"I recently found myself alone in a room of the Cathedral Museum of Mdina, with some virtually hidden gems created by Albrecht Dürer.  I had no idea before I came to Malta of the exquisite and extensive collection of woodcuts and engravings adorning the walls of this museum. This display not only demonstrated Dürer's universal and pan-European appeal but also his consummate skill exhibited across the mediums of copperplate engravings and woodcuts. Time is needed with these works for they are small and require close scrutiny to appreciate the craftsmanship and sensitivity of pure genius."

British art historian, tutor and lecturer Leslie Primo was recently invited to Malta by DFASinMalta to hold a lecture on Dürer: The Italian & Northern Renaissance.  Mr Primo took time out of his short visit to the island not only to meet up for a chat about art, London's National Gallery and Dürer but also to view Malta's own collection of  Dürer prints housed at the Mdina Cathedral Museum.

Leslie Primo has worked for many years at the National Gallery in London, taking visitors around the gallery and lecturing about the exhibited works of art, their history and the artists who created them. "Over time, I developed two streams of specialization, researching West European art history from the era spanning from 1140 through to 1500, and then proceeding to research art from the 16th century. I delved deeply in the Italian Renaissance for my MA. This all tallied excellently with the collection at the National Gallery where the entire collection of 2600+ works includes works dating from 1260 up to 1900."

Asked why he specifically chose to delve into the Renaissance, Mr Primo admits, "Actually this period chose me rather than the other way around. I did not set out with a clear cut intention to focus on this period in time. But I had already been working at the National Gallery when I began to study art history, and the Renaissance just seemed to draw me in. Then I developed a strong relationship with the works of Rubens, who is not a Renaissance artist but lies firmly within the Baroque. However I became totally fascinated with his oeuvre, going as far as writing two papers on famous works of his which especially inspire me - The Judgement of Paris,' a painting which Rubens painted eight times. At the National Gallery in London, we have two versions of this work. I tend to prefer the later version of the two, but that is my very personal preference of course. Another baroque master I especially cherish is Caravaggio and I am very eager to see his Malta works up close, since I am very familiar with all the Caravaggios at the National Gallery."
What about Dürer? Leslie Primo very evidently has a soft spot for this incredible artist, and relishes the fact that Dürer was the embodiment of a Renaissance man. "He was interested in everything, training and specialising in not one or two techniques, generally very difficult ones to master, but in several - etching, woodcutting, painting, engraving....... He ably became a master of all these very complex techniques."

Dürer was in fact a pretty heroic personality, travelling to Italy across the Alps, an arduous enough feat by today's standards, let alone by his. He travelled as a journey man, living off his art, adopting the Germanic tradition of using his trade to survive. Mr Primo lauds Dürer on several counts. "He created so many diverse masterpieces. The ultimate statement of intellectual imagination was, in my opinion, his depiction of the rhinoceros. Consider that he had never seen one in real life and yet, he used somebody else's verbal description to create such a good likeness of the animal. He used his knowledge of proportions and of the human anatomy, adopting the same principles to bring about something quite spectacular."

Delving further into what he discovered when he saw this artist's works here on Malta, Mr Primo says, "The unexpected delights include a print of the famed St. Jerome in his study, an image of which I featured in my talk to DFASinMalta. But there was also an unusual print I had not seen before, of the Virgin and Child sat within a crescent moon with 12 stars above her head. The iconography of this image is usually associated with Immaculate Conception images, and mostly seen in Spanish paintings. This opportunity to come to Malta was a welcome contrast to spending most of my time in crowded London galleries and blockbuster exhibitions, making this particular viewing all the more special. Because of the paucity of visitors at the time I was there, the pleasure was all mine and mine alone. This was indeed worth the pilgrimage to beautiful Mdina and a wonderful conclusion to my time in Malta."

What about Mr Primo's tutoring and lectures on art? With art videos appearing online and previous TV work to his credit, he has recently been involved in a new production, still in the works and under wraps, with Sky Arts. He  explains how this strand of his career developed, "People are curious about art. What is art? How do we learn to appreciate it? Then there are those who would like to understand better what they themselves own or have inherited. This is important because we are all ultimately only the custodians of art, responsible for history depicted artistically to shed light on such history to generations to come. I have seen important paintings emerge from private collections with pieces chopped off, simply because their owners decided they did not like that part  of the painting and whatever was depicted on it, or, even more absurdly, because the painting did not fit in the place they had determined for it. This is a huge shame, and only by educating people about art and its value to society, history and culture, can we avoid losing out on what is undeniably an intrinsic aspect of humanity's heritage."