Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape

Abstract

In the early 1500s, almost without warning, Albrecht Altdorfer promoted landscape from its traditionally supplementary role to the centre of the picture field. Christopher S. Wood shows how Altdorfer (c.1480-1538) transformed what had been the mere setting for sacred and historical figures into a principal venue for stylish draftsmanship and idiosyncratic painterly effects. In this English-language study of this artist, Wood investigates the historical conditions that supported the emergence of landscape as an independent genre in the time of Durer. He argues that Altdorfer's work is explicable neither in terms of the descriptive traditions of the Low Countries nor the discursive mode of contemporary Italian painting; rather, it registers a third possibility of deictic, or self-referential, practice. He also reveals that Altdorfer's forest scenes are far from doctrinally innocent: the forest that Altdorfer painted, drew, and etched is both a refuge from Christian rites and a mythical setting of idolatry. Because of Altdorfer's influence on the next generation of German and Netherlandish artists, his work forms a crucial link between Northern religious imagery and the modern development of landscape as a genre.