Cleveland Museum of Art

Landscape with Two Pines

Albrecht Altdorfer

Date

1521–22

Medium

etching

Culture

Germany

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Primarily a painter and draftsman, Albrecht Altdorfer made only nine etchings, which were intended to imitate his drawings. Those he made between 1522 and 1525—printed in very small numbers for a growing market of print collector—are considered the first prints in European art to depict pure landscape without narrative or devotional content. Here, he displayed remarkable freedom of draftsmanship and apparent spontaneity. The site depicted cannot be readily identified, and Altdorfer probably composed it from his imagination. Early etchings, such as this one, were made on iron rather than copper plates, which rendered the lines slightly hazy. To make this early etching, the artist used an iron plate rather than the more supple copper, which would shortly come to dominate etching technique.

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