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Artist Biography
Albrecht Durer (1471-1528),
German
 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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