Albrecht Durer

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Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528), also known as Durer or Duerer in English, was a German painter, printmaker, and the German Renaissance's orator.

Dürer, a native of Nuremberg, gained his fame and clout throughout Europe while still in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints.

He was in contact with several of the top Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512, Emperor Maximilian I. Dürer patronized him. Engravings, his new print, altarpieces, portraits, and self-portraits are among Dürer's vast body of work.

The woodcuts, as well as the Apocalypse series (1498) are more Gothic than the remainder of his art.

The Knight, Death and the Demon (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514), and Melencolia I (1514), which have been the subject of extensive research and interpretation, are among his well-known engravings.

His watercolours have also established him as one of Europe's first landscape designers, while his bold woodcuts have pushed the medium's capabilities. Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, as a result of his study of Italian artists and German humanists, has firmly established his reputation as one of the Northern Renaissance's most influential figures.

His theoretical books, which emphasize mathematics, perspective, and ideal proportions, have all been helpful in determining this. Albrecht Dürer has been credited with inventing the basic idea of ray tracing, a process that is used in modern computer graphics.

Early life (1471–1490)

Dürer was born on May 21st, the third son and second son of Albrecht Dürer the Elder and Barbara Holper, who married in 1467 and had eighteen children together. Albrecht Dürer the Elder (originally Albrecht Ajtósi) was a successful goldsmith who migrated to Nuremberg from Ajtós, Hungary's Ajtós. As he himself qualified as a master, he married Holper, his master's daughter. Hans Dürer, one of Albrecht's brothers, was also a painter and worked under him. Endres Dürer, another of Albrecht's brothers, took over their father's company and became a master goldsmith. The German word "Dürer" is a hack of the Hungarian word "Ajtósi." It was "türer" in Hungarian (meaning door) at the start (from "ajtó" in front). In the coat-of-arms the family bought, a door is included. Albrecht Dürer the Younger converted "Türer," his father's naming of the family's surname, to "Dürer" to match the local Nuremberg dialect.

Anton Koberger, the Dürer's godfather, left goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher in the year of Dürer's birth. He became Germany's most influential publisher, owning twenty-four printing presses and a number of German and international offices. The Nuremberg Chronicle, Koberger's most popular book, was released in 1493 in German and Latin editions. The Wolgemut workshop produced an astonishing 1,809 woodcut drawings (though with several repetitions of the same block) on display. Dürer may have been involved in any of these projects when he first started working for Wolgemut.

Dürer's life is well chronicled in several sources because he left autobiographical writings and was widely known by his mid-twenties. Dürer learned the basics of goldsmithing and drawing from his father after a few years of school. Despite his father's desire to continue his studies as a goldsmith, he displayed such a natural gift in drawing that he began as an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut in 1486. According to his later inscription, a self-portrait, a drawing in silverpoint, is dated 1484 (Albertina, Vienna). "When I was a child" "when I was a child." The drawing is one of the oldest living children's drawings of any kind, and as Dürer's Opus One has helped define his work as deriving from, and always connected to, himself. Wolgemut, the leading artist in Nuremberg at the time, had a large workshop that made a number of works of art, including woodcuts for books. Nuremberg was once a major and wealthy city, a center for publishing, and several luxury industries. It had strong ties with Italy, particularly Venice, which was just a short distance across the Alps.

After completing his apprenticeship, Dürer followed the German tradition of taking Wanderjahre, in effect, gap years, in which the apprentice acquired skills from artists in other fields; Dürer was expected to spend four years away. He left in 1490, perhaps to work under Martin Schongauer, Northern Europe's top engraver, but he died shortly before Dürer's arrival at Colmar in 1492. It's unclear where Dürer went in the intervening period, but it is likely he went to Frankfurt and the Netherlands. Schongauer's brothers, goldsmith Caspar and Paul, and painter Ludwig welcomed them in Colmar, Dürer. In 1493, Dürer went to Strasbourg, where he may have seen the sculpture of Nikolaus Gerhaert. The first painted self-portrait by Dürer (now in the Louvre) was painted at this time, and it was likely to be sent back to his fiancée in Nuremberg.

