Albrecht Altdorfer

Albrecht Altdorfer spent his career in Regensburg, where he was also town architect and a councillor. A journey along the Danube into the Alps around 1511 turned him toward landscape, and as the leading painter of the Danube School he made forests and mountains the real subject of his pictures, painting some of the first pure landscapes in European art. His Battle of Alexander at Issus (1529), made for Duke William IV of Bavaria, sets a vast battle beneath a cosmic sky.