'Albrecht Dürer' (
pronounced /'al.bʀɛçt 'dy.ʀɐ/) (
May 21,
1471 –
April 6,
1528)
[Mueller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Durers'', Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-012815-2.] was a
German painter and
mathematician.
Along with
Rembrandt and
Goya, Dürer is considered one of the greatest creators of
old master prints. He was born and died in
Nuremberg,
Germany and is best known for his
prints, often executed in series, including the ''Apocalypse'' (1498) and his two series on the passion of Christ, the ''Great Passion'' (1498–1510) and the ''Little Passion'' (1510–1511). Dürer's best known individual
engravings include '' (1513), '' (1514) and ''
Melencolia I'' (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and speculation. His most iconic images are his woodcuts of the '' (1497–1498) from the ''Apocalypse'' series, the "
Rhinoceros", and numerous self-portraits in oils. Dürer probably did not cut his own woodblocks but employed a skilled carver who followed his drawings faithfully.
[1] He painted a number of religious works in oils and made many brilliant
watercolours and drawings, which through modern reproductions are now perhaps his best known works.
His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Renaissance in Northern Europe ever since. His work reflected the apocalyptic spirit of his time, when famine, plague, and social and religious upheaval were common. He was sympathetic to the reform work of Luther who at his death wrote to a friend, "Affection bids us mourn for one who was the best."
Early life
The earliest painted ''Self-Portrait'' (1493) by Albrecht Dürer, oil, originally on
vellum Louvre,
Paris
Dürer was born on
May 21,
1471, third child and second son of his parents, who had between fourteen and eighteen children. His father was a successful
goldsmith, originally named Ajtósi, who in 1455 had moved to Nuremberg from Ajtós, near
Gyula in
Hungary. The German name "Dürer" is derived from the Hungarian, "Ajtósi". Initially, it was "Thürer," meaning doormaker, which is "ajtós" in Hungarian (from "ajtó" meaning door). A door is featured in the
coat-of-arms the family acquired. Albrecht Dürer the Elder married Barbara Holper, from a prosperous Nuremberg family, in 1467.
His godfather was
Anton Koberger, who left
goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher in the year of Dürer's birth. He quickly became the most successful publisher in Germany, eventually owning twenty-four
printing-presses and having many offices in Germany and abroad. His most famous publication was the
Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493 in German and Latin editions. It contained an unprecedented 1,809
woodcut illustrations (with many repeated uses of the same block) by the
Wolgemut workshop. Albrecht Dürer may well have worked on some of these, as the work on the project began while he was with Wolgemut.
It is fortunate Dürer left autobiographical writings and that he became very famous by his mid-twenties. Because of this, his life is well documented from a number of sources. After a few years of school, Dürer started to learn the basics of
goldsmithing and drawing from his father. Though his father wanted him to continue his training as a goldsmith, he showed such a precocious talent in drawing that he started as an apprentice to
Michael Wolgemut at the age of fifteen in
1486. A superb self-portrait, a
drawing in
silverpoint, is dated 1484 (
Albertina, Vienna) “when I was a child”, as his later inscription says. Wolgemut was the leading artist in Nuremberg at the time, with a large workshop producing a variety of works of art, in particular woodcuts for books. Nuremberg was a prosperous city, a centre for publishing and many luxury trades. It had strong links with
Italy, especially
Venice, a relatively short distance across the
Alps.
Gap year, or four
After completing his term of apprenticeship in 1489, Dürer followed the common German custom of taking "wanderjahre" — in effect a
gap year — however Dürer was away nearly four years, travelling through Germany,
Switzerland, and probably, the Netherlands. To his great regret, he missed meeting
Martin Schongauer, the leading engraver of Northern Europe, who had died shortly before Dürer's arrival. He was very hospitably treated by Schongauer's brother, and seems at this time to have acquired some works by Schongauer he is known to have owned. His first painted self-portrait (now in the
Louvre) was painted in
Strasbourg, probably to be sent back to his fiancé in Nuremberg.
Marriage and first visit to Italy
''Young Hare'', 1512, Watercolour and bodycolour,
Albertina.
Very soon after his return to Nuremberg, on
July 7,
1494, at the age of 23, Dürer was married to Agnes Frey following an arrangement made during his absence. She was the daughter of a prominent brass worker (and amateur harpist) in the city. The nature of his relationship with his wife is unclear, but it would not seem to have been a love-match, and his portraits of her lack warmth. They had no children. Within three months Dürer left for Italy, alone, perhaps stimulated by an outbreak of plague in Nuremberg. He made
watercolour sketches as he traveled over the Alps. Some have survived and others may be deduced from accurate landscapes of real places in his later work, for example his engraving ''Nemesis''. These are the first pure landscape studies known in Western art.
