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MARCH 17 JUNE 14, 2015
REALMS OF IMAGINATION
ALBRECHT ALTDORFER AND THE EXPRESSIVITY OF ART AROUND 1500
PICTURE GALLERY
The exhibition focuses on one of the most remarkable phenomena in
Renaissance art north of the Alps: the increasingly strong wave of
expressive elements in art produced around 1500. Although this
movement culminates in the work of Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480 – 1538)
and other representatives of the so-called “Danube school”, among them
Wolf Huber (c. 1485 – 1553) and the Master IP (c. 1490 – after 1530), we
also find similar phenomena outside the Danube region in other parts of
Central Europe.
Around one hundred and forty artworks, among them masterpieces by
Lucas Cranach, Matthias Grünewald and Hans Leinberger, document
how landscapes, history paintings and portraits were re-invented with the
help of a powerful novel interplay of light, colour and pose, creating an
antithesis to Dürer’s art based on the study of nature and a classical
canon. Instead, these compositions are dominated by poetry and drama,
and in them man and nature become one.
MAIN THEMES
OF THE EXHIBITION
The show’s introductory section focuses on the image of man in the work
of the leading protagonists of this expressive style, who were active in the
Danube region: we showcase panel paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer and
Wolf Huber from different periods of their stylistic development, as well as
carved altarpieces and small sculptures by Hans Leinberger and the
Master IP. Almost baroque-like in their agitation, the figures of the
Apostles from the central shrine of the altarpiece that once decorated the
high altar at Zwettl form the focal point of this group of works, which is
confronted in the exhibition with Dürer’s canonical engraving of Adam
and Eve.
Just how dramatic the novel versions of long-established subject matters
engendered by these spectacular stylistic innovations could be is the
subject of the second section of the exhibition, which features different
depictions of the Crucifixion. The first of these is Cranach’s early
Crucifixion, painted around 1500 in Vienna. Altdorfer is generally
regarded as the first artist to have produced autonomous painted or
printed landscapes; his bizarre-romantic creations form the focal point of
the third section of the exhibition, which looks at the artists’ new
approach to Nature, bringing together both autonomous landscapes and
narrative compositions in which nature plays a prominent role. Selected
depictions of Saint Christopher by Altdorfer and other artists from
southern Germany again document the possibilities of this expressive
formal idiom before visitors reach the core section of the exhibition.
Here we showcase both different subject matters and the pictorial means
of expressivity. Soon after 1500 artists increasingly favoured dynamic
distortions, ornamentalization, light reflexes, and gaudy colours to imbue
their compositions with a new vitality. In these works the dramatic
exaggerations of the shapes of both bodies and draperies also affects
settings and surroundings. The final section of the exhibition looks at
artists and patrons, among them Emperor Maximilian I but also noblemen
like the Prince-Bishops of Passau, members of the urban middle-class and
humanists. In Gallery XV of the Picture Gallery we showcase portraits as
well as epitaphs and votive paintings, confronting them with compositions
by Dürer and other German artists from the holdings of the
Kunsthistorisches Museum.
HIGHLIGHTS
OF THE EXHIBITION
Among the highlights of the exhibition are numerous panel paintings by
Albrecht Altdorfer, among them two of the first-ever autonomous
landscapes, the Prayer Book of Emperor Maximilian I featuring highly
imaginative drawings, Wolf Huber’s wings of the Saint Anne-Altarpiece
from Feldkirch, and spectacular sculptures like Leinberger’s bronze
Madonna from Berlin, the group of Apostles from the central shrine of the
altarpiece initially commissioned for the high altar at Zwettl, and the
complete huge altarpiece carved by the Master IP for the Church of Our
Lady before Tyn in Prague, which measures over six metres in height. In
addition, a comprehensive selection of important drawings by Altdorfer
and Huber – an extremely fragile medium rarely on public display – are on
show in the exhibition. We also present a sensational new discovery, the
back of a painting by the Master of Pulkau now in Chicago, which was
long believed lost; now in Belgrade, the Presentation of the Virgin Mary
has been restored for the exhibition in Vienna and will be presented to the
public in its original artistic context for the first time.
PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS
These images may be used free of charge when writing about the
exhibition; to download them go to press.khm.at.
