Dürer and Friends at the Huntington

Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1504. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

This summer the Norton Simon Museum and the Huntington have dueling exhibitions of Goya and Dürer prints. The Huntington's Albrecht Dürer collection is not nearly as comprehensive as the NSM's Goyas, but it encompasses some of the German printmaker's greatest hits. On view are impressions of Adam and Eve and two of the three Meisterstiche (missing is Melancholia, but UCLA's Hammer Museum showed its copy earlier this year).

Occupying the anteroom to Blue Boy's portrait gallery, the exhibition also includes single examples of some of Dürer's famous contemporaries, such as Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Altdorfer, Lucas van Leyden, and Marcantonio Raimondi.

Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1497-98. The Huntington

Lucas Van Leyden, Baptism of Christ, 1510. The Huntington

Installation view of Giovanni Bellini's Madonna and Child, about 1489. The Huntington

There are two paintings, one a Bellini Madonna that is rarely shown. The Bellini is part of the Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection that Henry bought after Arabella's death to commemorate her tastes (which, unlike his, were not focused on British art). Obviously a Bellini would be on regular display, were it decently preserved and autograph. It's easy to see that the example here has condition problems.  

Dürer judged the aged Bellini as "still the best painter of them all" and added that the Venetian artist "has highly praised me before many nobles."

The exhibition's other painting is a Rest on the Flight Into Egypt that has been on view in the Huntington's Renaissance painting room, given to Adrien Ysenbrandt. The exhibition label and collection website now assign it to Ysenbrandt and Joachim Patinir.

Adrien Ysendrandt and Joachim Patinir, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 16th century. The Huntington

Patinir is the great pioneer of Netherlandish landscape painting. If the dual attribution gains traction, it would add considerably to the painting's interest.

16th-century documents establish Adrien Ysenbrandt as a famous and prolific artist. He didn't sign his pictures, so there is more guesswork than usual in reconstructing his oeuvre. The art market being what it is, Ysenbrandt's name has been attached to a gamut of pretty good (and not-so-good) Flemish Renaissance paintings. 

Patinir supplied landscape backdrops to Quentin Metsys' figure paintings. It's also recorded that Patinir and Ysenbrandt (and his brother) took a road trip to Genoa in 1511. So did Patinir also do backgrounds for Ysenbrandt? It's possible, and the Huntington now believes it has an example.

"Albrecht Dürer: Wanderlust" is at the Huntington through Sep. 23, 2024.