ALBRECHT DUERER

ALBRECHT DUERER'S 
SELFPORTRAIT

ALBRECHT DUERER'S 
 EARLIER  
SELFPORTRAIT 1493

PRAYING HANDS

A WATERCOLOUR OF  AN  HARE

Abrecht Duerer was a German painter, printmaker and theorist. He was born in Nuremberg on 21 May 1471.

By the age of 20 his name was well known across Europe. Accordingly to the experts he is the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance.

He made his name with his watercolour as one of the first European landscape artists. Duerer learned about classical motifs, also from Italian artists and German humanists. He put it all into Northern art which gave him a great reputation in the Northern Renaissance.






















He also wrote many theoretical papers on mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions.

He came from a big family of 14-18 children and his father was a successful goldsmith. The family moved from Aitos, Hungary to Nuremberg.

The family name Duerer came from Ajtos which means doors in Hungarian. You can notice the door in his coat-of-arms.
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Duerer's godfather was Anton Koberger a goldsmith, who then changed over to printing and publishing. Koberger's success owed 24 printing-presses. He published the Nuremberg Chronicle in German and Latin which contained an unbelievable 1,809 woodcut illustrations made by Wolgemut's workshop. Duerer was with Wolgemut and most probably worked on some of them.

Duerer wrote several autobiographies and it is therefore that his life is so well documented.

Duerer joined his father after a few years in school. He showed so much talent in his drawings, his father wanted him to learn goldsmith. Duerer took an apprentice with Michael Wolgemut when he was 15 years. Wolgemut was a famous artist at that time and had a workshop producing works of art and specialized in woodcuts for books.

At that time Nuremberg was an important and prosperous city of many trades and publishing. Nuremberg lies on the trade route from Venice, Italy to the North.

In those day, after you finished your apprentice, you went away to learn from other masters. Duerer went to Colmar to the goldsmith brothers Caspar and Paul Schongauer and Ludwig Schongauer the painter in 1493.

In Strasbourg Duerer went to the sculptor Nikolaus Gerhaert. There he painted his first self-portrait (now in the Louvre) which he sent to his fiancée in Nuremberg.

1492 Duerer went to Basel and met George Schongauer a goldsmith and brother of Martin Schongauer.

When Duerer returned to Nuremberg he married Agnes Frey, the daughter of a prominent brass worker but they never had any children.

After three months Duerer went alone to Venice to study more art. He learned how to print in drypoints and design woodcuts. The visit to Italy had a great influence on his work. He wrote to Giovanni Bellini who was the oldest and best artist in Venice.

In 1495 Duerer returned to Nuremberg and opened a workshop. He melted the Italian and the Northern forms. He made some great woodcuts, mainly religious. He produced the famous series of sixteen great designs of the Apocalypse in 1498. His first seven scenes of the Great Passion and eleven of the Holy Family and saints. From 1503 to 1505 he painted the first of seventeen illustration of the Life of the Virgin but did not finish it for some time. All of them weren't published as a set but printed each and sold in great numbers.

Duerer started then a different art of using the burin to produce engravings. Eventually he made a master piece 'The Prodigal Son'(1496), then Nemesis (1502); The Sea Monster (1498) Saint Eustace (1501) which included highly detailed landscape and animals. A number of Madonnas and religious figures. Because prints are so easy to carry, his name and fame spread right across Europe.

Duerer produced so many masterpieces that it is almost impossible to mention them all. One of his most famous is the 'Praying Hands' 1508. Numbers of still life of meadows, or animals. One outstanding drawings is so famous it has to be mentioned 'Hare' (1502) because he almost drew every single hair of it.

Duerer went the second time to Italy in 1505 stayed there till 1507. He produced several portraits and altar pieces.

Although Duerer was highly celebrated in Venice he went back to Nuremberg in 1507. He made many friends such as Raphael, Geovanni Bellini, Loranzo de Credi and Leonardo.

During 1507-1520 Duerer created so many masterpieces and also finished the woodcut series Great Passion and Life of the Virgin. It was published in 1511.

In 1512 Emperor Maximilian I became a patron of Duerer and commissioned 'The Triumphal Arch' an enormous work printed in 192 separate blocks.

Maximilian died suddenly at a time when Duerer's health deteriorated. Duerer began loosing his eye sight and the use of his hands (maybe arthritis).

In July 1520 he travelled with his wife up the Rhine to Cologne and to Antwerp. They also went to Aachen to attend the coronation of Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. All the way he stopped to visit famous artists and saw their works. He also had done numerous drawings.

At the request of Christine II of Denmark, Duerer went to Brussels to paint the King's portrait. Duerer saw the golden treasures of the Aztec and was so overwhelmed of the beauty; he remarked that they are nothing short of a miracle. On this journey he caught an illness (assumed malaria) which cut back his work.

After his return Duerer worked on several projects of religious themes. He also wrote books of measurements, mathematics and human proportion.

Duerer died in Nuremberg in 1527 at the age of 56 and left a sum of 6,874 florins which was a lot of money in those days. His widow lived till 1539 and their large house is now a Museum.Top of Form

THE FIRST ON THE  LEFT IS DUERER'S HOUSE AND HIS MUSEUM.