Albrecht Altdorfer
The Resurrection
1518
panel, 70,5 x 37 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery
© KHM-Museumsverband
Albrecht Altdorfer
The Entombment of Christ
1518
panel
70,5 cm x 37,3 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery
© KHM-Museumsverband
Albrecht Altdorfer
The Three Magi
c. 1530/35
panel, 108,9 x 77 cm
Frankfurt am Main, Städelmuseum
© Städelmuseum Frankfurt am Main
Albrecht Altdorfer
Landscape with Castle
c. 1520/30
vellum mounted on beech, 30,5 x 22,5 cm
loaned by the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds to the
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich – Alte Pinakothek
© bpk | Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Albrecht Altdorfer
The Holy Family with Saint Agapitus
dated 1515
panel, 22,5 x 20,5 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery
© KHM-Museumsverband
Wolf Huber
Wing of the Saint Anne-Altarpiece: The Three Magi
1521
panel, 74 x 47,7 cm
Feldkirch, cathedral and parish church St. Nikolaus
(private loan)
© Photograph Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna
Wolf Huber
Wing of the Saint Anne-Altarpiece: The Presentation in the Temple
1521
panel, 72,1 x 47,6 cm
Feldkirch, cathedral and parish church St. Nikolaus
(private loan)
© Photograph Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna
Wolf Huber
Wing of the Saint Anne-Altarpiece: The Birth of the Virgin Mary
1521
panel, 74 x 47,7 cm
Feldkirch, cathedral and parish church St. Nikolaus
(private loan)
© Photograph Bundesdenkmalamt, Vienna
Wolf Huber
The Raising of the Cross
c. 1525
panel cut off in semi-circular shape at the top
115 x 153,5 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery
© KHM-Museumsverband
Georg Lemberger
The Fall of Man and the Salvation
1535
panel, 66,9 x 80,3 cm
Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum
© Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
Master of Messkirch
The Crucifixion
1st half of the 16th century
panel, 98 x 73 cm
Schwäbisch Hall, Würth Collection
© Würth Collection
Niklaus Manuel, called Deutsch
The Beheading of John the Baptist
c. 1517
fir
32,5 x 26 cm
Kunstmuseum Basel
© Kunstmuseum Basel, Photograph Martin P. Bühler
Meister von Pulkau
Presentation of the Virgin
c. 1507/10
panel
111,7 x 74,5 cm
Belgrad, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in den königlichen Palastanlagen
© Photograph: KHM-Museumsverband
Albrecht Altdorfer
The Crucifixion
1512
black ink, white highlights, on olive, brown ground paper
Brunswick, Anton Ulrich‐Museum
© Herzog Anton Ulrich‐Museum Brunswick, Kunstmuseum des Landes
Niedersachsen
Albrecht Altdorfer
Mountain Landscape with Pollard Willows
c. 1511
Pen and two shades of black ink drawing on slightly-browned paper
14,1 x 19,6 cm
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Dept. of Prints
© Kupferstichkabinett der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna
Wolf Huber
Pollard Willows near a Stream
1514
Pen and brown ink, 152 x 207 mm
Budapest, Szépmüvészti Múzeum
© Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Andreas Lackner
Saint Blaise Enthroned
1518
limewood, remnants of original polychromy, gilt
134 x 65,5 x 23 cm
Vienna, Belvedere
© Vienna Belvedere
Photograph: Bettina Sidonie Neubauer
Master of the Zwettl Altarpiece and members of his workshop
Central shrine of the retable commissioned for the high altar of the
church of the Cistercian abbey at Zwettl
1516‐25
limewood, fir wood back of the central shrine, varnished, partially
polychromed, the original retable measured c. 19 metres in height; the central
shrine 6,5 x 3 x 0,6 m, Adamsthal near Brno, Saint Barbara
© Parish of St. Barbara
Hans Lemberger
The Virgin Mary and Child
c. 1515/20
Bronze, hollow cast, 45,5 x 21 x 17,5 cm
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Collection of Sculpture and Museum of
Byzantine Art
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst
Photograph: Antje Voigt, Berlin
Master I. P.
The Mocking of Job
Passau, c. 1525
h. 49,5 cm, w. 113 cm, diam. max. 10 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Kunstkammer
© KHM-Museumsverband
Master IP
Retable of St John
1520s
Wood
c. 5.90 m
Prague, Kostel Panny Marie před Týnem
© Photograph: KHM-Museumsverband
Jörg Breu the Elder, Hans Burgkmair the Elder and others
Prayer-Book of Emperor Maximilian I (Diurnale seu lieber precum)
1514‐1515
Pen and ink drawings in different colours in the margins of a copy of the
Emperor’s prayer book printed in 1513 on vellum by Hans Schönsperger the
Elder at Augsburg
28 x 40 cm (measurements of the book when opened)
Besançon, Bibliothèque Municipale
© Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon
CATALOGUE
An exhibition catalogue will be published in German.
Realms of Imagination
Edited by Sabine Haag and Guido Messling
paperback, size 24 x 28 cm, 288 pages
price: € 35
ISBN: 978-3-99020-081-0
PARTNERS
AND CURATORS
The exhibition is organized by the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna and
the Städel Museum und Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung
Frankfurt/Main, in collaboration with the Geisteswissenschaftliches
Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas e.V. of the University of
Leipzig.
Exhibition Curators:
Dr. Guido Messling (Vienna, KHM), in collaboration with
Professor Dr. Jochen Sander, Dr. Stefan Roller (Frankfurt, Städel Museum
und Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung) and Dr. habil. Jiří Fajt (Leipzig,
GWZO)
OPENING HOURS AND
ENTRANCE FEES
Tuesdays – Sundays, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Thursdays until 9 p.m.
June, July and August open daily!
Annual Ticket
Adults
Vienna Card
Concessions
Children under 19
Group ticket (p.p.)
€ 34
€ 14
€ 13
€ 11
free
€ 11
Buy your online-tickets at:
https://shop.khm.at/en/ticket-shop/
PRESS CONTACT
Nina Auinger-Sutterlüty, MAS
Head of Communication and Public Relations
KHM-Museumsverband
Wissenschaftliche Anstalt öffentlichen Rechts
Burgring 5, 1010 Vienna
T +43 1 525 24 - 4021
[email protected]
www.khm.at