Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape
Christopher Wood
The first independent or ‘pure’ landscapes in Western art were produced in southern Germany in the first decades of the sixteenth century. They were painted, drawn and etched by Albrecht Altdorfer of Regensburg and his only slightly less flamboyant contemporary Wolf Huber of Passau. These radical experiments in landscape appeared without advance notice and disappeared from view almost as suddenly.
Altdorfer converted outdoor settings into a theatre for stylish draughtsmanship and extravagant colour effects. At the same time, his landscapes offered a densely textured interpretation of that quintessentially German locus, the forest interior. In this revealing study, now available in a revised and expanded second edition, Christopher S. Wood shows how Altdorfer prised landscape out of its subsidiary role as setting and background for narrative history painting and devotional works, and gave it a new, independent life of its own.
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Reviews for Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape
Simon Schama
A study that is bound to become a standard work.
Independent on Sunday
The well chosen illustrations are a revelation.
The Times
sumptious
Daily Telegraph
Excellent illustrations . . . [and] detailed exuberant comments leave the reader in no doubt about Altdorfers brilliance and originality.
Anthony Grafton, The New York Review of Books
This is an important book that will have a great and positive influence on the study of Northern art, and on the understanding of landscape painting generally.
Joseph Leo Koerner