»Dürer was here« takes you on Dürer's last great journey

In 1520, Albrecht Dürer, who was already famous at the time, set out on a journey to Aachen and the Netherlands. The travel book has been preserved in a historical copy, so that Dürer's undertaking is one of the oldest surviving journeys described by an artist himself. The reason for the trip, however, was not his artistic work − the plague had broken out in Dürer's hometown of Nuremberg and he planned to have the privileges promised to him by the late Emperor Maximilian I confirmed on the occasion of the coronation of the new Emperor Charles V. These privileges included a fixed pension. These included a fixed pension and a ban on the unauthorized reprinting of his pictorial inventions. This imperial precursor to copyright had been granted to only a few individuals.

Dürer used his journey in his typical entrepreneurial way of thinking: as he passed through numerous cities, including the art stronghold of Antwerp, he distributed and sold his copperplate engravings and at the same time increased his already high reputation. The Dürer brand with the monogram »AD«, which stands for innovation and technical quality, continued to consolidate itself throughout Europe.

In addition to Dürer's approximately 90 works, »Dürer Was Here. A Journey Becomes Legend« exhibits about the same number of prints and paintings by Dürer's contemporaries and successors, whom he met or inspired on his journey. These include Quinten Massys, Lucas van Leyden, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Other exhibits such as letters, maps, and clothing transport visitors into the everyday life of Dürer's almost year-long undertaking.