This exhibition features more than thirty woodblock prints and engravings by (or after) the German Renaissance master printmaker Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). The artist was an extraordinary innovator who revolutionized the medium of printmaking in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Trained as a goldsmith, the painter, etcher, and draftsman Dürer was praised for the remarkable compositional complexity and high level of naturalism in his works, as evidenced in his celebrated Small Woodcut Passion (1508-10), Life of the Virgin (1503-10), and the full set of sixteen prints from the Engraved Passion (1507 12) that are featured in the exhibition.
Catapulted by his enormous talent and technical innovation, Dürer was one of the most influential artists of his age. He established an international reputation for his remarkable skills in printmaking, which he single-handedly elevated to an independent art form, producing designs for more than 300 woodblocks and more than 100 engravings over the course of a forty year career that reverberated throughout Europe.