout his career and an early copy of the Feast of the Rose Garland, produced for the German merchant’s church in the city, the original is too fragile to travel.

The longest section looked at the trip through the Low Countries as his diaries of his travels survives in copies. The one surviving original page was in the show. These were not so much a travelblog shopping lists, accounts and notes on things he saw but they give a wonderful fresh insight.  I loved a set of six portraits drawings, one of which is shown here, which he sold as he travelled or gave away as gifts to people who hosted him. There were also pages from sketchbooks he used on the trip with his visual observations.

The show does an excellent job at conjuring up a picture of Europe at this time and the cross pollination of ideas as much as examining the work of Durer.

Closes 27 February 2021

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