1522
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Landscape with Two Pines is a 1522 by Albrecht Altdorfer, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see two tall pines on a hill, a winding river, and tiny people walking below. This is one of the first European prints to show a landscape without a religious story or myth. Altdorfer drew it like a quick sketch—loose, almost messy lines—but it was actually an etching, a printmaking technique where acid eats lines into metal. He made only nine of these, and they were rare even in his time. To see how other artists turned landscapes into art, look up *subject: germany*.
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…
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.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480 – 12 February 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance working in Regensburg. Along with Lucas Cranach the Elder and Wolf Huber he is regarded to be the main…
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