Scenes of “The Alps” from Albrecht Dürer’s adventurous life

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAlbrecht Dürer traveled over the Alps on foot and horseback two times to go to Venice to study art and later to find a man who was forging his art as well as to look for what he was missing in Nuremberg.  The trip was 440 miles one way from Nuremberg to Venice. Can you imagine hiking and riding a horse that distance over the Alps?  These are pictures from my trip to the Alps in the spring.  I envision the path in the top picture being like one that Dürer followed.

 

 

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Albrecht Dürer, an artist from Nuremberg, is the subject for my next book

The year was 1500 and OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERADürer paints himself as looking almost Christ-like, because he wanted gifted artists to be recognized for their creativity rather than be regarded as mere craftsmen.  By foot and by horse, Dürer crossed the Alps to study art in Venice, but his life was forever changed by his introduction to a form of feminine beauty that was so unlike that of the stolid women in Nuremberg where he lived and worked.  How he resolves the tug of war in his heart between Beauty and Duty remains to be seen…

A little now about my book, “Duccio and the Maestà”

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It is about an artist who created an altarpiece in 1311. The artist—Duccio—was regarded as Siena’s very best painter at that time. Siena was at the apex of its power and artistic achievement. In the book, Duccio gets into trouble, though. Two powerful men want to sabotage his work and his reputation, and they use the fact that he has a secret female apprentice as their way to destroy Duccio.