Artists
Albrecht Altdorfer
- Country:
- Germany
- Birth year:
- 1480
- Death year:
- 1538
Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480 Reensburg?-1538 Regensburg), who was In all probability the son of the painter Ulrich Altdorfer, was named a citizen of Regensburg in 1505 under the designation "The Painter of Amberg." He became a member of the city council in 1519 and the city's master builder in 1526. He made several trips to Vienna in his lifetime, and became a leading master of the Danube School through the development of ideas adopted from Austrian and Italian art as well as from Albrecht Durer. Altdorfer's main interest lay in landscape painting. At first he tried to combine the natural world with human figures to form a harmonious whole, but this became far less important to him in his later years, and he began to create the first pure landscapes in European art. Despite their wealth of detail, his works tend to be imaginary scenes in front of a backdrop of indefinable depth. Among the artist's works are The Witches' Sabbath, 1506, Musee du Louvre, Paris; Alte Pinakothek, Munich; and The Passion Altar, c. 1515, Augustiner-Chorherrenstift, St. Florian-near-Linz.