Landscape with a Double Spruce

Albrecht Altdorfer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Altdorfer was a prolific printmaker, but he produced only nine landscape etchings, which date from about 1518 to 1522. These luminous images, lacking any traditional historical or religious narratives, were the first to celebrate landscape as the primary subject matter. This sheet shows an expansive Alpine vista with large mountains, nestled villages, and a river that winds its way beyond the two sprices that command the foreground. This etching was probably produced for a small market of connoisseurs with a taste for intimate and unusual subjects. The sheet demonstrates remarkable spontaneity and a freedom of draftsmanship that echoes that of the artist’s numerous landscape drawings. Altdorfer’s revolutionary landscapes galvanized a group of artists later known as the Danube School.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art