Landscape with Two Pines (1521–22): Art, History and Details

Landscape with Two Pines (1521–22) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Albrecht Altdorfer (German, c. 1480–1538).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Primarily a painter and draftsman, Albrecht Altdorfer made only nine etchings, which were intended to imitate his drawings. Those he made between 1522 and 1525—printed in very small numbers for a growing market of print collector—are considered the first prints in European art to depict pure landscape without narrative or devotional content. Here, he displayed remarkable freedom of draftsmanship and apparent spontaneity. The site depicted cannot be readily identified, and Altdorfer probably composed it from his imagination. Early etchings, such as this one, were made on iron rather than copper plates, which rendered the lines slightly hazy.

Object facts

• Title: Landscape with Two Pines
• Date: 1521–22
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Altdorfer (German, c. 1480–1538)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching
• Dimensions: Platemark: 11.8 x 16.3 cm (4 5/8 x 6 7/16 in.); Sheet: 11.8 x 16.3 cm (4 5/8 x 6 7/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1953.627

A detail from the museum

To make this early etching, the artist used an iron plate rather than the more supple copper, which would shortly come to dominate etching technique.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Talbot, Charles W., and Alan Shestack. Prints and Drawings of the Danube School; An Exhibition of South German and Austrian Graphic Art of 1500 to 1560; [Catalogue]. [New Haven]: [Printed by the Carl Purington Rollins Printing-Office of the Yale University Press], 1969.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.