Dürer, Albrecht (1471-1528)
Die Drahtziehmühle (The Wire-drawing Mill)
c.1489
Watercolor and gouache on paper, 29 x 42.6 cm
Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin
The depiction of the landscape environment, which is self-evident and particularly interesting to us, was not common for centuries, from the end of antiquity to the Renaissance. A worldview that sees true life in the hereafter cannot, of course, consider the backdrops of the earthly vale of tears to be important. Biblical history and the holy teachers were almost exclusively the subject of the pictorial representations, either placed in front of an unearthly gold background, or in the vicinity of strongly stylized abbreviations of mountain, tree and house. In the 15th century, at about the same time as the reproduction of individual portraits, interest in naturalistic landscapes also arose. An identifiable landscape background is encountered for the first time in the painting “Peter’s Fish Train” by Konrad Witz, created in 1444 in the Geneva Museum; shortly before, Jan van Eyck had convincingly depicted the shallow shore of the sea in a book illumination. Dürer was certainly familiar with drawings in the style of the coloured photographs of Bamberg (Imperial Palace, Michelsberg Monastery) by Wolfgang Katzheimer, created shortly before 1487-ca. 1500. In the present drawing, Dürer chose a completely unfamous motif: the subject is the carefully executed landscape, in which unattractive buildings on the outskirts of the city are embedded, as well as the wire drawing mill (“trothzichmüll”) – an industrial building, if you will – on the Pegnitz west of Nuremberg. The place is still recognizable today. The impressive sheet, to which the even more ancient drawing of the St. John’s Cemetery (formerly Bremen, Kunsthalle) can be assigned as a counterpart, not only marks the beginning of German landscape painting, it also opens the series of Dürer‘s landscape watercolors. Most scholars date it to the summer of 1494, after Dürer‘s return from his travels (Basel, Colmar, Strasbourg, also the Netherlands?) and before his departure on his first trip to Italy; however, it may have been written around 1489/90, after his apprenticeship with Michel Wolgemut and before the start of his journey.
Text: Hans Mielke in: Das Berliner Kupferstichkabinett. Ein Handbuch zur Sammlung, ed. by Alexander Dückers, 2nd edition, Berlin 1994, p. 107f., cat. III.27 (with further reading). (Kupferstichkabinett)