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Metropolitan Museum of Art Exhibits Master European Drafstmen in DÜRER AND BEYOND, 4/3-9/3

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An exhibition of works by Dürer and other masters to show at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located at 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York City, highlighting achievements in Central European Draftsmanship from 1400 to 1700.

Exhibition Dates are April 3–September 3, 2012, located in the galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs on the 2nd floor.

Central European Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1400-1700, presents a selection of 100 works from the Museum’s outstanding holdings of German, Swiss, Austrian, and early Bohemian drawings. Works by later 16th– and 17th–century artists are balanced by a group of drawings from the early 16th century, including an exceptional double-sided self-portrait by Albrecht Dürer. In addition to drawings by other major artists such as Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Altdorfer, Urs Graf, Hans Holbein the Elder, Joseph Heintz the Elder, Wenzel Hollar, and Joachim von Sandrart the Elder, the exhibition highlights works by lesser-known, but equally fascinating, draftsmen of the 15th to 17th century. The selection of drawings in the exhibition is enhanced by comparative material, including prints, illustrated books, paintings, glass roundels, and decorative objects also from the Museum’s collection, as well as by loans from the Pierpont Morgan Library and private collections.

Albrecht Dürer’s extraordinary standing as the dominant figure in German art should not lead to the conclusion that he was one of only a very small group of gifted artists. Dürer and Beyond brings together varied works of high quality by Dürer and his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors in order to present a more balanced overview of drawings made by artists active before 1700 in the Holy Roman Empire—the loosely knit state corresponding roughly with present-day Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic.

Dürer and Beyond is the first exhibition to offer an extensive overview of the Metropolitan Museum’s holdings of Central European drawings, most of which were acquired over the past two decades. Presented chronologically and grouped by city, school, and theme, the selection begins with two beautiful examples of Bohemian draftsmanship, followed by the earlier, more well-known, artists of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, with exceptional examples by Schongauer, Dürer, and Hans Baldung, which entered the Museum as part of the Robert Lehman Collection in 1975. These are supplemented by works by later 16th– and 17th–century artists, like Jost Amman and Friedrich Sustris, whose names may not be as well known to the American public but whose works are equally compelling in terms of style and subject matter.

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