Almost 500 years after his death, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) remains revered, the first of the great German painters, and still the greatest. Famous in his lifetime, he has never been forgotten. It was he who elevated the painter from workman to artist.

His work is supreme; deliberate, tactile and born of an ability to see into the depths of a subject, from the sinew in an arm to the colour modulations in a bird's wing feathers. Most visitors come to the Albertina seeking Dürer's work - but very few actually see it.

When a group of Italian art students stand in the magnificently restored Albertina state rooms and gaze at a crouched Dürer hare - sagacious, intelligent, exquisite - as it stares back at them over a time-bridge of five centuries, what they are in fact looking at is a superb facsimile copy. The same is true of the other examples of Dürer's watercolours - a sod of turf, a dead bird, a detail of a wing - which the viewers admire as they move on at their ease through stately rooms, none of which is guarded by a security patrol.

Dürer's precise, evocative genius overwhelms. While at the Albertina I pounced on the sole remaining Dürer exhibition catalogue - it was in Spanish, but I bought it just to look at the pictures.

According to the Albertina itself, about 1,000 Dürer drawings are known to exist. The largest collections of authenticated drawings are held in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (120 sheets), the British Museum in London (130 sheets) and the Albertina (130 sheets).

He is an artist of huge range, not only in subject but also in methodology. He excelled at painting, sketching, woodcuts and copper engraving. He was also an early exponent of the self-portrait, completing his first one at 13. Following a three-year apprenticeship, he set off in 1489 as a journeyman artist, travelling through Germany and Switzerland.

His early career was notable for engravings and woodcuts, his themes mainly religious, allegorical and historical. Yet his gift for observing the natural world, particularly flowers and grasses, quickly emerged, and his historical and allegorical work often featured magnificent studies of horses, often in a battle context.

In 1494, he returned to Nuremberg and quickly established himself as a commission artist. In the autumn of that year, he travelled to Italy, which excited his interest in landscapes. While there, he is believed to have met Andrea Mantegna. Italy was important, and he returned five years later to undertake several commissions for paintings. Back in Nuremberg in 1507, he entered an exciting period, producing three of his masterworks of engraving, including St Jerome in his Study and Knight, Death and the Devil. From 1512 onwards, Dürer was busy with imperial commissions for Maximilian I.

If the Albertina Collection, with all its medieval, Renaissance, classical and romantic treasures chronicling the artistic evolution of German, Italian, Dutch and French art, is to be personified by only one artist, then let it be Dürer, whose legacy is immortalised in his majestic and diverse accomplishments and also through his influence, imaginative in its daring and vision, practical in its engraving and printmaking techniques.

Forceful arguments plead for a permanent Dürer exhibition to be mounted at the Albertina, such is the interest in him. Yet there was so much bad feeling following the 2005 exhibition at the Prado in Madrid, for which many major Dürer works were loaned, that the Austrian government decided not to allow any future Dürer loans nor to let his work leave Austria ever again. Albertina staff members are among those who shrug and apologise, saying "the Dürers are not on exhibition - you should complain".

It is a dilemma, the point at which protection becomes inaccessibility. Although, at any given time, only a fraction of major permanent collections the world over are on view, Dürer appears to be an artist for whom scholars, critics and the public want the policies reviewed. At present, his works are exhibited for only three months every six years. (The Albertina's policy on them is an extreme variation of that relating to the Vaughan Bequest, which stipulates January viewing only of the Turner watercolours at the National Gallery of Ireland. However, Henry Vaughan set his conditions in 1899 at a time no one envisaged the sophisticated lighting technology we enjoy today.)

Among the riches contained in the predominantly oriental and Islamic-themed Chester Beatty Library in Dublin is an impressive selection of European prints, including 123 Dürer prints, two of which will feature in a forthcoming exhibition. Chester Beatty was a remarkable collector, possessed of a Midas touch, yet even he never managed to buy a Dürer drawing.