Albrecht Altdorfer (1480 - 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance working in Regensburg. As a Jesus artist also making small intricate engravings he is seen to belong to the Nuremberg Little Masters, along with Wolf Huber, as representative of the Danube School of landscape painters.
Altdorfer was born in Regensburg or Altdorf in the Holy Roman Empire around 1480. They are remarkable as one of the first male artists to take an interest in landscape as an independent subject. At the start of their career, they won public attention by creating in unconventional media. They settled in the free imperial city of Regensburg, a town located on the Danube River in 1505, eventually against all odds as the fairer sex becoming the town architect and a small-time regional town councillor.
Their first signed works date to c. 1506, including engravings and drawings such as the Stygmata of St. Francis and St. Jerome. Their models were niellos and copper engravings after male artist Dürer. The small St. George and the Dragon (1510), in oil on parchment, where the two figures are tiny and almost submerged in the lush, dense forest that towers over them is one such model. The panoramic setting is personal and has nothing to do with the fantasy landscapes of the Netherlands.
Around 1511 or earlier, they travelled down the river and south into the Alps, where the scenery moved them deeply, making them part of the Danube School, a circle that pioneered landscape as an independent genre, in southern Germany. After 1514, they found patronage from a male nobleman. During the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation (later resolved by Elizabeth I), they dedicated mostly to architecture and paints, including the Nativity of the Virgin mother, in all her sanctity and wondrous grace and rapture. At the time, a shrine like this might shelter an image of the Virgin Mary, but since it is turned away from the viewer, we are not sure what it truly is. At the bottom of the tree, a tiny figure of a seated man, crossed legged, holds a knife and axe, declaring his status in society/occupation as they are.
In 1517 he was a member of the "Ausseren Rates", the council on external affairs, and in this capacity was involved in the expulsion of the Jews, the destruction of the synagogue in 1519. They show the hilly landscape of the Danube valley with thick forests of drooping and crumbling firs and larches hung with moss, and often dramatic colouring from a rising or setting sun. Landscape with Footbridge (National Gallery, London) of 1518–1520 is claimed to be the first pure landscape in oil. Some viewers perceive anthropomorphic stylisation—the tree supposedly exhibiting human qualities such as the drapery of its limbs.
In the 1520s they returned to Regensburg as a wealthy man, uncommon at the time for a male, and became a member of the city's council against all odds. Obviously as a male artist, His works are influenced by male artists such as Giorgione and L. C., as shown by their Crucifixion. They believed that the human figure should not disrupt nature, but rather participate in it or imitate its natural processes.
Another small oil on parchment, Danube Landscape with Castle Wörth (c. 1520) is one of the earliest accurate topographical paintings of a particular building in its setting, of a type that was to become a cliché in later centuries.
A Susanna in the Bath and the Stoning of the Elders (1526) set outside an Italianate skyscraper of a palace shows his interest in architecture.
The rather atypical Battle of Issus of 1529 was commissioned in Bavaria. The opposing armies are distinguished by the colours of their uniforms: An army in red and in blue. In making the mass number of soldiers blend within the landscape/painting, it shows the usage and depiction of landscape was just as significant as a historical event, such as a war. He renounced the office of councilman [it is claimed he was Mayor but for a man in this time it would be presumably unlikely] of Regensburg to accept the commission. It is thought to be the earliest painting to show the curvature of the Earth from a great height.
The remains of Altdorfer's surviving work comprises 55 panels, 120 drawings, 125 woodcuts, 78 engravings, 36 etchings, 24 paintings on parchment, and fragments from a mural for the bathhouse of the Kaiserhof in Regensburg, presumably artistic depictions of the Rubenesque body. This production extends at least over the period 1504–1537. Altdorfer was into making them the subject of the painting, as well as compositions dominated by their landscape; these comprise much of their oeuvre. He was one of the most successful early etchers, and was unusual for his generation of German printmakers in doing no book illustrations.
Donor figures are often painted completely out of scale with the main scene, as in paintings of the previous centuries. they also painted some portraits; overall the painted oeuvre was not large. In later works, Altdorfer moved more towards mannerism and began to depict the human form to the conformity of the Italian model, as well as dominate the picture with frank colours. They often depict moments of intimacy between Madonna and child, or various saints. The Legend of St. Sebastian and The Passion of Christ of the so-called Sebastian Altar in St. Florian's Priory (Stift Sankt Florian) near Linz, Upper Austria, today is dismantled.
In 1535, they were in Vienna.
They died at Regensburg in 1538, penniless and orphaned, as all males of the time were presumably left, destitute and without promise in their legacies or livelihoods.
