Dürer

Early Life and Biography

Albrecht Durer was a German painter, print-maker, and theorist from Nuremberg, during the Middle Ages. He was born 1471 in Nuremberg and died 1528. His family came from Hungary, becoming the name of Thurer when they settled in Nuremberg after the middle of the 15 century. His father, also named Albrecht, was a goldsmith and served as assistant to Hieronymus Helfer. They had 18 children, including Durer. Durer's brother became a famous artist as well. He was trained to a principal painter and start his career.

Early Artist Career

At the age of 15 Durer was apprenticed to the principal painter of the town, Michael Wolgemut, a prolific if undistinguished producer of small works in the late Gothic style. Durer learned to paint, wood carving, and elementary copper engraving under Wolgemut. At the end of his apprenticeship in 1490 he traveled to Wanderjahr. In 1492 he arrived in Colmar, intending to study under Martin Schöngauer, a well regarded painter-engraver of his time. On July 9, 1494 Durer was married. Soon his relationship with his wife is unclear and her reputation has suffered from a posthumous assault by Durer's friends. Soon he will to travel to Italy and leave his wife in Nuremberg, some time in 1495 he will return. He went to Venice, evidence of his travels being derived from drawings and engravings that are closely linked to existing northern Italian works by Mantegna, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Lorenzo di Credi and others.

During the first few years from 1495 he worked in the established Germanic and northern forms. His best works in this period were for wood-block printing, typical scenes of popular devotion developed into his famous series of sixteen great designs for the Apocalypse, first carved in 1498. Around 1504-1505 he carved the first seventeen of a set illustrating the life of the Virgin. Neither these nor the Great Passion were published till several years later. In the more finely detailed and expensive copper-engraving Durer was training himself. He attempted no subjects of the scale of his woodcuts, but produced a number of Madonnas, single figures from scripture or of the saints, some nude mythologies, and groups, sometimes satirical, of ordinary people. The Venetian artist Jacopo de Barbari, whom Durer had met in Venice, got him back to Nuremberg. He influenced Durer with the new developments in perspective, anatomy and proportion, from which Durer began his own studies. A series of extant drawings show Durer's experiments in human proportion, up to the famous engraving of Adam and Eve 1504 which showed his firm and detailed grasp of landscape had extended into the quality of flesh surfaces by the subtlest use of the graving-tool known to him. Two or three other technical masterpieces were produced up to 1505, when he made a second visit to Italy.

The years between his return from Venice and his journey to the Netherland after mid-1507 are commonly 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. In them, working with a vast number of preliminary drawings and studies, he produced what have been accounted his four best works in paintings. During this period he also completed the two woodcut series of the Great Passion and the Life of the Virgin. From 1511 to 1514, Durer concentrated on engraving, both on wood and copper, but especially the latter. The major work he produced in this period was the thirty-seven subjects of the Little Passion on wood. In 1513 and 1514 appeared the three most famous of Durer's works in copper-engravings In the remaining years to 1520 he produced a wide range of works. Tempera on linen portraits in 1516. Engravings on many subjects, experiments in etching on plates of iron and zinc and much more.

Durer In Italy

In Italy he turned his hand to painting, at first producing a series of works by tempera-painting on linen, including 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. The occasion of this journey has been erroneously stated by Vasari. In Venice he was given a valuable commission from the emigrant German community for the church of St. Bartholomew. The picture painted by Durer 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. Durer produced many other paintings in Venice. He soon went back to Nuremberg by the mid-1507.

The Northern Renaissance

Durer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. During the years when he started his works, it was open to the influences of the Renaissance. Durer's engravings had by this time attained great popularity and had begun to be copied. When he returned to Nuremberg by mid-1507 and remained in Germany until 1520, His reputation spread all over Europe. He was on terms of friendship or friendly communication with all the masters of the age, and Raphael held himself honored in exchanging drawings with Durer.

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Self Portrait