“Albrecht Durer. The Remondini collection” is the exhibition that presents, for the first time in its entirety, the graphic treasure of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), present in the Museum of Bassano del Grappa.
With this exhibition dedicated to Dürer, the City of Bassano del Grappa celebrates the reopening of Palazzo Sturm, at the end of the latest restoration campaign that returns the Palazzo to the City.
Palazzo Sturm also houses the Remondini Engraving Museum which preserves and presents the creations of the Bassano dynasty of printers, specialized in refined editions and popular prints which, between the 600th and 700th centuries.
In the Remondini collection there are also 8500 graphic works among which the names of the great European masters of the Renaissance and the modern era stand out.
Between them Albrecht Dürer, present in the Remondini Collections with 123 woodcuts and 91 chalcography. Dürer made 260 engravings and 214 of them are in Bassano del Grappa.
Dürer began his career as a wood engraver (woodcut) in 1496. From 1512 to 1519 he worked for Emperor Maximilian I for whom he created The Triumphal Arch and The Triumphal Procession, the latter in the Bassano del Grappa collection. Most likely he passed through the city on the Brenta. He can be seen in the landscapes and background views of works such as La Grande Fortuna.
The themes treated by Dürer are mythological, religious, popular, naturalistic, portraits, landscapes and the Bassano collections include the complete series of the Apocalypse, the Great Passion, the Little Passion and the Life of Mary.
For the Emperor Maximilian he also made one of his most popular engravings, the "Rhinoceros". In memory of the exotic animal that the Emperor had destined for the Pope but which never arrived in Rome, victim of a shipwreck off the Ligurian coast.
Around this very famous work, Chiara Casarin – director of the Civic Museums – wanted to offer visitors to the exhibition a focus which, on the one hand, recalls the story and on the other, traces the fortune that that engraving had over the centuries. The theme of the Rhinoceros has in fact fascinated many artists, from Raphael to Stubbs, to Salvador Dalì up to Li-Jen Shih, whose King Kong Rhino was commissioned from Bassano to demonstrate how current and universal that subject and Durerian lesson are still today.
“Albrecht Durer. The Remondini collection” is accompanied by a video of refined artistic quality that relives Albrecht Dürer's atelier and illustrates the engraving technique. The exhibition, curated by Chiara Casarin in collaboration with Roberto Dalle Nogare, will be accompanied by a catalog with texts by Chiara Casarin, Bernard Aikema, Giovanni Maria Fara, Elena Filippi and Andrea Polati.
