In Altdorfer's works, an effort to capture, comprehend and absorb the mysterious forces of nature is perceived.
(? – 1538) German painter. He pioneered the development of landscape painting in the West. He is believed to have been born in Regensburg. His father, an engraver, Ulrich Altdorfer, had become impoverished and left Regensburg in 1491, renouncing his city citizenship. Albrecht applied to become a citizen of Regensburg in 1505, and his request was granted. According to the traditions of the period, it was necessary to be 25 years old to gain such a right. Therefore, Altdorfer's date of birth is thought to be 1480 at the latest. In the records of the city census of 1505, the artist is referred to as the "painter from Amberg". However, no document has been found showing that Altdorfer was born or lived in this city.
Altdorfer was deeply involved in the cultural and political developments in this free city, which was firmly settled in Regensburg in 1508 and is located very close to the northern bank of the Danube. Here he received his first painting order; He was asked to paint a painting for the Church of Saint Peter. Altdorfer, who made a trip to the banks of the Danube and the Alps in 1511, was very impressed by the landscapes he encountered in this region and the landscape painters who worked on them.
Altdorfer was elected to the city council for foreign affairs in 1519 and to the council for interior affairs in 1526. In the same year, he was appointed as the city architect. The artist's work in this area concerns the construction of wine cellars, a slaughterhouse, the city wall, and the town hall tower. None of these structures have survived to the present day.
Altdorfer served in the Magistrates' Court in 1528. Although he was proposed as mayor in the same year, he did not accept the task because he was working on a painting that he attached great importance to, The War of Alexander. However, he maintained his relationship with the political life of the city until his death. In 1533, while a member of parliament, he was instrumental in summoning a Protestant clergyman to Regensburg and converting the city to Protestantism.
Because of his affinity for Protestantism, Altdorfer supported the demolition of the Regensburg Synagogue and the construction of the Church of Our Lady the Beautiful in its place and participated in the construction of the church. In the last years of his life, he was the administrator of the Augustine Abbey, while supporting Protestantism. He died in Regensburg on February 14, 1538. Altdorfer's first products were carvings and some drawings made starting in 1506. In his drawings, he mostly embroidered brown or gray-blue paper with black and white lines. In these, he heavily included fantastic elements; Even his religious drawings have this feature.
The source of inspiration for his carvings is Italian niellos. Niello, a layer obtained by filling copper carvings with colored alloys, was also used as a printing mold by Italian artists of the period. In Altdorfer's carvings, besides the niellos, this type of work by the circle of Dürer and Jacopo de Barbari has an influence. In contrast, Altdorfer has managed to develop a personal style. His works have precision and precision reminiscent of miniatures.
The most important feature of the artist, which emerged from his first paintings and developed continuously throughout his life, is the weight of the landscape in his works. The landscape is an important element in his first known painting, The Satyr Family (1507). Some German painters such as Jorg Kölderer workshop and Cranach influenced the development of the concept of landscape in the artist. An important stage of this development was his trip to the Alps in 1511. Altdorfer gave the first examples of pure landscape painting in the West. With his works, he became the pioneer of the Danube School, which tried to place human figures in harmony with nature and included painters such as Cranach, Breu, and Huber.
Altdorfer, circa 1510, worked with Cranach's influence on a narrative that emphasized heroic emotions and highlighted human figures. In his work called The Crucifixion, nature has been handled in detail, but the figures are quite large and in a dominant position. However, he also made independent landscape drawings in the same years. In his works during this period, besides the problem of placing the figures, he also tried to create a "space" effect in his works. Towards 1518, in the eight panels he made for the altar wings of the Church of Saint Florian near Linz, he not only successfully solved the space problem but also created lively, dramatic scenes by combining landscape and architectural elements. A competent harmony was achieved between the movements of the figures and nature on the panels. The change seen in Altdorfer's use of color is a factor affecting his style in this period, he left the soft colors in his early works and switched to bright, strong colors. One of the earliest examples of this change is Rest on the Escape to Egypt (1510).
In the early 1520s, Altdorfer was now proficient in landscape painting. In this period, he created the first purely landscape paintings of the West, in which no figures were involved. In The Regensburg Landscape (1522-1525) and The Milled Landscape (1522-1523), the artist tried to capture the views of nature by skillfully using the techniques of light, color, and foggy atmosphere. There is a realistic expression in these pictures; however, it is seen that Altdorfer also resorts to the imagination while painting the landscape. The painter also made some night landscapes. For example, in Jesus on the Mount of Olives and in the Capture of Jesus, the use of light and shadows creates a dramatic effect.
In the first years of the 1530s, he also made a series of metal engravings, in which he also rendered landscapes. In these, he tried to achieve the effect of distance by arranging the planes flowing backward, arranged one after the other, instead of the bright colors he placed in the foreground. Altdorfer was also influenced by Dürer, who is considered the most important representative of the German Renaissance. Dürer's compositions rely more on precision in details; Altdorfer, on the other hand, tends to look after the whole composition first. In this whole, which is shaped by the arrangement of light and dark areas, the meticulously processed details are of secondary importance.
Altdorfer's style that changes and stylizes perceived reality is also seen in Wolf Huber; Both artists approach Romanticism with these aspects. In fact, the trend toward stylization is a common feature of 16th-century German painting. Compared to Italian Renaissance artists, German painters were more concerned with the expression of thought and emotion than with questions of form. However, in Altdorfer's works, an effort to capture, comprehend and assimilate the mysterious forces of nature is also perceived. In these works, the place of man in the universe and his relationship with nature are emphasized, and these two elements are tried to be reconciled.
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https://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/altdorfer/