Documenting Durer's
Landscape 's
Durer travelled to Italy on 2 occasions. First in 1494 and then again in 1505. My film considers his first journey from Nuremburg to Venice.
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During this journey, it is believed that Durer made small paintings which are regarded as the first modern, topographically accurate representations of landscape. I propose that he may also have made close observational drawings of flora and fauna from these landscapes, before or after time spent with Giovanni Bellini.
I use my photographic survey of Dolomite landscapes between Trento, where Durer made his famous ‘View of Trento’ in 1495, and Venice. Through my film work I bring together my photographs of Northern Italian landscapes and their flora, with botanical drawings by Durer which match the species I found. I make the argument that Durer was looking closely at landscape when he travelled and recorded the morphology and botanical details of landscapes in a new way in Renaissance Painting. This was to contribute to the emergence of the landscape an independent, subjective genre, separate from religious painting.