In Italy, he went to
Venice to study its more advanced artistic world.
[Lee, Raymond L. & Alistair B. Fraser. (2001) ''The Rainbow Bridge'', Penn State Press. ISBN 0-271-01977-8.] Through Wolgemut's tutelage, Dürer had learned how to make prints in
drypoint and design
woodcuts in the German style, based on the works of
Martin Schongauer and the
Housebook Master.
. He also would have had access to some Italian works in Germany, but the two visits he made to Italy had an enormous influence on him. He wrote that
Giovanni Bellini was the oldest and still the best of the artists in Venice. His drawings and engravings show the influence of others, notably
Antonio Pollaiuolo with his interest in the proportions of the body,
Mantegna,
Lorenzo di Credi and others. Dürer probably visited
Padua and
Mantua on this trip also.
Return to Nuremberg
On his return to Nuremberg in 1495, Dürer opened his own workshop (being married was a requirement for this). Over the next five years his style increasingly integrated Italian influences into underlying Northern forms. Dürer lost both of his parents during the next decade. His father died in 1502 and his mother died in 1513.
[Allen, L. Jessie. (1903) ''Albrecht Dürer'', Methuen & co.] His best works in the first years of the workshop were his
woodcut prints, mostly religious, but including secular scenes such as, ''The Mens Bath-house'' (c1496). These were larger than the great majority of German woodcuts hitherto, and far more complex and balanced in composition.
It is now thought unlikely that Dürer cut any of the woodblocks; this task would have been left for a specialist craftsman. His training in Wolgemut's studio, which made many carved and painted altarpieces, and both designed and cut woodblocks for
woodcut, however, evidently gave him great understanding of what the technique could be made to produce, and how to work with block cutters. Dürer either drew his design directly onto the woodblock itself, or glued a paper drawing to the block. Either way his drawing was destroyed during the cutting of the block.
His famous series of sixteen great designs for the ''Apocalypse'' 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. Around 1503–1505 he produced the first seventeen of a set illustrating the life of the Virgin, which he did not finish for some years. Neither these, nor the ''Great Passion,'' were published as sets until several years later, but prints were sold individually in considerable numbers.
''Lamentation for Christ'', oil, 1500-3
During the same period Dürer trained himself in the difficult art of using the
burin to make
engravings. Perhaps he had begun learning this skill during his early training with his father. The first few were relatively unambitious, but by 1496 he was able to produce the masterpiece, the ''Prodigal Son,'' which
Vasari singled out for praise some decades later, noting its Germanic quality. He was soon producing some spectacular and original images, notably, ''Nemesis'' (1502), ''The Sea Monster'' (1498), and ''Saint Eustace'' (1501), with a highly detailed landscape background and beautiful animals. He made a number of
Madonnas, single religious figures, and small scenes with comic peasant figures. Prints are highly portable and these works made Dürer famous throughout the main artistic centres of Europe within a very few years.
The Venetian artist
Jacopo de' Barbari, whom Dürer had met in Venice, visited Nuremberg in 1500, and Dürer said that he learned much about the new developments in
perspective,
anatomy, and
proportion from him. He was unwilling to explain everything he knew, so Dürer began his own studies, which would become a lifelong preoccupation. A series of extant drawings show Dürer's experiments in human proportion, leading to the famous engraving of, ''
Adam and Eve'' (1504); showing his subtlety while using the
burin in the texturing of flesh surfaces.
This is the only existing engraving signed with his full name.
Dürer made large numbers of preparatory drawings, especially for his paintings and engravings, and many survive, most famously the ''Praying Hands'' (1508
Albertina, Vienna), a study for an apostle in the Heller altarpiece. He also continued to make images in
watercolour and
bodycolour (usually combined), including a number of exquisite still lives of meadow sections or animals, including his "
Hare" (1502,
Albertina, Vienna).
Second visit to Italy
In Italy, he returned to painting, at first producing them on
linen. These include portraits and altarpieces, notably, the Paumgartner
altarpiece and the ''
Adoration of the Magi''. In early 1506, he returned to Venice and stayed there until the spring of 1507.
By this time Dürer's engravings had attained great popularity and were being copied. In Venice he was given a valuable commission from the emigrant German community for the church of
St. Bartholomew. The picture painted by Dürer was closer to the Italian style—the ''Adoration of the Virgin'', also known as the ''Feast of Rose Garlands''. It was subsequently acquired by the Emperor
Rudolf II and taken to
Prague. Other paintings Dürer produced in Venice include, ''The Virgin and Child with the Goldfinch'', ''Christ disputing with the Doctors'' (supposedly produced in a mere five days), and a number of smaller works.
