The Discovery of Nature.
With increasing prosperity and the world opened up by travel, artists became increasingly curious about the world around them. Albrecht Dürer is the main promoter of this trend in the north; he homed in a particular spot or place as in his watercolour of Innsbruck which Clark calls the “first portrait of a town.”1 With some painters like Leonardo and Dürer, their researches were propelled by the scientific urge to discover the secrets of nature: its flora, fauna and animals- the unforgettable watercolour of a hare (above). Something of the same blend of scientific investigation and apocalyptic imaginings, as in Leonardo, is present in Dürer’s extraordinary drawing that records some kind of dream in which he witnessed a cosmic disaster in 1525.2 This demonstrates how rational observation of scientific minutiae could overlap with a view of nature more rooted in the fantasies of the artists.
1Ibid, 34.
2The inscription on this drawing reads. “In 1525, during the night between Wednesday and Thursday after Whitsuntide, I had this vision in my sleep, and saw how many great waters fell from heaven. The first struck the ground about four miles away from me with such a terrible force, enormous noise and splashing that it drowned the entire countryside. I was so greatly shocked at this that I awoke before the cloudburst. And the ensuing downpour was huge. Some of the waters fell some distance away and some close by. And they came from such a height that they seemed to fall at an equally slow pace. But the very first water that hit the ground so suddenly had fallen at such velocity, and was accompanied by wind and roaring so frightening, that when I awoke my whole body trembled and I could not recover for a long time. When I arose in the morning, I painted the above as I had seen it. May the Lord turn all things to the best.'
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