Albrecht Dürer Vienna St Stephen’s Cathedral

It was only in October that I stood under this wall art: Albrecht Dürer Vienna 

(excuse the non-use of umulats in the title – my tablet and keyboard with WP do not allow for ‘special characters’ to be inserted into titles)

Trying to find a souvenir of my visit, I popped into the shop and never noticed the art piece above me.

It would appear that underneath the actual painting, is a drawing now reputed to be by the Northern Renaissance artist Albrect Dürer.

Erwin Pokorny, a Viennise specialist on the artist, tells the Art Newspaper that he believes “none of Dürer’s assistants or followers were able to reach the quality of the underdrawing’s virtuoso brushstrokes”.

If this turns out to be true and not just a desire on behalf of the city to encourage more visitors, evidence would be here of the artist’s unrecorded visit to Vienna. One theory is that Dürer called into Vienna enroute from Nuremberg to Venice.

Travel was obvioulsy difficult at this time, so it must have been most important to the artist to make the journey. Again, according to the theory in The Art Newspaper, Dürer may have been visiting his friend Conrad Celtis a humanist scholar who lived in Vienna from 1497 to 1508.

Albrecht Durer Vienna

This is all relatively bland information except for the more serious at enthusiast, and even more, for those who have a particular interest in the Northern Renaissance and Albrecht Dürer especially.

My interest simply stems from having been at the site recently and trying to find items of inetrest enough to write a blog piece. I had to move on from the Cathedral.

I’m not sure what impact this apparent discovery will make on the art world, but going by the huge number of visitors to the nearby Albertina Art Museum’s recent Dürer exhibition if the Cathedral plays its cards right, its visitor numbers and maybe even paying visitor numbers, could increase exponentially.

Albrecht Durer Vienna