Albrecht Dürer: Master Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints from the Albertina
an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., March 24–June 9, 2013
Catalog of the exhibition by Andrew Robison and Klaus Albrecht Schröder National Gallery of Art/DelMonico, 315 pp., $75.00; $40.00 (paper)
In the summer of 1494, soon after his engagement, Albrecht Dürer made a startlingly intimate drawing of his fiancée, Agnes Frey. One might have expected a twenty-three-year-old to depict his betrothed as a source of love, or comfort, or well-being, all the more since her substantial dowry would soon launch his independent career. Instead, Albrecht showed Agnes twisted up in a knot of anxious introversion. She looks withdrawn and preoccupied, and the circles under her heavy-lidded eyes may even make one think she has been crying.…