Concealed/revealed. Investigating Altdorfer, Cranach and Dürer

Investigating how an artist works, seeing with his eyes what nobody else has seen for centuries - using technical means it is now possible to make the invisible visible. The use of digital infrared reflectography has been being perfected at the Doerner Institute since the early 1990s - technical pioneering work. It can show how the artist sketched on the panel or canvas before starting to paint. This often reveals art of an exceptional quality - a first taste of which was displayed at the Dürer exhibition in 1998. Since then, numerous high resolution infrared pictures of overpainted sketches have been made that have never been on show before. The anniversary year 2011 provides the perfect occasion to present the best examples from works in the Alte Pinakothek to a wide public, centred on six prominent works of German Renaissance painting. The original paintings and the infrared pictures will be shown on a scale of 1:1 next to each other, enabling a direct comparison and a fascinating insight into Altdorfer's, Cranach's and Dürer's creative works.

Photo: Lucas Cranach the Elder, 'The Crucifixion of Christ', 1503, detail, Alte Pinakothek, digital infrared reflectogram: Lars Raffelt, Doerner Institute