Albrecht Dürer (1471 - 1528) was a German painter, printmaker and theorist, the central figure of the Northern Renaissance. [1] His woodcuts and copper engravings, including the Apocalypse series, Knight, Death and the Devil and Melencolia I, established printmaking as a major art form and spread his reputation across Europe within his lifetime. [2] He also wrote the first books in German on geometry and on human proportion, applying mathematics systematically to artistic practice. [3]
Early life and training
Dürer was born in Nuremberg on 21 May 1471, the son of a Hungarian-born goldsmith. He trained in his father's workshop, acquiring the metalworking skills that underlie his engraving, and then with the painter and woodcut designer Michael Wolgemut. [1]
Between 1490 and 1494 he travelled as a journeyman through the upper Rhine, working in Basel and Strasbourg on book illustration. He married Agnes Frey in 1494 and shortly afterwards made the first of two journeys to Italy, where he encountered Venetian painting and the Italian interest in perspective, anatomy and classical proportion. [2]
Printmaking
Dürer set up his own workshop in Nuremberg and turned to print, a medium that allowed wide distribution and commercial independence. The Apocalypse woodcut series of 1498 brought him international fame; its large, densely worked images transformed what a woodcut could be. [1]
His engravings on copper achieved an unprecedented tonal range and precision. The three works generally grouped as the Meisterstiche or master engravings — Knight, Death and the Devil (1513), St Jerome in His Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514) — are dense with symbolism and have generated a large scholarly literature, particularly the magic square and geometric solid in Melencolia I. [2]
Painting
Dürer's paintings include several self-portraits, among them the frontal, Christ-like image of 1500 in Munich, as well as the Feast of the Rosary painted in Venice and the late panels known as the Four Apostles. His watercolours of landscapes, plants and animals, such as the Young Hare and the Great Piece of Turf, were unusual in their close naturalistic observation. [1]
From 1512 he worked for the Emperor Maximilian I, contributing to large woodcut projects including the Triumphal Arch, and received an imperial pension that was confirmed by Charles V after a journey to the Netherlands in 1520-21. [2]
Mathematics and theory
Dürer devoted his later years to writing. The Underweysung der Messung (1525), a treatise on measurement, introduced Euclidean geometry, perspective construction and the drawing of curves and solids to a German-reading audience, and is regarded as the first mathematics book published in German for adults. It includes constructions for conic sections, epicycloids and the net diagrams of polyhedra that are still used to teach solid geometry. [3]
He also published a treatise on fortification and the Four Books on Human Proportion, in which he analysed the human figure through systematic measurement rather than a single classical ideal. [1]
Death and legacy
Dürer died in Nuremberg on 6 April 1528. He had become a wealthy and internationally known figure who corresponded with humanists such as Willibald Pirckheimer and followed the early Reformation with sympathy. [2]
His prints were copied and pirated across Europe, and his monogram — an A enclosing a D — is among the earliest artists' marks to have been protected as a form of trademark. He is regarded as the artist who brought the intellectual ambitions of the Italian Renaissance north of the Alps, and his theoretical writings gave later artists a mathematical vocabulary for their work. [3]