In early 1492, Dürer travelled to Basel to stay with another brother, Martin Schongauer, the goldsmith Georg. Following an arrangement made during his absence, Dürer was married to Agnes Frey shortly after returning to Nuremberg on July 7-1494 at the age of 23. Agnes was the niece of a well-known brass worker (and amateur harpist) in the area. However, no children were born from the marriage, and Albrecht's Dürer name died out. Agnes' marriage to Albrecht was not a happy one, as shown by Dürer's letters in which he insulted Willibald Pirckheimer in a tense tone about his wife. He called her a "old crow" and made other profane remarks. Pirckheimer denied his antipathy toward Agnes, referring to her as a shrew with a bitter tongue who caused Dürer's death at a young age. Albrecht was bisexual, if not homosexual, in some of his books, as well as the closeness of his relationship with some of his closest male acquaintances, according to one.

Within three months of his marriage, Dürer left for Italy alone, perhaps triggered by a outbreak of plague in Nuremberg. As he travelled through the Alps, he made watercolour sketches. Some have survived, while others may have been derived from realistic landscapes of real places in his later life, such as his engraving Nemesis.

He went to Venice, Italy, to investigate the country's more advanced artistic traditions. Dürer had learned how to make prints in drypoint and design woodcuts in the German style, thanks to Schongauer and the Housebook Master's tutelage. He may also have had access to some Italian works in Germany, but the two trips he made to Italy had a huge influence on him. Giovanni Bellini was both the oldest and also the best of the Venetian painters, according to him. His drawings and engravings portray the influence of others, including Antonio del Pollaiuolo, with his obsession with the body's proportions; Lorenzo di Credi; and Andrea Mantegna, whose drawings he made while training. On this trip, the Dürer presumably visited Padua and Mantua.

Dürer opened his own workshop on his return to Nuremberg in 1495 (being married was a prerequisite for this). His style has progressively blended Italian influences into underlying Northern styles over the next five years. His woodcut prints were largely religious, but also secular scenes such as The Men's Bath House (ca.). 1496 (?) These were larger and more finely cut than the overwhelming majority of German woodcuts, and they were much more complex and balanced in composition.

It's now thought that Dürer cut any of the woodblocks himself; this task would have been carried out by a master craftsman. However, his time in Wolgemut's studio, which produced several carved and painted altarpieces as well as cutting woodblocks for woodcut, gave him a good idea of what the process was like and how to work with block cutters. The designer drew his artwork directly onto the woodblock block or glued a paper drawing to the block. Or, perhaps, his plans were lost during the block's cutting.

St. Michael Fighting the Dragon, as well as his illustrations, are dated 1498. He made the first seven scenes of the Great Passion in the same year, and a little later, a series of eleven on the Holy Family and saints. The Seven Sorrows Polyptych, which was commissioned by Frederick III of Saxony in 1496, was executed by Dürer and his assistants c. 1500. Dürer's father died in 1502 in 1502. Dürer's first 17 of a set depicting the Life of the Virgin, which he did not complete for many years, was produced around 1503 to 1505. Neither these nor the Great Passion were released as sets until many years ago, but prints were also available in huge quantities.

Dürer trained himself in the difficult art of using the burin to make engravings during the same period. It's likely that he acquired this skill during his early training with his father, as it was also a common goldsmithing skill. He executed the Prodigal Son in 1496, which Italian Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari lauded for praise some decades later, noting the Italian Renaissance art historian's mention of its Germanic quality. He was soon producing some spectacular and original images, including Nemesis (1502), The Sea Monster (1498) and Saint Eustace (c. 1501) with a rich landscape history and animals. His landscapes of this period, such as Pond in the Woods and Willow Mill, are quite different from those of his earlier watercolours. Rather than depicting topography, there is a lot more emphasis on captureing atmosphere rather than merely portraying topography. He created a number of Madonnas, single religious figures, and small scenes with comedic pesant figures. Prints are extremely portable, and these works made Dürer well-known throughout Europe's key cultural centers in a matter of years.

