Albrecht Dürer 1471-1528 E-Book

Victoria Charles

• Herausgeber: Parkstone International
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 115

Beschreibung

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is widely regarded as one of the most significant artists of the Northern Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Dürer became renowned for his mastery of various mediums, including painting, printmaking, and wood-cutting. Throughout his life, Dürer produced a vast array of works that demonstrated his technical skill and innovative vision. His art often incorporated religious and classical themes, and his use of perspective and realism helped to establish new standards in European art. Beyond his artistic achievements, Dürer was also a prolific writer and thinker. His treatises on geometry, human proportion, and the theory of perspective remain influential in the fields of art and science to this day. In this comprehensive biography, readers will gain insight into Dürer's life and work, exploring the cultural and political context in which he lived and the impact he had on the art world. Drawing on extensive research and analysis, this book presents a compelling portrait of one of the most important figures of the Renaissance.

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Victoria Charles

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© 2023 Parkstone Press International, New York, USA

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ISBN: 978-1-63919-777-4

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No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers, artists, heirs or estates. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification.

Contents

Introduction

Dürer’s Life

The Painter

The Woodcuts And Copper Engravings

A Selection Of Masterpieces With Commentary

The Drawings

Biography

Index

Self-portrait at 26, 1498. Oil on panel, 52 x 41 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

INTRODUCTION

Albrecht Dürer is not simply the artist who created The Young Hare, The Great Piece of Turf or the Study of Hands, symbols of medieval art that have almost degenerated into kitsch. Among the artists of medieval Germany, Albrecht Dürer is without doubt one of the most outstanding figures. He was not only a painter, graphic artist, woodcarver and copper engraver; he was also notable because of his mathematical examinations of the theoretical foundations of art, in the field of geometry in particular, where the transition from the late Gothic style to the Renaissance became the most apparent.

Dürer’s continuous efforts to achieve perfection, together with the then common search for forms, rules and mathematical laws, in order to be able to transform these ideas onto paper and canvas, is reflected in his writings from the second half of his industrious life. He published in 1525 the Instructions on Measurement. There were Latin editions also, published in the years 1532, 1535 and 1605. Among many other items were the first instructions, written in German, on the construction of sundials. The astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and the mathematician Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) relied on Dürer’s ideas. In the year of Dürer’s death saw the publication of his four books on human movement: Here are four books on human proportions, discovered and described by Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg for use by all lovers of this art. In the first three volumes Dürer described and examined types of human bodies, and in the fourth volume he occupied himself with the study of motion.

In contrast to the other artists of this epoch, an unusual amount of information is available on Dürer’s life, his development and the impact of his work. As a contemporary of the reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546), he stands between the two great Christian persuasions, presenting the Catholics with the Life of Mary (1503-1504), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and The Knight, Death, and the Devil, and Melanchthon (1526). Dürer could never limit the abundance of his ideas.

The Head of Jesus Christ, 16th century. Print, woodcut.

Young Hare, 1502. Watercolour and gouache, 25 x 22.5 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria.

In addition, there exists a Self-Portrait (1484) by the thirteen-year-old Dürer. As his self-portraits from the years 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1500 show, Dürer occasionally portrayed himself in drawing using the silver pen technique and adding a monogram later by hand, which therefore did not enable later corrections. As a twenty-year-old, he wrote of his ideas in several books on woodcutting (which later were rarely attributed to him). By the age of twenty-four Dürer had produced not only his woodcuts of the Ship of Fools from the year 1494, but also the first copper engravings. In his later years Dürer was involved, sometimes reluctantly, in secondary art production, mainly serving the crown by portraying his powerful Emperor. Dürer’s models were the masters of Italian art, and he adopted aspects of their work without ever becoming an “imitator” or copier of other artists’ work. His works reflect reason, and were mainly created using the intellect.

This is in contrast to Mathias Grünewald (c. 1470/1480-1528), who occasionally exhausted himself completing a single piece of work; or Hans Holbein the elder (c. 1465-1524); or even the audacious Hans Baldung (1484/1485-1545), whose works often engaged their souls. The subjects of Dürer’s The Wire Drawing Mill, Young Hare and Rhinoceros were drawn only according to descriptions by third parties in 1515, and were never seen by him. His depictions of large armour-plates, or a female body worn out by life, for example, come from his experience and his thoughts independent of other influences.

During the turbulent transition from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, when America was (re) discovered, and the Greek classics were printed for the first time and social issues were to become relevant, the plastic artists were the only people able to articulate themselves in observance with the period. Because the new language created by Luther in an almost peaceful way could not yet be used and music only reached a few people, there were only limited forms of expression available at that time.

