Albrecht Dürer
1471-1528
by Akira Kato
June 9, 2002
Albrecht DÜRER, the most famous artist of Reformation Germany
Albrecht Dürer was the most famous artist of Reformation Germany-
widely known for his paintings, drawings, prints, and theoretical writings
on art, all of which had a profound influence on 16th-century artists in
his own country and in the Lowlands.
Dürer was born May 21, 1471, in Nuremberg. His father, Albrecht
Dürer the Elder, was a goldsmith and his son's first art teacher. From
his early training, the young Dürer inherited a legacy of 15th-century
German art strongly dominated by Flemish late Gothic painting. German
artists had little difficulty in adapting their own Gothic tradition to
the Flemish art of Robert
Campin, Jan van
Eyck, and especially Rogier
van der Weyden. The northern empirical (derived from observation
rather than theory) approach to reality was their common bond.
During the
16th century, stronger ties with Italy through trade, and the spread of
Italian humanist ideas northward, infused the more conservative tradition
of German art with new artistic ideas.
German artists found it difficult to reconcile their medieval
devotional imagery—represented with rich textures, brilliant colors, and highly detailed figures—with the emphasis by Italian artists on the
antique, on mythological subjects, and on idealized figures. Dürer's
self-appointed task was to provide a model for his northern contemporaries
by which they could combine their own empirical interest in naturalistic
detail with the more theoretical aspects of Italian art. In his many
letters—especially those to his lifelong friend, the humanist Willibald
Pirckheimer—and in his various publications, Dürer stressed geometry and
measurement as the keys to understanding the art of the Italian
Renaissance and, through it, classical art.
From about 1507 until his
death, he made notes and drawings for his best-known treatise, the Four
Books on Human Proportions (published posthumously, 1528). Artists of his
day, however, more visually oriented than literary figures, looked more to
Dürer's engravings and woodcuts than to his writings to guide them in
their attempts to modernize their art with the classicizing nudes and
idealized subjects of the Italian Renaissance.
Apprenticeship
After studying with his father, Dürer was apprenticed in 1486 to the
painter and printmaker Michael Wolgemut at the age of 15. Between 1488 and 1493, Wolgemut's shop was
engaged in the sizable task of providing numerous woodcut illustrations
for the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), by Hartmann Schedel, and Dürer must
have received extensive instruction in making drawings for woodcut
designs. Throughout the Renaissance, southern Germany was a center for
publishing, and it was commonplace for painters of the period to be
equally skilled at making woodcuts and engravings.
As was customary for
young men who finished their apprenticeships, Dürer embarked on his
bachelor’s journey in 1490. In 1492 he was in Colmar, where he tried to
join the workshop of the German painter and engraver Martin
Schongauer, who, unbeknownst to Dürer, had died in 1491. Dürer was
advised by Schongauer's brothers to travel to the Swiss publishing center
of Basel to find work.
In Basel and later in Strasbourg, Dürer made
illustrations for several publications, including Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools, translated 1507) in 1494. During this early period of his life, between his apprenticeship and his return to Nuremberg
in 1494, Dürer's art demonstrates his extreme facility with line and his
keen observation of detail. These qualities are especially evident in a
series of self-portraits,
including an early drawing (1484, Albertina, Vienna) done when he was 13,
a thoughtful portrait drawn in 1491 (University Collections, Erlangen,
Germany), and a painting of himself as an extremely confident
young man (1493, Louvre, Paris).
First Italian Journey
After marrying Agnes Frey in Nuremberg in 1494, he left for Italy.
He made a pilgrimage to see hor himself “what had been hidden for
a thousand years”. The Renaissance was at its height, and young Dürer
became enthralled. He copied the classical nudes of Andrea Montegna and studied mathematics, read Poliziano’s Latin poetry and later made an engraving inspired by it.
He produced some superbly detailed watercolor landscape studies,
during his return journey, such as a view of the Castle at Trent
(National Gallery, London). During the next ten years in Nuremberg, from
1495 to 1505, Dürer produced a large number of works that firmly
established his fame. Despite his wife’s nagging, Dürer refused to leave books and stuck strictly to his trade as
an artisan-painter.
The above work was based on Italian studies of the nude. Although he assimilated Italian ideas, Dürer still retained his own intensely northern character and Gothic touches such as an egg-like object hanging from
the ceiling. The egg represented the four elements of the universe—a purely medieval symbol.
Other works include his woodcut series the Apocalypse
(1498) and the engravings Large Fortune (1501-1502) and Fall
of Man (1504).
Collectively these works and others of the period show
his increasing technical mastery of the woodcut and engraving media, his
understanding of human proportions based on passages by the ancient Roman
writer Vitruvius, and his brilliant ability to incorporate the details of
nature into believable pictures of reality. His self-portrait
of 1500 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), in which he portrayed himself as a
Christ-like figure, summarizes in visual form his lifelong concern for the
elevation of the artist's status above that of a mere artisan.
Second Italian Journey
Between 1505 and 1507, Dürer once again traveled to Italy. In Venice he met the great master Giovanni Bellini and other artists, and he obtained an important commission for
a painting, the Madonna of the Rose Garlands (1506, National Museum,
Prague), for the German Merchants' Foundation.
Back in Nuremberg in 1507,
he began a second period of great productivity in which he created the following works:
- an altarpiece (1508-1509, destroyed by fire in 1729) for the
Dominican church in Frankfurt,
- an Adoration of the Trinity panel
(1508-1511, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna),
- two editions of the Passion, woodcuts for Triumphal Arch for
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I,
- a series of engravings that included The
Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513),
- Saint
Jerome in His Study (1514), and
- Melancholia I (1514).
Through the linear technique of engraving, Dürer was able to
create tones of varying darkness and he used them to describe
three-dimensional form.
Final Journey and Late Works
In 1520, Dürer learned that Charles V, Maximilian's successor, was
scheduled to travel to Aachen from Spain to be crowned Holy Roman emperor
of the Habsburg dynasty. Dürer had received an annual stipend from
Maximilian, and he was anxious to meet with Charles to have it continued.
Armed with prints and other artworks, which he sold along the way to
finance his trip, Dürer journeyed to Aachen and on to the Lowlands between
1520 and 1521.
His diary provides a fascinating account of his travels,
his audiences with royalty, and receptions by fellow artists, especially
in Antwerp. His audience with Charles proved successful. He returned to
Nuremberg, where he remained until his death on April 6, 1528. His last
monumental works are two large panels, depicting the four
apostles (1526?, Alte Pinakothek), presented originally as his gift to
the city of Nuremberg.
The quality of Dürer’s work, his prodigious output, and his influence
on his contemporaries all underscore the importance of his position in the
history of art. In a broader context, his interest in geometry and
mathematical proportions, his keen sense of history, his observations of
nature, and his awareness of his own individual potential demonstrate the
intellectually inquiring spirit of the Renaissance.