Jacopo de' Barbari, a Venetian artist who Dürer had met in Venice, attended Nuremberg in 1500, and Dürer said he learned a lot about the new developments in perspective, anatomy, and proportion from him. De' Barbari was unable to tell the world everything he knew, so Dürer began his own research, which would become a lifelong obsession. Dürer's experiments in human proportion have culminated in the famous engraving of Adam and Eve (1504), which shows his subtlety when using the burin in the texturing of flesh surfaces. This is the only known engraving with his full name.

Dürer made a slew of preparatory drawings, many of which survive, including the Betende Hände (Praying Hands) from circa 1508, a study of an apostle in the Heller altarpiece. He continued to produce photographs in watercolour and bodycolour (usually combined), including a number of still lifes of meadow sections or animals, including his Young Hare (1502) and the Great Piece of Turf (1503).

He returned to painting in Italy, where he first created a sequence of tempera on linen works. Portraits and altarpieces, including the Paumgartner altarpiece and the Adoration of the Magi, are among those included. In early 1506, he returned to Venice and stayed there until the spring of 1507. Dürer's engravings had a following and were being imitated by this time. He was given a coveted commission from the emigrant German community for San Bartolomeo's Basilica in Venice. This was the altar-piece known as the Adoration of the Virgin or the Feast of Rose Garlands. It features portraits of members of Venice's German community, but it also shows a strong Italian presence. The Emperor Rudolf II later purchased it and moved it to Prague.

Despite the fact that he was detained by the Venetians, Dürer returned to Nuremberg by mid-1507, and remained in Germany until 1520. His fame had swelled across Europe, and he was on friendly terms and in constant contact with the bulk of the major artists, including Raphael.

Dürer painted some of his finest works, including Adam and Eve (1507, for Frederick of Saxony), Virgin with the Iris (1508), and Matthaeus Landauer's Adoration of the Trinity (1511). He also produced two woodcut series, the Great Passion and the Life of the Virgin, in 1511, which was published alongside the Apocalypse collection. The post-Venetian woodcuts depict Dürer's experiment with chiaroscuro modelling effects, creating a mid-tone throughout the print, in which the highlights and shadows can be compared.

The thirty-seven Little Passion woodcuts, first published in 1511, and a series of fifteen small engravings on the same theme in 1512 are among the 1512 works from this period. When compared to his prints, painting did not make enough money to justify the time expended. Dürer's three most popular engravings were produced in 1513 and 1514: Knight, Death and the Devil (1513, presumably based on Erasmus's Handbook of a Christian Knight), St. Jerome in His Study, and Melencolia I (both 1514, the year Dürer's mother died): Pen and Ink drawings of Dürer's period of art work in 1513 were also available. Pirckheimer's friend Pirckheimer wrote a similar story. These drafts were later used to produce Lusterweibchen chandeliers, combining an antler with a wooden sculpture.

He created his woodcut of a Rhinoceros in 1515, but not knowing the animal had arrived in Lisbon from a written description and sketch by another artist. An image of the Indian rhinoceros has such power that it remains one of his best-known books and is also used in some German school science text-books as late as the last century. He created a variety of works in the years leading up to 1520, including the woodblocks for the first western printed star charts in 1515 and tempera on linen portraits in 1516. His only experiments with etching occurred in this period, with five of them being produced between 1515–1518 and a sixth in 1518; a method he may have abandoned as unsuitable to his aesthetic of methodical, classical style.

Maximilian I became the Dürer's top patron from 1512 to 15. He commissioned The Triumphal Arch, a large work produced from 192 separate blocks, the symbolism of which is partially inspired by Pirckheimer's translation of Horapollo's Hieroglyphica. Johannes Stabius, the master builder and court-painter Jörg Kölderer, as well as Hieronymous Andreae, created the project and explanations, with Dürer as the designer-in-chief. The Arch was followed by The Triumphal Procession, which began in 1512 by Marx Treitz-Saurwein and included woodcuts by Albrecht Altdorfer and Hans Springinklee, as well as Dürer.

