Leonardo / Durer: Renaissance Masterdrawings on Colored Ground

Explores the revolutionary Renaissance works of Leonardo and Dürer and their long-lasting impact on the art of drawing.

Dürer’s Praying Hands is one of the world’s most popular artworks. Few artists have changed the art world more profoundly than Leonardo and Dürer. Both bring their subjects to life with breathtaking virtuosity, creating masterpieces of incredible intimacy.

Mythology, religious faith and history, images of everyday life, and travel scenes were core themes of the fifteenth century and stand at the center of the art displayed in the drawings of Leonardo and Dürer. Their images reveal their charm in the interplay of chiaroscuro effects on colored paper. The works of both masters are shown here alongside sheets by their contemporaries such as Albrecht Altdorfer and Hans Baldung Grien. This lavish publication examines how this art became so popular and successful and illustrates the wide-ranging expressive possibilities that the technique offers.
 

Ralph Gleis is general director of the Albertina and curator of numerous exhibitions of art from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Achim Gnann is a curator of Italian art from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries at the Albertina in Vienna.

Christof Metzger is a curator of German, Austrian, and Swiss art before 1760 at the Albertina in Vienna.