Dürer, Albrecht
1471–1528
German artist

Aremarkably talented painter, printmaker, and designer, Albrecht Dürer was perhaps the best-known artist in Renaissance Europe. His prints spread his work far and wide throughout Europe, extending his influence as an artist well beyond his homeland of Germany. Dürer's work came to embody German art for audiences of later generations.

Early Years. Dürer was born in Nürnberg. His father, a noted goldsmith, trained him in the art of metalworking. The young Dürer's talent for drawing was already evident in 1484, when he produced a delicate self-portrait. Created at a time when artists rarely focused on their own images, this work became the first of many self-portraits by Dürer.

In 1486 Dürer became an apprentice* to Michael Wolgemut, Nürnberg's leading painter. Under Wolgemut, the young artist learned the arts of drawing, painting, and printmaking. Dürer may have assisted his master in designing and producing woodcuts* to illustrate two books.

Upon finishing his training in 1489, Dürer began a period of travel as a journeyman*. His travels took him to Basel and Strasbourg, two leading publishing centers, where he produced illustrations for books. Returning to Nürnberg in 1494, Dürer married Agnes Frey, the daughter of a well-known coppersmith. Agnes supported her husband throughout his art career, helping to manage his large workshop and often traveling to fairs to sell his prints.

Later that year Dürer visited Venice and other towns in northern Italy, where he discovered the work of Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini. Mantegna inspired Dürer with his powerful images of the ancient world, his attention to the human body, and his use of perspective*. Bellini taught Dürer new approaches to the use of color.

Woodcuts, Engravings, and Paintings. Back in his native Nürnberg in 1495, Dürer established a workshop and entered one of the most productive periods of his career. During this time Dürer focused primarily on woodcuts and engravings. In his woodcuts, he experimented with ways to organize space and with varied material surfaces, using the white background of paper to suggest both solid matter and open areas. Dürer also explored the use of lines to express form, texture, and light. Through prints of these works, Dürer's artistic ideas and fame reached a growing audience well beyond Nürnberg.

Dürer's early skill with metalworking tools attracted him to the art of engraving as early as 1494. Several of his engravings reveal his growing fascination with the ancient world and with the human body. In a work entitled Nemesis, featuring a figure of a winged nude woman, Dürer followed a precise formula for human proportions laid out in the writings of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius. By drawing on these ancient sources, Dürer attempted to ground his art in theory.

Dürer's 1504 engraving Adam and Eve also shows his interest in the classical* tradition of portraying the human form. He based his figures on two ancient works of sculpture, the Apollo Belvedere and the Medici Venus. However, the way he presented them strongly reflects the artistic styles of northern Europe, with a stress on surfaces, lighting, and vivid contrasts between the figures and the backgrounds. His Adam and Eve are among the most complex and fascinating nudes in German art, and they inspired dozens of copies by other artists.

Throughout this period, Dürer also painted and produced designs for stained glass and various other decorative objects. In 1496 he did a portrait of Frederick III, the ruler of the German state of Saxony. Frederick became a regular patron*, commissioning Dürer to create many works on religious themes.

Italy and Nürnberg. In 1505 Dürer returned to Venice, this time as a renowned artist. He observed in a letter that many jealous Italian artists criticized his works as "not antique and therefore not good," yet copied them at every opportunity. While in Venice, and during travels to Bologna, Rome, and Florence, Dürer continued his studies of perspective and the human form. In Rome, he copied several sketches of the human body by Leonardo da Vinci.

Back in Nürnberg by early 1507, Dürer entered another highly productive period. His life-sized paintings of Adam and Eve illustrate the lessons he had learned in Italy. In Dürer's earlier engraving, the two biblical figures had appeared rigid and formal, but the new works made Adam and Eve softer and more graceful. Dürer also produced many series of woodcuts and engravings during this period. Some of these, such as the Life of the Virgin and the Engraved Passion, are among the most technically brilliant and emotionally expressive works of his career.

Sometime between 1510 and 1512, Dürer began working for the Holy Roman Emperor* Maximilian I. He created several sketches for bronze statues of kings that the emperor wished to have decorating his tomb. With the help of other artists in his workshop, Dürer also produced nearly 200 woodcuts for a massive collection called the Triumphal Arch. In 1515 Maximilian rewarded Dürer with an annual salary paid out of Nürnberg's taxes.

Final Years. Dürer made another journey in 1520 to 1521, this time to the Netherlands. According to the notes in his diary, wherever the artist went the locals treated him as a celebrity. Dürer paid for the trip by selling prints, drawing portraits, and producing a few paintings. During the journey, however, he developed a fever that permanently damaged his health.

In the last years of his life, Dürer concentrated on portraits and writing about art. He became a pioneer in the field of art theory, which until then had been undeveloped in Germany. In fact, he often had to invent his own artistic terms. Although his texts became popular with scholars, they had little practical impact on artists of his time.

After Dürer's death, his reputation continued to grow, and collectors eagerly searched out his drawings, prints, and paintings. The period between about 1570 and 1620 was called the "Dürer Renaissance" because of the great popularity of his work and of new works in his style.

(See alsoAnatomy; Architecture; Art in Germany; Art in Italy; Books and Manuscripts; Printing and Publishing. )

* apprentice

person bound by legal agreement to work for another for a specified period of time in return for instruction in a trade or craft

* woodcut

print made from a block of wood with an image carved into it

* journeyman

person who has completed an apprenticeship and is certified to work at a particular trade or craft

* perspective

artistic technique for creating the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface

* classical

in the tradition of ancient Greece and Rome

* patron

supporter or financial sponsor of an artist or writer

* Holy Roman Emperor

ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, a political body in central Europe composed of several states that existed until 1806