Book of the week: Albert & the Whale by Philip Hoare

Philip Hoare’s book on Dürer is a ‘captivating journey’ blending biography, art history, nature writing and memoir 

Albert & the Whale by Philip Hoare 

In the freezing winter of 1520, Albrecht Dürer set off from Antwerp to a remote part of the Netherlands to paint a beached whale, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. The German artist (pictured, in a 1498 self-portrait) travelled for six days; his ship was nearly wrecked. Upon reaching the shore, he found it deserted: “the great creature had sailed away”. In his magnificent new book, Philip Hoare uses this episode as a jumping-off point for “a trip of another kind entirely” – a “captivating journey” spanning centuries and genres, blending biography, art history, nature writing and memoir. Although it centres on Dürer’s life and work, Hoare summons up numerous other figures – from Luther and Shakespeare to David Bowie – and somehow makes them relevant to the Renaissance painter. A book of dazzling insight and “liquid beauty”, Albert & the Whale is Hoare’s “greatest work yet” – surpassing even the whale-focused Leviathan, for which he won the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize.

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