![]() ![]() Landscape by Albrecht Dürer, who was born #onthisday in 1471. He travelled through Germany to Colmar, Basel (where he worked as a book illustrator) and Strasbourg, returning briefly to get married, but leaving again after a couple of months to visit northern Italy. Dürer left Nuremberg in 1490 and did not return until 1494. It meant that the city was one of the first to have printing presses and this was to be crucial in Dürer's art.Īlthough Nuremberg was a cosmopolitan hub, it was customary for artists to gain experience after their apprenticeship by travelling around, learning from others – a kind of gap year. It was wealthy and exported gold and silverwork throughout Europe. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Nuremberg was the economic capital of Germany. This exhibition presents an outstanding selection of these objects, including an impressive life-size portrait painted in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Oudry in 1749 (on loan from Staatliches Museum Schwerin), a painting by Pietro Longhi showing Clara standing in front of her audience in Venice (from Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice), a large marble statue by the Flemish artist Pieter Anton Verschaffelt from the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor, and an exceptionally rare clock mounted on a Clara figure, from a private Dutch collection made by the Parisian bronzier and clockmaker Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain.1484, silverpoint drawing by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)Īt 15, Albrecht was apprenticed to the painter Michael Wolgemut and began to learn the artistic techniques he would employ in his career, from drawing and painting to woodcut printing, which was used for book illustrations among other things. A remarkable number of likenesses were made of Clara, in many forms and using many different materials. Scholars studied her in minute detail, from head to tail, and artists became fascinated by every fold of her skin. However, the sketch wasn’t entirely accurate: it depicted the rhinoceros with an extra horn on its back, for example, and skin that resembled a suit of armour.Ĭlara’s appearance on the scene changed all this and led to a better understanding of the rhinoceros and to more accurate portrayals. ![]() He based his drawing on a sketch of a rhinoceros that was briefly in Lisbon. Until Clara’s arrival, all that people knew of her species was from a print made in 1515 by the renowned artist Albrecht Dürer. She was a hyped up, must-see cultural phenomenon, and Mout used print advertising and medals to pump that hype to the max. She prompted this sensational level of interest because no one in Europe had ever been able to see a real live rhinoceros. People touched, teased, admired and studied Clara. Eventually, Clara died in London in 1758. Upon her return to the Netherlands, she lived in a field in the North district of Amsterdam. She travelled far and wide: to Vienna and Paris, and to Naples and Copenhagen. For the next 17 years she travelled around Europe in a custom-made cart, accompanied by her entourage. ![]() Her owner Douwe Mout van der Meer was soon showing her to anyone who would pay for the pleasure, whether at fairs, markets, carnivals or royal courts. After her long voyage from India, in 1741 she arrived in Amsterdam. ![]() Clara may not have been the first rhinoceros to come to Europe, but she did become the most famous one. ![]()
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