The Wire-Drawing Mill

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The Wire-Drawing Mill: Albrecht Durer

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Art Type: Various Paintings
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Albrecht Durer Various Paintings - The Wire-Drawing Mill

Keywords: Wire, Drawing, Mill

Work Overview: The Wire-Drawing Mill
Albrecht Durer
Date: 1494
Style: Northern Renaissance
Genre: cityscape
Watercolour and gouache on paper
286 x 426 mm

Along with Saint John's Church, this is among Dürer's earliest watercolours, dating either from 1489 or 1494. Inscribed `wire-drawing mill', it depicts a workshop which manufactured copper wire.

From a raised vantage point, our gaze passes over the large and small mills in the meadows on the banks of the River Pegnitz belonging to the city of Nuremberg. The buildings in the foreground are the Grossweiden Mill on the north bank of the River Pegnitz, near St John's Church. A mill wheel leans against one of the buildings. On the far side of the river is the Kleinweiden Mill. Beyond this are villages lying on the outskirts of Nuremberg and the mountains. Dürer has again lavished great care on some of the details, such as the distant houses. His colouring is reminiscent of Netherlandish landscapes, with brown tones in the foreground, greens in the middle ground and bluish mountains in the distance.

Although the detailed composition of the sheet still accords with Late Medieval workshop tradition, the fine glazes, produced with considerably thinned watercolours, already herald the freer brushstrokes of later watercolours. In this respect the sheet can be called a milestone in Dürer's development of the technique of watercolour painting.

Albrecht Dürer was most of the most prolific and influential German artists of the High Renaissance. While Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo were blowing up Italy with their stunning creations, Dürer was redefining art in the North. He was born in 1471 in Nuremberg, a town now famous for the Nazi trials that took place there after WWII. However, in Dürer’s time, the town was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Dürer was a genius and wrote books relating to geometry, human proportions, and art in the natural world. The way he depicted images was so lifelike and precise that his paintings perfectly reflected Alberti’s adage, “a window on the world.” He married in 1494 and worked as an apprentice for an engraver. Perhaps this early exposure to this medium explains why Dürer was such a gifted engraver, woodcutter, and painter. His most famous works are his self portraits, woodcuts of the Apocalypse, and his scenes of nature.

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Albrecht Durer

Work Overview