Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape

In the early sixteenth century, almost without warning, Albrecht Altdorfer promoted landscape from its traditionally supplementary role to the center 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 the first major 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 Dürer. he argues that Altdorfer's work - which readily found favor with a secular culture of amateurs and collectors - 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.^ Altdorfer's landscapes offer a densely textured interpretation of that quintessentially German place, the forest interior. As Wood explains, however, these scenes 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. In producing his landscapes, Altdorfer flaunted and exaggerated the formal principles of a regional pictorial tradition. Wood demonstrates that the abrasive surface effects, incessant ornamental movement, and structural impenetrability of these pictures make them the incunabula of a self-resistance to literal readings, Altdorfer's landscapes also resemble the exactly contemporary pastorals and allegories of Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzo Lotto, and Giorgione. 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 of a genre.^ Filled with color and black-and-white illustrations, Wood's book makes an impressive contribution to the critical literature on Northern Renaissance art. -- from dust jacket.