RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.- Eighty-three prints by Albrecht Dürer, the Renaissance painter and graphic artist who transformed printmaking from a secondary medium meant for a popular audience into an art form of the highest importance, will be on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts through Januanry 9, 2005.

“Albrecht Dürer was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, and indeed all of Western civilization,” says Dr. Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Drawn from the Graphic Collection of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which was founded in 1692 and is one of the oldest academies in Europe, the exhibition features all of Dürer’s most celebrated prints. Among them will be his famous Apocalypse woodcut series, first published in 1498. The series presents “a haunting vision of the Book of Revelation,” says Dr. Donald Schrader, consulting curator for VMFA.

“Dürer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse print is one of the most famous images from the German Renaissance,” Schrader says. The entire Apocalypse series will be included in the exhibition.