Adoration of the Magi (Dürer)

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Adoration of the Magi (Albrecht Dürer)
Adoration of the Magi
Albrecht Dürer , 1504
oil on wood
99 × 113.5 cm
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Adoration of the Magi (Italian Adorazione dei Magi ) is a painting on softwood by Albrecht Dürer . The artist's monogram and the year 1504 can be seen at the bottom left of the picture on the surface of a hewn stone . The picture is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence .

history

The picture was commissioned by Friedrich the Wise for the castle church in Wittenberg and completed in 1504. The date is recorded on a stone below the stable together with Dürer's monogram . The picture is considered to be one of his most important works, which were created between his first and second trip to Italy.

Fra Bartolomeo offering in the temple , 1516, KHM Vienna

Since 1603 the picture has been in the imperial art collection in Vienna as a gift from the King of Saxony, Christian II , most of it in Schönbrunn Palace . In 1793 it came to Florence at the suggestion of the then director of the Uffizi, Luigi Lanzi . Lanzi, who wanted to add an important work by Albrecht Dürer to his collection, offered the painting “Offering in the Temple” by Fra Bartolomeo in exchange . Today the picture is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

description

Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi , around 1481/82, unfinished. Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Despite certain similarities with the architecture in the background of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci with the same title, Dürer probably did not know the unfinished work.

Dürer has depicted himself in the picture in the form of the king with the green robe and shoulder-length curly hair that is typical of him.

The picture shows Dürer, who was already famous as a graphic artist, as a master in dealing with color who is in no way inferior to his Italian contemporaries. However, the perspective is not yet completely correct. An analysis of Dürer's working method on this picture was carried out with the help of infrared images , which made the signature visible. A drawing by Dürer with the same subject, but with a local southern German color, dates from 1524 and is in the Albertina in Vienna .

Individual evidence

  1. Costantino Porcu (Ed.) Dürer . Milan, Rizzoli 2004. p. 112.
  2. Gloria Fossi. Uffizi. Florence, Giunti 2010. p. 346.
  3. Looking over your shoulder while painting , Spektrum.de, May 2, 2012, online, accessed June 17, 2015 .

literature

  • Gustav Glück: On Dürer's Adoration of the Magi in Florence . In the Yearbook of the Prussian Art Collections 19, 1908, pp. 119–122.
  • Fedja Anzelewsky : Albrecht Dürer. The painterly work , 2. new work. Edition, Berlin 1991, No. 82.
  • Peter Strieder : Dürer. Langewiesche Verlagbuchhandlung, Königstein im Taunus, 3rd edition 2012.

Web links