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Albrecht Altdorfer and His Legacy
About 1520, the practice of etching in Germany entered a second phase. By that point, Albrecht Dürer had abandoned the technique, and Netherlandish artists were taking it up, Lucas van Leyden most prominent among them. While their counterparts in the Netherlands had begun to use copper plates, German etchers such as Albrecht Altdorfer largely stuck with iron. Nevertheless, they expanded the notion of what the medium could achieve. Building on the accomplishments of Dürer, Altdorfer produced the first independent printed landscapes, which prominently displayed his distinctive calligraphic freedom.
Augustin Hirschvogel and Hanns Lautensack, first in Nuremberg and then in the Habsburg capital Vienna, also turned their attention to landscape. They produced topographic views of known places, mathematically precise maps, and invented vistas, among other subjects. In the 1540s, Hirschvogel worked exclusively with copper plates, which suited his personal style with its decorative flourishes and looping lines. Lautensack experimented with iron, but shifted to copper in the 1550s during the height of his activity as an etcher, and often mixed etched lines with engraving. Lautensack's print operation also became more organized and prolific: he began publishing his etchings in series and may have engaged professional printers. From the 1520s on, German artists embraced etching as a primary printmaking technique and began to test different ways to expand the market for their prints. |