Julian Bell - Adam Elsheimer and the Nature of Nature

About

Between his arrival in Rome in 1600 and his death there, aged 32, ten years later, Adam Elsheimer of Frankfurt created a succession of minute but powerfully influential paintings. Artists ranging from Rubens and Rembrandt to Claude Lorrain and even to the painters at the Mughal court were affected by the pictorial poetry of Elsheimer’s narratives. Julian Bell will explore the character of this art created in the era of Caravaggio and Galileo, and will argue that it opens up questions about what ‘Nature’ means, both then and now.