LONDON, ENGLAND.- The British Museum presents "Albrecht Dürer and his legacy:  The graphic work ofa Renaissance artist," on view through March 23, 2003. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was in a sensethe first truly international artist. He was certainly the first who saw how to exploit the newtechnologies of printing to ensure that his works were known and sought after not just in his owncountry but across the whole of Europe, making him the great master of the multiple image and aninternational celebrity. The  AD monogram became a trademark recognized and respected world-wide.His drawings and his prints, on which his reputation was built, are at the heart of thisexhibition, the first to be devoted to him in.  As a prelude to the Museum’s 250th anniversary year in 2003, the exhibition will celebrate thesuperlative collection of Dürer prints, drawings and watercolors in The British Museum, many ofwhich were Sir Hans Sloane’s original bequest to the Museum in 1753. In addition, there will be anumber of outstanding loans, including the National Gallery’s Saint Jerome, and drawings of primeimportance from the Ashmolean Museum, the Royal Collection, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin andthe Albertina in Vienna. Two superb drawings, the Albertina’s Self-portrait as a thirteen-year oldand the world famous Praying Hands, have never before been displayed in this country. The aim ofthe exhibition is to examine Dürer’s extraordinary achievements as a draughtsman and printmakerduring his own lifetime and to look at how the artist’s widely-disseminated and innovative imageryinfluenced artists and craftsmen for centuries to come.  The exhibition begins with an examination of the artist’s revolutionary approaches toself-portraiture and looks at the differing ways that other artists have represented andconstructed his image over the centuries. The next sections follow the chronology of Dürer’s life,with an emphasis on a particular period or project in each.   They include his early years in Nuremberg; his first visit to Italy which stimulated him toproduce the earliest-known group of watercolor landscapes drawn from nature to have survived inthe history of western art; the production of his virtuoso engraving Adam and Eve in 1504 with itsnumerous related studies; his work for the Emperor Maximilian including the massive Triumphal Arch– one of the largest prints ever produced - and his three enigmatic master prints of 1513-1514,Knight, Death and the Devil, Melancholia and St Jerome in his Study. The following sections showthe impact of Dürer’s work on other artists, including Germany, Holland and Italy (Rembrandt amongthem), and his long-standing influence on ceramic designs from 16th century maiolica to 18thcentury Meissen.  A focus on the late 16th and early 17th century phenomenon known as the ‘DürerRenaissance’, largely created by the scarcity of the master’s work, shows how glossy pastiches andelegant copies of his work became so highly sought after that artists such as Hans Hoffmann becamewell-known primarily for their skill at producing them.  The exhibition concludes with Dürer’s legacy in the 19th century, particularly the way in whichhis work was interpreted by Romantic artists such as Caspar David Friedrich.  Amid the rise ofGerman nationalism, Dürer’s name and art began to achieve a virtually iconic status and a finalsection looks at how the artist became an object of almost religious veneration in the elaboratefestivals celebrating the anniversaries of his birth and death dates of 1828 and 1871.