Durer Biography
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Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)
A supremely gifted and versatile German artist of the Renaissance
period, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was born in the Franconian city of
Nuremberg, one of the strongest artistic and
commercial centers in
Europe
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He was a brilliant painter,
draftsman, and writer, though his first and probably greatest artistic impact
was in the medium of printmaking. Dürer apprenticed with his father, who was a
goldsmith, and with the local painter Michael Wolgemut, whose workshop produced
woodcut illustrations for major books and publications. An admirer of his
compatriot Martin Schongauer, Dürer revolutionized printmaking, elevating it to
the level of an independent art form. He expanded its tonal and dramatic range,
and provided the imagery with a new conceptual foundation. By the age of thirty,
Dürer had completed or begun three of his most famous series of woodcuts on
religious subjects: The Apocalypse (1498), the Large Woodcut Passion
cycle (ca. 1497–1500), and the Life of the Virgin (begun 1500). He went
on to produce independent prints, such as the engraving Adam and Eve, and small,
self-contained groups of images, such as the so-called Master Engravings
featuring Knight, Death, and the Devil, Saint Jerome in His Study (1514), and
Melancholia I, which were intended more for connoisseurs and collectors than for
popular devotion. Their technical virtuosity, intellectual scope, and
psychological depth were unmatched by earlier printed work.
More than any other Northern European artist, Dürer was engaged by the artistic
practices and theoretical interests of Italy. He visited the country twice, from
1494 to 1495 and again from 1505 to 1507, absorbing firsthand some of the great
works of the Italian Renaissance, as well as the classical heritage and
theoretical writings of the region. The influence of Venetian color and design
can be seen in the Feast of the Rose Garlands altarpiece (1506;
Prague,
Národní Galerie), commissioned from Dürer by a German colony of merchants living
in Venice. Dürer developed a new interest in the human form, as demonstrated by
his nude and antique studies. Italian theoretical pursuits also resonated deeply
with the artist. He wrote Four Books of Human Proportion (Vier Bücher
von menschlichen Proportion), only the first of which was published during
his lifetime (1528), as well as an introductory manual of geometric theory for
students (Underweysung der Messung), which includes the first scientific
treatment of perspective by a Northern European artist.
Dürer's talent, ambition, and sharp, wide-ranging intellect earned him the
attention and friendship of some of the most prominent figures in German
society. He became official court artist to Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian I and
his successor Charles V, for whom Dürer designed and helped execute a range of
artistic projects. In
Nuremberg,
a vibrant center of humanism and one of the first to officially embrace the
principles of the Reformation, Dürer had access to some of Europe's outstanding
theologians and scholars, including Erasmus, Philipp Melanchthon, and Willibald
Pirkheimer, each captured by the artist in shrewd portraits. For Nuremberg's
town hall, the artist painted two panels of the Four Apostles (1526;
Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek), bearing texts in
Martin Luther's translation that pay tribute to the city's adoption of
Lutheranism. Hundreds of surviving drawings, letters, and diary entries document
Dürer's travels through
Italy
and the Netherlands (1520–21), attesting to his insistently scientific
perspective and demanding artistic judgment.
The artist also cast a bold light on his own image through a number of striking
self-portraits—drawn, painted, and printed. They reveal an increasingly
successful and self-assured master, eager to assert his creative genius and
inherent nobility, while still marked by a clear-eyed, often foreboding outlook.
They provide us with the cumulative portrait of an extraordinary Northern
European artist whose epitaph proclaimed: "Whatever was mortal in Albrecht Dürer
lies beneath this mound."
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