03 — ARTWORK
St Jerome by the Pollard Willow
- MEDIUM
- Drypoint, 208 x 185 mm
- TYPE
- Religious
PALETTE
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THIS REPRODUCTION
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CURRENT LOCATION · Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)
- FILE
- 750 × 899 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
One of only three drypoints by Dürer. The possibilities of the new medium are fully exploited. The elements are interpreted in terms of tonal values rather than plastic form. This is the most picturesqueTerm covering a set of attitudes towards landscape, both real and painted, that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It indicated an aesthetic approach that found pleasure in roughness and irregularity, and an attempt was made to establish it as a critical category between the 'beautiful' and the 'Sublime'. Picturesque scenes were thus neither serene (like the beautiful) nor awe-inspiring (like the Sublime), but full of variety, curious details, and interesting textures — medieval ruins were quintessentially Picturesque. Natural scenery tended to be judged in terms of how closely it approximated to the paintings of favoured artists such as Gaspard Dughet, and in 1801 the Supplement to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary by George Mason defined 'Picturesque as: 'what pleases the eye; remarkable for singularity; striking the imagination with the force of painting; to be expressed in painting; affording a good subject for a landscape; proper to take a landscape from.' The Picturesque Tour in search of suitable subjects was a feature of English landscape painting of the period, exemplified, for example, in the work of Girtin and (early in his career) of Turner, and the Picturesque generated a large literary output; much of it was pedantic and obsessive and it became a popular subject for satire. of Dürer's prints. Its strength, clarity and lighting remain unsurpassed. Unquestionably it served Rembrandt as a model.
The date may have been added later by someone else. However, this date is placed on the engravingA print made from a metal plate that has had a design cut into it with a sharp point. Ink is smeared over the plate and then wiped off, the ink remaining in the etched lines being transferred when the plate is pressed very firmly onto a sheet of paper. in very similar fashion to that of the Madonna with the Pear. There are some impressions of this print before the monogram; also a few where a portion of the upper left corner is inexplicably screened off, shearing off the blades of grass on the top of the rock.
OTHER WORKS BY ALBRECHT DÜRER
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rc1cf874f3f5d3c,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {St Jerome by the Pollard Willow by DÜRER, Albrecht},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-14},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/drer-albrecht-r9b10ff91cb62c2/st-jerome-by-the-pollard-willow-rc1cf874f3f5d3c},
urldate = {2026-09-14},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-14. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.