A walk from the center of Arco to Varignano, following in the footsteps of the painter Albrecht Dürer who, inspired by these places, painted the castle and the village at the end of the 15th century.
This itinerary follows the hypothetical route taken in 1495 by the Nuremberg painter Albrecht Dürer through the olive groves of Arco toward the places from which he painted his famous view of the town, which captures the castle surrounded by the village and olive trees. The watercolor "Venediger Klausen," now exhibited at the Louvre in Paris, captures with almost photographic quality the rocks of the cliff, the fortified village, and the silvery color of the olive leaves. The staging is, however, strongly idealized, compressing on a single canvas landscape elements and views that are quite distant from each other.
Dürer visited the town of Garda on his first trip to Italy (1494), which he undertook to closely learn about the artistic innovations introduced during the Renaissance. His destination was Venice, and from there he probably moved on to other centers in northern Italy, where he had the chance to observe works by the masters of the time, including Mantegna, Carpaccio, and the brothers Giovanni and Gentile Bellini.
The path is accompanied by some texts of Italian writers of the time (Nicolò d’Arco, Jacopo Vargnano), which evoke the amazement with which the northern traveler observed for the first time a country with a Mediterranean landscape and atmosphere.
