Durer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist

An exploration of Dürer’s career and legacy as an international traveling artist

The visual legacy of Dürer’s travels extends far beyond his lifetime and throughout Europe, and the documents illuminating them offer unique insights into the distinctive ways Dürer conducted and managed his career, making him an intriguing―and even controversial―figure. This generously illustrated book examines the career of preeminent Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) as an international traveler, addressing his relations with artists from Italy to the Low Countries, including Giovanni Bellini, Joos van Cleve, Jan Gossaert, Lucas van Leyden, Quentin Massys, and Bernard van Orley. Bringing together paintings, drawings and prints, the book examines Dürer as an artist-entrepreneur, explorer, and innovator of artistic theory. Dürer’s treatises and letters, and his detailed journal documenting his journey to the Low Countries in 1520-1, offer insights into his artistic practices and encounters with artists and patrons, as well as the nature of travel in the early 16th century.

Susan Foister is deputy director and curator of early Netherlandish and German paintings at the National Gallery, London. Peter van den Brink is director of the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen