In 1515, Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer drew an Indian Rhinoceros, an animal he had never seen. A consummate draftsman, Dürer relied solely on a written description and another artist’s sketch to produce his striking depiction of the exotic species. Although his rendition included inaccuracies—such as an extra horn sprouting between its shoulder blades and overly stylized plates of armor—Dürer captured the powerful mammal’s essential qualities. His rhinoceros has been widely copied ever since.
Born in Nürenburg, Germany in 1471, Dürer apprenticed with his father, a goldsmith, from an early age. By the time he was 15, he had left his father’s trade to study with local artist Michael Wolgemut, a well-known painter and print maker. Wolgemut created religious paintings, altarpieces and woodblock prints. Most of the woodcuts were illustrations for book publishers based in Nürenburg, a major publishing center at the time.
Dürer’s Woodcuts and Engravings
Dürer began his career by concentrating on printmaking. Etching was a natural extension of the skills he learned as a metalworker under his father’s tutelage. He learned woodcutting during his apprenticeship in Wolgemut’s studio.
Over the course of a decade, he produced series of woodcuts on religious subjects, including his great works The Apocalypse and Life of the Virgin. Individual prints include The Sea Monster, Knight, Death and the Devil, Saint Jerome in His Study and Melancholia I. Notable for their large size and skillful execution, Dürer’s prints rapidly gained recognition throughout Europe.
Artists usually specialize in woodcutting or engraving; Dürer was a talented practitioner of both processes. Curators Suzanne Boorsch and Nadine Orenstein explain: “engraving had been considered the more refined medium. Dürer elevated the woodcut to the level of engraving by making his woodcuts equally involved and intricately designed. The kind of detail one finds in Samson Rending the Lion, for example, was unprecedented in woodcuts by earlier artists.”
Dürer also created small masterpieces known as ex libris, or bookplates. As printed books proliferated following Johannes Gutenberg’s momentous invention of the printing press, both private individuals and public libraries wanted a device to identify volumes in their valuable collections. Dürer and fellow German Hans Holbein were early producers of bookplates.
The Italian Influence
Dürer journeyed to Italy twice in his lifetime—first from 1494 to 1495 and later from 1505 to 1507. He was profoundly influenced by the work of Italian artists including Giovanni Bellini, Andrea Mantegna, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Lorenzo di Credi, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. The exposure to Italian art sharpened Dürer’s interest in anatomy, proportion and perspective. He continued to study these topics throughout his career.
Dürer’s Watercolors, Landscapes and Paintings
As he traveled through the Alps on his first trip to Italy, Dürer painted watercolors of the surrounding countryside. According to scholar Giulia Bartram, “they are the earliest known group of watercolor landscapes drawn from nature to have survived in the history of western art.” View of the Arco Valley, (1495) and Landscape with a Woodland Pool (1496) are notable examples.
Dürer’s eye for detail shines through in nature studies such as Young Hare (1502) and The Large Turf (1503).
Inspired by the colors and classical proportions of the Venetian artists he encountered, Dürer returned to Nürenburg to produce the paintings that are considered his masterpieces: Adam and Eve (1507), Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand (1508), Virgin with the Iris (1508), Assumption of the Virgin (1509),and Adoration of the Trinity (1511).
Dürer’s Portraits and Self-Portraits
Throughout his career, Dürer painted portraits, beginning with his father and mother in 1490. Later portraits include merchant Oswolt Krel (1499),a young Venetian woman (1505), the emperors Charlemagne (1512) and Maximillian (1519), and the finely detailed depiction of city elder Hieronymus Holzchuher (1526).
As impressive as all his portraits are, Dürer’s self-portraits are perhaps even more compelling. They trace his physical changes from youth to manhood, but also reflect his growing self-confidence and self-awareness as an artist. The earliest known Dürer self-portrait, a silverpoint drawing, shows the artist at age 13. Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle, painted at age 22, shows the elegantly dressed artist holding a symbolic thistle, signifying marital fidelity as well as being an allusion to Christ.
Arguably the most famous likeness—Self-Portrait with Fur-Trimmed Robe, painted in 1500 at age 28—shows Dürer facing the viewer straight on in a pose reminiscent of Medieval paintings of Christ. According to an analysis by noted art historian Joseph Leo Koerner, Dürer’s pose, combined with his aristocratic clothing and the Latin inscription, announce to the world “the Renaissance painter's ascent from craftsman to artist, from manual to intellectual laborer.”
The Final Years
Dürer completed the two-panel painting of apostles John, Peter, Mark and Paul known as The Four Holy Men in 1526. He published books on geometry and fortification in 1525 and 1527. Following his death in 1528, his widow and his friend, the scholar Willibald Pirckheimer, published several of his finished manuscripts as the Four Books on Human Proportion, one of Dürer’s most important legacies.
Sources:
- Bartrum, Giulia, Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy, British Museum Press, 2002
- Boorsch, Suzanne and Orenstein, Nadine, “The Print in the North: The Age of Albrecht Dürer and Lucas van Leyden,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Spring 1997
- Carothers, Martha, “Bookplates,” Special Collections, University of Delaware Library online, March 1, 2004
- “Ex Libris: Bookplate collection illuminates merger of art and literature,” University of Virginia Magazine online, June 08, 2010
- Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art, University of Chicago Press, 1993
- “Who Was Albrecht Dürer?” The Morgan Library and Museum online feature accompanying the exhibition Defining Beauty: Albrecht Dürer at the Morgan, May 18 through September 12, 2010
- Wisse, Jacob. "Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2002
- Norbert Wolf, Albrecht Dürer, Prestel USA, 2010
Kristin Hanneman - Kristin Hanneman is a freelance writer and photo editor based in metropolitan Washington, D. C. Kristin has over 30 years experience ...
