- Museum number
- 1921,0714.2
- Description
-
A table and jugs, and a slight sketch of a horse in trappings. 1520-21
Silverpoint on pale pink prepared paper
Verso: A chest and a firedog
Silverpoint, on pink prepared paper
- Production date
- 1520-1521
- Dimensions
-
Height: 115 millimetres
-
Width: 167 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- Summary of J. Rowlands 'Drawings by German Artists and Artists from German-speaking regions of Europe in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum: the Fifteenth Century, and the Sixteenth Century by Artists born before 1530', London, BM Press, 1993, no. 218:
Together with 1895,0915.982 and 1848,1125.3 this is a sheet, much cut down, from the silverpoint sketchbook drawn while Dürer toured the Netherlands in 1520-21. The shadowy outline of a horse should very probably be linked with the sketch of a caparisoned horse on a further sheet from the book (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg; Zink, p. 86, no. 64, repr.), which has been associated with ceremonial occasions that Dürer attended, such as the coronation of the Emperor Charles V in Aachen (22 October 1520) and the entry of Christian II, King of Denmark, into Brussels (3 July 1521). If as both Winkler and Flechsig have proposed, the study on the verso was done towards the end of Dürer's stay in the Netherlands, then the study of a horse would have most probably been done at the entry of the King of Denmark, whose portrait Dürer also drew (Sl,5218.48), into Brussels in early July 1521. The chest on the verso is similar to a fourteenth-century chest from the province of Limbourg, in the collection of M. Albéric de Terwangne ('Dürer aux Pays-Bas', p. 100, no. 164, repr.). A pen drawing, possibly a copy of a lost original by Dürer, 'Study of a three-legged stool and pitcher', is also in the British Museum (Sl,5218.110).
Lit. from Rowlands 1993: C. Dodgson, Burlington, xxxix, 1921, pp. 183f; BM Guide, 1928, p. 27, no. 263; Lippmann, vii, p. 23, nos. 854-5, repr.; Schilling, Sketchbook, pp. 30f. repr.; Flechsig, Dürer, ii,pp. 223f.; Tietze, iii, p. 27, nos. 827-8, repr.; H. Christ, Wallraf Jahrbuch, x, 1938, p. 194; Winkler, Dürer, iv, p. 22, nos. 784-5, repr.; Panofsky, ii, p. 142, nos. 1504-5; Rowlands, Dürer, p. 40, no. 265; Goris and Marlier, p. 183, nos. 21-22, repr.; Strauss, iv, pp. 2076ff., nos. 1521/42-43, repr.
Additional literature: Giulia Bartrum in 'Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns', edited by Stacey Sell and Hugo Chapman, Princeton and Oxford, 2015, p. 71, pls. 31 (recto and verso); Joanna Russell, Judith Rayner and Jenny Bescoby, ' Northern European Metalpoint Drawings: technical examination and analysis', London, 2016, p. 61 (for scientific analysis of the paper preparation and technique).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1928 BM London, Guide Woodcuts, Drawings of A. Dürer, no. 263
1971, BM, Dürer no.265
2015 May-Jul, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 'Drawing in Silver and Gold'
2015 10 Sep-6 Dec, London, British Museum, 'Drawing in Silver and Gold'
- Acquisition date
- 1921
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1921,0714.2
