Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Albrecht Dürer: Watercolours and Drawings > Status Update

Durer could never have achieved this sense of independence & initiative without going to Italy. But, paradoxically, he then became more independent than any Italian painter, precisely because he was an outsider without a modern tradition - the German tradition until he changed it, belonged to the past. He was the first, one-man avant- garde.

The style of these engravings...is a further demonstration of how far away we are from Durer. According to our categories, their style looks incongruously & simultaneously Gothic, Renaissance, & Baroque.

Why does a man paint himself? Among many motives, one is the same as that which prompts any man to have his portrait painted. It is to produce evidence, which will probably outlive him, that he once existed. His look will remain...