Nuremberg and the masterworks
This detail from ''Salvatore Mundi'', an unfinished oil painting on wood, reveals Dürer's highly detailed preparatory drawing. ''See ''
Despite the regard in which he was held by the Venetians, Dürer was back in Nuremberg by mid-1507. He remained in Germany until 1520. His reputation had spread throughout
Europe. He was on friendly terms and in communication with most of the major artists of Europe, and exchanged drawings with
Raphael.
The years between his return from Venice and his journey to the
Netherlands are divided according to the type of work with which he was principally occupied. The first five years, 1507–1511, are pre-eminently the painting years of his life. He worked with a vast number of preliminary drawings and studies and produced what have been accounted his four best works in painting, ''Adam and Eve'' (1507), ''Virgin with the Iris'' (1508), the altarpiece the ''Assumption of the Virgin'' (1509), and the ''Adoration of the Trinity by all the Saints'' (1511). During this period he also completed the two woodcut series, the ''Great Passion'' and the ''Life of the Virgin'', both published in 1511 together with a second edition of the ''Apocalypse'' series.
He complained that painting did not make enough money to justify the time spent, when compared to his prints, and from 1511 to 1514 concentrated on printmaking, in woodcut, and especially, engraving. The major works he produced in this period were the thirty-seven
woodcut subjects of the ''Little Passion'', published first in 1511, and a set of fifteen small engravings on the same theme in 1512. In 1513 and 1514 he created his three most famous
engravings, ''The Knight, Death, and the Devil'' (or simply, ''The Knight'', as he called it, 1513), the enigmatic and much analyzed ''Melencolia I'', and ''St. Jerome in his Study'' (both 1514).
In 'Melencolia I' appears a fourth-order
magic square which is believed to be the first seen in European art. The two numbers in the middle of the bottom row give the date of the engraving, 1514.
In 1515, he created a woodcut of a ''
Rhinoceros'' which had arrived in Lisbon, from a written description and brief sketch, without ever seeing the animal depicted. Despite being relatively inaccurate (the animal belonged to a now extinct Indian species), the image has such force that it remains one of his best-known, and was still being used in some German school science text-books early last century.
In the years leading to 1520 he produced a wide range of works, including portraits in
tempera on
linen in 1516, engravings on many subjects, a few experiments in etching on plates of
iron, and parts of the ''Triumphal Arch'' and the ''Triumphs of Maximilian'' which were huge propaganda woodcut projects commissioned by
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. He drew marginal decorations for some pages of an edition of the Emperor's printed
prayer book. These were quite unknown until facsimiles were published in 1808 as the first book published in
lithography. The decorations show a lighter, more fanciful, side to Dürer's art, as well as, his usual superb draftsmanship. He also drew a portrait of the Emperor Maximilian, shortly before his death, in 1519.
Journey to the Netherlands and beyond
St. Christopher,
engraving, 1521, by Albrecht Dürer
In the summer of 1520 Dürer made his fourth, and last, journey. He sought to renew the Imperial pension Maximilian had given him (typically, instructing the city of Nuremberg to pay it), to secure new
patronage following the death of Maximilian, and to avoid an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg. He, his wife, and her maid set out in July for the Netherlands in order to be present at the coronation of the new emperor,
Charles V. He journeyed by the
Rhine to
Cologne, and then to
Antwerp, where he was well received and produced numerous drawings in
silverpoint,
chalk, and
charcoal. Besides going to
Aachen for the
coronation, he made excursions to Cologne,
Nijmegen,
's-Hertogenbosch,
Brussels,
Bruges,
Ghent, and
Zeeland. In Brussels he saw "the things which have been sent to the king from the golden land" — the
Aztec treasure that
Hernán Cortés had sent home to
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V following the fall of
Mexico. Dürer wrote that this treasure trove "was much more beautiful to me than miracles. These things are so precious that they have been valued at 100,000 florins".
Dürer appears to have been collecting for his own
cabinet of curiosities, and he sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of
coral, some large fish fins, and a wooden weapon from the
East Indies.
He took a large stock of prints with him, and wrote in his diary to whom he gave, exchanged, or sold them, and for how much. This gives rare information on the monetary value placed on
old master prints at this time. Unlike paintings, their sale was very rarely documented. He finally returned home in July 1521, having caught an undetermined illness which afflicted him for the rest of his life, and he greatly reduced his rate of work.
Final years in Nuremberg
The title page of ''Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion'' showing the monogram signature of Albrecht Dürer
Back in Nuremberg, Dürer began work on a series of religious pictures. Many preliminary sketches and studies survive, but no paintings on the grand scale ever were carried out. This was due in part to his declining health, but more because of the time he gave to the preparation of his theoretical works on
geometry and perspective, the proportions of men and horses, and
fortification. Although having little natural gift for writing, he worked diligently to produce his works.
