Astounded Scholars Just Found What Appears to Be a Previously Unknown Work by Albrecht Dürer in a Church’s Gift Shop

Experts in Vienna have discovered an artwork in a
local cathedral that may bear the hand of the Renaissance
master Albrecht Dürer.

Scholars believe a newly discovered wall painting in the
city’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral features
an underdrawing that was sketched by the famed German painter and
printmaker. If so, it hints at a previously unknown chapter in the
life of the artist, who is not known to have ever visited
Vienna.

Hidden beneath dirt that had accumulated over the centuries, the
painting was found during restoration work on the Gothic cathedral,
which was built between 1137 and 1160.

In November, a few weeks after the artwork was uncovered above
the doorway of the bishop’s portal—an area of the church that now
serves as a gift shop—the archdiocese called a meeting of
researchers and scientists to determine its origin.

“The quality of the underdrawing is reminiscent of Dürer,” said
Bernd Euler-Rolle, the director of Austria’s Federal Monuments
Office, according to Kronen Zeitung.

One expert went even further.

“It is not a question of whether, but when Dürer was in
Vienna,” Erwin Pokorny, an expert on the artist, told Viennese
daily Die Presse.
“The masterful strokes are clearly recognizable as those of
Dürer.”

Believed to date from around 1505, the underdrawing was done on
plaster. The painting atop it is a triptych featuring Austrian
patron St. Leopold in the center with Saints Catherine and Margaret
on the left and right panels, respectively.

Dürer is believed to have drafted the drawings for the two
female saints, but not to have done the finished painting. If so,
it is unclear why he didn’t complete the work himself.

One theory is that the mural was commissioned by the Holy Roman
Emperor Maximilian I, who is known to have employed Dürer from
around 1512. It is possible, however, that their relationship was
formed earlier.

The Baroque art historian Joachim von Sandrart wrote in his
biography of the artist that the emperor asked Dürer to make a
significant wall painting, but there are no other records of that
work. This could be it, art historian Micahel Rainer
told Die Presse.

Dürer may have stopped in Vienna to visit his friend, Conrad
Celtis, a humanist scholar who lived in the city from 1497 to 1508,
the Art
Newspaper speculates. It may have been a stop on his
way from Nuremberg to Venice in 1505, a theory bolstered by a known
Dürer drawing in the British Museum collection done
in Windisch, in southern Austria, which is along the
route.

The cathedral has now begun an extensive conservation project,
cleaning the work and taking small samples for chemical analysis.
The full findings are set to be published in an Austrian art and
preservation magazine.

It remains to be seen how upcoming exhibitions, such as
“Dürer’s Journeys: Travels
of a Renaissance Artist,” which will appear at the National
Gallery in London (February 13–May 16, 2021), will address the
possibility that the artist made his way to Vienna. Currently, the
show plans to cover Dürer’s time in the Alps, Italy
(particularly Venice), and the Netherlands.

The museum declined to comment on the new discovery.

The post Astounded Scholars Just Found What Appears to Be a
Previously Unknown Work by Albrecht Dürer in a Church’s Gift
Shop appeared first on artnet News.