Dürer worked with pen on the marginal images for an Emperor's printed Prayer-Book, but they were not widely available until facsimiles were published in 1808 as part of the first book to be published in lithography. Dürer's book was stopped due to an unidentified reason, but artists such as Lucas Cranach the Elder and Hans Baldung continued to decorate the book. Dürer produced several portraits of the Emperor, including one shortly before Maximilian's death in 1519.

Maximilian was a cash-trapped king who would sometimes neglect to pay, but he was still the Dürer's most important patron. Artists and learned men were respected in his court, which was not unusual at the time (later, Dürer said that as a non-noble in Germany, he was regarded as a parasite). Pirckheimer (who appeared in 1495 and later in Maximilian) was also a key court figure and a key cultural patron, who had a major influence on Dürer as his tutor in classical knowledge and humanistic critical analysis, as well as a collaborator. In Maximilian's court, Dürer collaborated with a number of other exceptional artists and scholars of the time, such as Johannes Stabius, Konrad Peutinger, Conrad Celtes, and Hans Tscherte (an imperial architect).

As a king of his occupation, Dürer demonstrated a great deal of confidence in his abilities. One day, the emperor, who wanted to give Dürer an idea, tried to sketch with the charcoal but ultimately failed. "This is my scepter," Dürer took the charcoal from Maximilian's hand, finished drawing, and told him: "This is my scepter."

Maximilian discovered that the ladder Dürer used was too short and fragile, and he begged a noble to keep it for him. The noble denied, saying that it was within his right to serve as a non-noble. Maximilian decided to hold the ladder himself and told the noble that he could make a noble out of a peasant any day, but that he could not make a noble out of a noble.

This tale and a 1849 painting depicting it by August Siegert have all become relevant. Dürer's painting at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna depicts a nineteenth-century painting. This reveals a seventeenth-century "artist legend" about the previous encounter (in which the emperor stayed the ladder) – that this corresponds to the time Dürer was assisting with the Viennese murals. Art connoisseurs discovered a piece of handwriting now traced to Dürer, which shows that the Nuremberg master had actually participated in designing the murals at St. Stephen's Cathedral. The commissioner's identity is discussed in Nuremberg's recent 2022 Dürer exhibition (in which the drawing style is also traced and connected to Dürer's other works). Now the painting of Siegert (and the myth associated with it) can be used as proof that this was Maximilian. The Dürer is known to have attended the Emperor's service in 1511, and the mural's date is estimated to be around 1505, but it is likely that they knew and worked with each other before 1511.

The discovery of space by Dürer resulted in a friendship and collaboration with court astronomer Johannes Stabius. Stabius has also served as both Dürer's and Maximilian's go-between for their financial difficulties.

The first world map to be projected on a solid geometric sphere was created by Dürer and Stabius in 1515. Also in 1515, Stabius, Dürer, and the astronomer Konrad Heinfogel produced the first planispheres of both southern and northern hemispheres, as well as the first published celestial maps, which sparked renewed interest in the field of uranometry throughout Europe.

Maximilian's death occurred at a time when Dürer was worried that he was losing "my sight and freedom of hand" (probably due to arthritis), and that Martin Luther's books were affecting him. In July 1520 Dürer's fourth and last major journey to renew the Imperial pension Maximilian had given him and to ensure the patronage of the new emperor, Charles V, who was to be crowned at Aachen. Dürer and his wife and her maid travelled through the Rhine to Cologne and then to Antwerp, where he was warmly welcomed and produced numerous drawings in silverpoint, chalk, and charcoal. He toured Cologne (where he admired Stefan Lochner's painting), Nijmegen, 'Hertogenbosch, Bruges (where he appreciated Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges), and Zeeland (where he admired van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece).

Dürer kept a large number of prints with him and wrote in his diary to whom he gave, exchanged, or sold them and how much money was spent. This is the first indication of the monetary value placed on printed newspapers at this time. Unlike paintings, their selling was very rarely chronicled. Although giving valuable documentary evidence, Dürer's Netherlandish diary also revealed that the trip was not profitable. For example, Dürer gifted Maximilian's last portrait to his daughter, Margaret of Austria, but she later switched to some white cloth after Margaret refused to accept the portrait and refused to accept it. Bernard van Orley, Jan Provoost, Gerard Horenbout, Jean Mone, Joachim Patinir and Tommaso Vincidor all met during this trip, but he did not appear to meet Quentin Matsys, but did not appear to meet Quentin Matsys.