The consequence of this shift in emphasis was that during the last years of his life, Dürer produced comparatively little as an artist. In painting there was only a portrait of , a , a , and two panels showing
St. John with
St. Peter in and
St. Paul with
St. Mark in the . In copper-engraving, Dürer produced only a few portraits, those of the cardinal-elector of Mainz (''The Great Cardinal''),
Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, and his friends the
humanist scholar
Willibald Pirckheimer,
Philipp Melanchthon, and
Erasmus of Rotterdam.
Despite complaining of his lack of formal education, especially in the classical languages, Dürer was greatly interested in intellectual matters, and learned much from his great friend
Willibald Pirckheimer, whom he no doubt consulted on the content of many of his images. He also derived great satisfaction from his friendship and correspondence with
Erasmus and other scholars. Dürer succeeded in finishing and producing two books during his lifetime. One on geometry and perspective, ''The Painter's Manual'' (more literally, the ''Instructions on Measurement'') was published at Nuremberg in 1525 and it is the first book for adults to be published on
mathematics in German.
His work on fortification was published in 1527, and his work on human proportion was brought out in four volumes shortly after his death at the age of fifty-six, in 1528.
It is clear from his writings that Dürer was highly sympathetic to
Martin Luther, and he may have been influential in the City Council declaring for Luther in 1525. However, he died before religious divisions had hardened into different churches, and may well have regarded himself as a reform-minded
Catholic to the end.
Dürer died in Nuremberg at the age of 56.
He left an estate valued at 6,874 florins - a considerable sum. His large house (which he bought from the heirs of
Bernard Walther in 1509), where his workshop also was, and where his widow lived until her death in 1537, remains a prominent Nuremberg landmark, and is now a museum.
Legacy
''The Cannon'', Dürer's largest etching, 1518
Dürer exerted a huge influence on the artists of succeeding generations; especially on
printmaking, the medium through which his contemporaries mostly experienced his art, as his paintings were mostly in private collections located in only a few cities. His success in spreading his reputation across Europe through prints was undoubtedly an inspiration for major artists such as
Raphael,
Titian, and
Parmigianino, who entered into collaborations with
printmakers to distribute their work beyond their local region.
His work in
engraving seems to have had an intimidating effect upon his German successors, the ''Little Masters'', who attempted a few large engravings, but continued Dürer's themes in tiny, rather cramped, compositions. The early
Lucas van Leiden was the only Northern European
engraver to successfully continue to produce large engravings in the first third of the century. The generation of Italian engravers who trained in the shadow of Dürer all either directly copied parts of his landscape backgrounds (
Giulio Campagnola and Christofano Robetta), or whole prints (
Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano). However, Dürer's influence became less dominant after 1515, when Marcantonio perfected his new engraving style, which in turn, traveled over the Alps to dominate Northern engraving also.
In painting, Dürer had relatively little influence in Italy, where probably, only his altarpiece in Venice was to be seen, and his German successors were less effective in blending German and Italian styles.
His intense and self-dramatising self-portraits have continued to have a strong influence up to the present, and may be blamed for some of the wilder excesses of artist's self-portraiture, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
He has never fallen from critical favour, and there have been revivals of interest in his works Germany in the ''Dürer Renaissance'' of c.1570–1630, in the early nineteenth century, and in
German Nationalism from 1870–1945.
He is commemorated on the
calendar of the
Lutheran Church with other artists on April 6.
The crater Dürer on
Mercury was named in his honor.
See also
★
Western painting
★
History of painting
★
Self portrait
References
1. Giulia Bartrum, "Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy", British Museum Press, 2002, ISBN 0714126330
Books/sources
★ Giulia Bartrum (2002), ''Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy'', British Museum Press. ISBN 0714126330
★ Walter L. Strauss (Editor) (1973), ''The Complete Engravings, Etchings and Drypoints of Albrecht Durer'', Dover Publications. ISBN 0486228517 — still in print in paperback.
★ Wilhelm Kurth (Editor) (2000), ''The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Durer'', Dover Publications. ISBN 0486210979 — still in print in paperback.
External links
★
A selection of Albrecht Dürer's paintings
★
Links to online museum images of all of Dürer's prints — see section B (nb: Not all Public Domain)
★
Albrecht Durer in the "History of Art"
★ http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/durer/
★
Alternative Albrecht Durer
★
Works by Albrecht Dürer at Museumsportal Schleswig-Holstein
★
Albrecht Dürer: ''Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion'' (Nuremberg, 1528). Selected pages scanned from the original work. Historical Anatomies on the Web. US National Library of Medicine.
★
★
''De Symmetria... and Underweysung der Messung'' 1538, from
Rare Book Room.
★
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