Resources & Recommendations #8
to listen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) who achieved fame throughout Europe for the power of his images. These range from his woodcut of a rhinoceros, to his watercolour of a young hare, to his drawing of praying hands and his stunning self-portraits such as that above (albeit here in a later monochrome reproduction) with his distinctive A D monogram. He was expected to follow his father and become a goldsmith, but found his own way to be a great artist, taking public commissions that built his reputation but did not pay, while creating a market for his prints, and he captured the timeless and the new in a world of great change.
to watch
To ready oneself for the upcoming Michelangelo exhibition at the British Museum, take a look back at a lecture given in 2013 by Hugo Chapman, the museum’s Keeper and Curator of Italian and French Drawings from c. 1400 to c. 1800, in celebration of "Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Chapman deftly traverses the various facets, forms and functions of Michelangelo's draughtstsmanship and discuss his relationships with Raphael, the object of his affection, Tommaso de' Cavalieri, and his own students.
to read
Hendrick Goltzius: Painting with Colored Chalk, Alison M. Kettering
A fascinating long read on the development of Hendrick Goltzius, one of the outstanding figures in Dutch art during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as a colourist. The article examines Goltzius’ portraits of his fellow artists produced in coloured chalks and highlights the interdependence of his subject matter and his choice of medium, as well as the transformative effects of his artistic encounters on a voyage Italy.
