Albrecht Durer
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Born
| Albrecht Durer
(
1471-05-21
)
21 May 1471
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Died
| 6 April 1528
(1528-04-06)
(aged 56)
Nuremberg, Germany
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Nationality
| German
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Known for
| Printmaking
,
Painting
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Notable work
| Knight, Death, and the Devil
(1513)
Saint Jerome in his Study
(1514)
Melencolia I
(1514)
Durer's Rhinoceros
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Albrecht Durer
(21 May 1471 ? 6 April 1528) was a
Hungarian
-
German
painter
,
engraver
and
mathematician
.
[1]
[2]
He was born on 21 May 1471 and died on 6 April 1528 in
Nuremberg
,
Germany
and is best known as a maker of
old master prints
. His prints were often in a series, so that there is a group of different prints about a subject. The most famous series are the
Apocalypse
(1498) and his two series on the passion of
Christ
, the
Great Passion
(1498?1510) and the
Little Passion
(1510?1511).
Durer's best known individual
engravings
(that is, ones that are not part of a series) include
Knight, Death, and the Devil
(1513),
Saint Jerome in his Study
(1514) and
Melencolia I
(1514). His most iconic images are his woodcuts of the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
(1497?1498) from the
Apocalypse
series, the
Rhinoceros
, and numerous self-portraits in oils. Durer possibly did not cut his own woodblocks but may have employed a skilled carver who followed his drawings faithfully.
[3]
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.
Durer's prints made him famous across Europe before 30, with many people hailing him as the greatest artist of the
Renaissance
in Northern Europe.
Durer was the third child and second son of his parents, who had between fourteen and eighteen children. His father was a successful
goldsmith
from
Ajtos
, near
Gyula
in
Hungary
.
Durer's godfather was
Anton Koberger
, who left
goldsmithing
to become a printer and publisher in the year Durer was born. He quickly became the most successful publisher in Germany, and owned twenty-four
printing presses
and had many offices in Germany and abroad. His most famous publication was the
Nuremberg Chronicle
,
published in 1493 in German and Latin. It had 1,809
woodcut
pictures by the Wolgemut workshop. Durer may well have worked on some of these, as the work on the project began while he was with Wolgemut.
[3]
Durer had started to learn
goldsmithing
and drawing from his father. His father wanted him to continue his training as a goldsmith, but he was so good at drawing that he started as an
apprentice
to Michael Wolgemut at the age of fifteen in 1486. A self-portrait, a
drawing
in
silverpoint
, is dated 1484 (Albertina,
Vienna
). Wolgemut was the leading artist in Nuremberg at the time, and had a large workshop making different types of works of art, in particular woodcuts for books. Nuremberg was a rich city, a centre for publishing and many luxury trades. It had strong links with
Italy
, especially
Venice
, a relatively short distance across the
Alps
.
[3]
After completing his term of apprenticeship in 1489, Durer followed the common German custom of taking a
wanderjahre
? in effect a
gap year
. Durer was away nearly four years, travelling through Germany,
Switzerland
, and probably, the
Netherlands
. Durer wanted to meet Martin Schongauer, the best engraver of Northern Europe, but Schongauer died shortly before Durer's arrival. He stayed at the house of Schongauer's brother, and got some pictures that Schongauer owned.
His first painted self-portrait is now in the
Louvre
. It was painted in
Strasbourg
, probably so that Durer could send it back to his
fiancee
in Nuremberg.
[3]
In fact, very soon after he got back to Nuremberg, on 7 July 1494 Durer was married to Agnes Frey. She was the daughter of a well known brass worker (and amateur harpist) in the city. He was 23, and the marriage was arranged while Durer was away travelling. his absence. They had no children, and most people think that they did not marry for love, but because it was good to link the two families. Also, a single man could not set up in business for himself in Nuremberg. Durer painted some portraits of his wife, but experts say that they "
lack warmth
". The experts think that if Durer loved his wife he would have taken more time over those pictures to make her look more beautiful and friendly.
Within three months Durer left for Italy. The start of
plague
in Nuremberg was one reason for his leaving.
In Italy, he went to
Venice
where artists were working in a more modern style.
[4]
Durer wrote that
Giovanni Bellini
was the oldest and still the best of the artists in Venice.
On his return to Nuremberg in 1495, Durer opened his own workshop. He started to use what he learned in Italy more and more, so his work was quite different from the other artists in Nuremberg who used only the traditional German style.
Durer's father died in 1502 and his mother died in 1513.
[5]
Durer probably did not cut any of the woodblocks himself. This was a job for experts. But he had designed and cut woodblocks for
woodcut
as part of his training in Wolgemut's studio, and he had seen many carved and painted altarpieces made in the studio. This means he knew what could be made into a woodblock print, and how to work with the expert block cutters. Durer either drew his design directly onto the woodblock itself, or glued a paper drawing to the block. Either way his drawing was destroyed when the block was cut.
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.
[3]
The Venetian artist
Jacopo de' Barbari
, whom Durer had met in Venice, visited Nuremberg in 1500, and Durer said that he learned much about the new developments in
perspective
,
anatomy
, and
Body proportions
from him. de'Barbari did not want to tell Durer everything he knew, so Durer began his own studies, and he kept studying for the rest of his life. This is a series of drawings show Durer's experiments in human proportion, before he made his famous engraving of
Adam and Eve
(1504).