After securing his pension, Dürer returned home in July 1521, suffering from an undetermined illness that bounded him for the remainder of his life and greatly reduced his workload.

On his return to Nuremberg, Dürer worked on a number of grand projects with religious significance, including a crucifixion scene and a Sacra conversazione, but neither of which were completed. This may have been due in part to his poor health, but also because of the attention he paid to geometry and perspective, the proportions of men and horses, and fortification.

However, one result of this change in emphasis was that Dürer made little as an artist during his last five years. There was only a portrait of Hieronymus Holtzschuher, a Madonna and Child (1526), Salvator Mundi (1526), and two panels depicting St. John with St. Peter in the background and St. Paul with St. Mark in the background. Although Dürer gave Nuremberg's City of Nuremberg 100 guilders in exchange, he received this last outstanding work, the Four Apostles.

Dürer's engravings were limited to portraits and illustrations for his treatise. The portraits include Cardinal-Elector Albert of Mainz; Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony; Willibald Pirckheimer, a scholar of the humanist scholar; and Erasmus of Rotterdam. For those of the Cardinal, Melanchthon, and Dürer's last major work, a drawn portrait of Nuremberg patrician Ulrich Starck depicted the sitters in perspective.

Despite protesting a lack of a formal classical education, Dürer was keen on intellectual topics and learned a lot from his boyhood friend Willibald Pirckheimer, who, no doubt, consulted on the content of several of his images. He also gained a great deal of joy from his friendships and contacts with Erasmus and other scholars. During his lifetime, Dürer was able to produce two books. "The Four Books on Measurement" was published in Nuremberg in 1525 and was the first book for adults on mathematics in Germany, as well as being cited later by Galileo and Kepler. In 1527, the other, a study on city fortifications, was published. The "four Books on Human Proportion" were published posthumously, just after his death in 1528.

Dürer died in Nuremberg at the age of 56, leaving an estate worth 6,874 florins, a significant sum. He is buried in the Johannisfriedhof cemetery. His large house (purchased in 1509 from the heirs of the astronomer Bernhard Walther), where his workshop was located and where his widow lived until his death in 1539, is a popular Nuremberg landmark.

According to Dürer's writings, he may have been sympathetic to Luther's ideas, but it is uncertain if he ever left the Catholic Church. In 1520, Dürer wrote of his desire to draw Luther in his diary: "And Lord, please tell me that I may go to Dr. Martin Luther," says the artist; so I want to make a lasting memorial of the Christian man who helped me overcome so many difficulties. "We must stand in scorn and danger because we are reviled and called heretics," Dürer wrote in a letter to Nicholas Kratzer in 1524. Pirckheimer's "I confess that in the beginning, I believe in Luther, like our Albert of blessed memory"... but the truth has gotten worse," Pirckheimer wrote in a letter to Johann Tscherte in 1530. Dürer may have contributed to Nuremberg City Council's ban on Lutheran sermons and services in March 1525. Dürer, as a result of Luther's Babylonian Captivity in 1520, had links with several reformers, including Zwingli, Andreas Karlstadt, Melanchthon, Erasmus, and Cornelius Grapheus, who received Dürer's Babylonian Captivity in 1520. Nevertheless, Erasmus and C. Grapheus are more likely to be Catholic change agents. Also, from 1525, "the year that saw the peak and fall of the Peasants' War, the artist can be seen to distance himself somewhat from the [Lutheran] movement."

Later works by Dürer have also shown Protestant sympathies. His 1523 Woodcut The Last Supper woodcut has often been attributed to an evangelical theme, espousing the Gospel, as well as the inclusion of the Eucharistic cup, an expression of Protestant utrachism. The delaying of the engraving of St Philip, which was completed in 1523 but not published until 1526, may have been due to Dürer's inability with images of saints; even if Dürer was not an iconoclast, he analyzed and challenged the position of art in religion in his last years.

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