[3]
This is the only existing engraving signed with his full name.
Durer made large numbers of other practice drawings, especially for his paintings and engravings, and many survive, most famously the
Praying Hands
(1508 Albertina, Vienna). He also continued to make images in
watercolour
and
bodycolour
(usually combined), including a number of very beautiful still lives of meadow sections or animals, including his "
Hare
" (1502, Albertina, Vienna).
In early 1506, he returned to Venice and stayed there until the spring of 1507.
[2]
By this time Durer's engravings were very popular and were being copied. In Venice he was given a valuable commission from the emigrant German community for the church of
San Bartolomeo
. This was the altar-piece known as the
Adoration of the Virgin
or the
Feast of Rose Garlands
. It includes portraits of members of Venice's German community, but shows a strong Italian influence. Later, the Emperor
Rudolf II
took it to
Prague
. Other paintings Durer made in Venice include,
The Virgin and Child with the Goldfinch
,
Christ disputing with the Doctors
(supposedly produced in just five days), and a number of smaller works.
Durer was admired by the Venetians, but he was back in Nuremberg by mid-1507. He stayed in Germany until 1520. His reputation had spread throughout
Europe
. He was on friendly terms with most of the major artists of Europe, and exchanged drawings with
Raphael
.
The years between and his journey to the
Netherlands
are divided according to the type of work he made. During the first five years, 1507?1511, after his return from Venice Durer mostly painted. He made his four best paintings,
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
.
He complained that painting did not make enough money, so from 1511 to 1514 he concentrated on printmaking. The famous works he made in this period were the thirty-seven woodcuts for 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),
Melencolia I
, and
St. Jerome in his Study
(both 1514).
[3]
'Melencolia I' has a
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 his woodcut of the
Rhinoceros
. The rhinoceros was in
Lisbon
, but Durer never saw it. He made it from a sketch and description from another artist. It was not very lifelike, but still being used in some German school science text-books early last century.
[3]
The rhinoceros was from an
extinct
Indian
species
.
Up to 1520 he produced a wide range of works, including portraits in
tempera
on
linen
, experiments in etching on plates of
iron
, and parts of the
Triumphal Arch
and the
Triumphs of Maximilian
which were huge woodcut projects ordered by
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor
.
Journey to the Netherlands and beyond
[
change
|
change source
]
In the summer of 1520 Durer made his fourth and last major journey.
He wanted to renew the Imperial pension Maximilian had given him. Maximilian had died in 1519, so the city of Nuremberg stopped paying it. Durer also needed new
patrons
following the death of Maximilian, and to avoid an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg.
He took his wife and her maid and left Nuremberg for the Netherlands in July 1520, to be at the coronation of the new emperor,
Charles V
. He travelled by the
Rhine
to
Cologne
, and then to
Antwerp
, where he made many drawings in
silverpoint
,
chalk
, and
charcoal
.
Durer went to
Aachen
for the
coronation
, but also made trips 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
Hernan Cortes
had sent home to
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
following the fall of
Mexico
. Durer 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".
[3]
Durer 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
.
Durer took many prints with him. He wrote in his diary to whom he gave, exchanged, or sold them, and for how much. This is some of the few times the price of prints was recorded, so historians think it very important to show the values of prints compared to paintings at that time. Durer returned home in July 1521. He had an unknown illness which stayed with him for the rest of his life, and slowed his rate of work.
[3]
Back in Nuremberg, Durer started work on a series of religious pictures. There are many practice sketches and
studies
(practice paintings for a bigger painting) but no big paintings from this time. This was partly because of his illness, but more because of the time he spent preparing to write books about
geometry
and perspective, the proportions of men and horses, and
fortification
.
His writings show that Durer 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 "Catholic" and "Protestant"churches. Durer probably thought of himself as a reform-minded
Catholic
.
Durer died in Nuremberg at the age of 56. He left money and goods worth 6,874
florins
- a considerable sum. His workshop was a part of his large house. His widow lived there until her death in 1537. The house is now a museum.
[3]
- ↑
The title of this article contains the character u. Where it is unavailable or not wanted, the name may be written as Albrecht Duerer.
- ↑
2.0
2.1
Mueller, Peter O. 1993.
Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Durers
, Walter de Gruyter.
ISBN
3-11-012815-2
.
- ↑
3.00
3.01
3.02
3.03
3.04
3.05
3.06
3.07
3.08
3.09
3.10
Giulia Bartrum 2002. "Albrecht Durer and his Legacy", British Museum Press.
ISBN
0-7141-2633-0
- ↑
Lee, Raymond L. & Alistair B. Fraser. (2001)
The Rainbow Bridge
, Penn State Press.
ISBN
0-271-01977-8
.
- ↑
Allen, L. Jessie. (1903)
Albrecht Durer
, Methuen & co.
- Giulia Bartrum (2002),
Albrecht Durer and his Legacy
, British Museum Press.
ISBN
0-7141-2633-0
- Walter L. Strauss (Editor) (1973),
The Complete Engravings, Etchings and Drypoints of Albrecht Durer
, Dover Publications.
ISBN
0-486-22851-7
? still in print in paperback.
- Wilhelm Kurth (Editor) (2000),
The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Durer
, Dover Publications.
ISBN
0-486-21097-9
? still in print in paperback.
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