One reward for Dürer’s constant struggle for perfection was his closeness to the great personalities of his time. The Basle printing masters, the brothers of Martin Schongauer (c. 1450-1491), and in his hometown, the council member Pirckheimer (1470-1530) took the son of a craftsman under their wing. His friends among the Italian masters were primarily Bellini (1430-1516), Giorgione (c. 1478-1510) and Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). The elector of Saxony was also no stranger to him. Dürer was considered a kind, affable and sensible man and, as someone who had travelled quite extensively within Europe, was made welcome in these circles.

Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle, 1493. Oil on vellum (transferred to canvas ca. 1840), 56.5 x 44.5 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.

DÜRER’S LIFE

It is possible that Dürer, a quintessentially German artist, was not originally from Germany. His paternal ancestors came from the village of Ajtos, situated near the town of Gyula in Hungary. Therefore it cannot be completely ruled out that the word Ajtos, meaning “Tür” (door) in German, became “Türer”, that is, Dürer. We have evidence that his family had already been living in Nuremberg since 1444. There, the forty-year-old Albrecht, Dürer’s father, married his employer’s daughter in 1467.

They had 18 children together, of which Albrecht was the third, but he was the first child to survive. He describes his parents as being full of love and affection, which is expressed in his pictures of them.

He describes his father as serious and considerate, always taking great pains to feed his forever growing family. However, Dürer was even more attached to his mother, whom he took into his home after his father’s death, where he portrayed her, in all her shocking thinness shortly before her death, in a moving charcoal drawing.

In this family the art of goldsmith’s work had followed a long a tradition. Albrecht Dürer’s grandfather had been a goldsmith and his father broadened his already substantial experiences in this field with Hieronymus Holper, whom he had joined as an assistant in 1455. Thus it was only natural that the son joined his father’s workshop in 1484 to also become a goldsmith, following his three years of schooling during which, according to Dürer, he had only learned to read, do sums and write. This apprenticeship presented itself quite naturally, because at this time Nuremberg was a town that was constantly growing in its power and wealth, firstly because of its international experience as a merchant town, secondly because it had excellent workshops for the manufacture of precision instruments and thirdly because of its guardianship of the national jewels.

Dürer’s father taught him the careful handling of the precious materials, and of course, the bases of and abilities for design, which were required of all craftsmen. From this there was an easy progression to painting. Thus on the 30th of November 1486, at the age of fifteen, Dürer began an apprenticeship with Master Michael Wolgemut (1434-1519), who ran the largest painting workshop in Nuremberg at that time. He stayed there until he began his travels of 1490 to 1494. His most important stopovers were in Freiberg, Strasbourg, Colmar and Basle. Because Dürer was ambitious, he wanted to call on the most famous German painter and copper engraver of that time, Martin Schongauer, in order to ask for his advice and to become his apprentice. However, to Dürer’s dismay, Schongauer had died, so Dürer had to satisfy himself with what Schongauer’s brothers, who were working as painters and goldsmiths, could teach him. During this period in history, when there were neither grants to be had nor a cheque from well-to-do or ambitious parents, Dürer had to earn his daily living by himself. He spent the longest period of his travelling years in Basle, where he found sufficient work with some printers as a graphic artist for woodcuts. Amongst the most beautiful works of this time are surely the text illustrations for the Knight of Thurn, printed by Michael Furter in 1493. After four years of travelling, he returned to Nuremberg. As was common at that time, his father had chosen a suitable partner for him, so that the son only needed to consent to wed Agnes Frey (or, according to the spelling of the time, Agnes Freyin), the daughter of a wealthy coppersmith.

Portrait of Barbara Dürer, 1490. Oil on panel, 47 x 35.8 cm. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, Germany.

Dürers father, Albrecht Dürer the Elder, with a Rosary, 1490. Oil on softwood panel, 47.5 x 39.5 cm. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

Self-Portrait with Fur-Trimmed Robe, 1500. Oil on limewood, 67.1 x 48.9 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Germany.

The wedding took place on the 7th of July 1494, without love or affection. Dürer’s friends soon accused his wife of holier-than-thou virtuousness, and Dürer himself began boasting about his “mistresses”. Although the marriage was childless, husband and wife pursued common interests together. Agnes successfully sold his woodcuts and copper engravings at the Frankfurt Fair in 1506.

Later, during his trip to Venice, she managed his workshop. Not only did she accompany her husband on his long journey to the Netherlands in 1520-1521 to escape the plague which was threatening Nuremberg, she donated a large part of his estate to theology students in 1538.

Prior to this, Dürer had already resumed his travels, and some of his drawings from this time show South Tyrol landscapes and traditional costumes from Venice. In 1505 (after a short trip in 1494-1495) he made his second trip to Italy, and in a letter to Pirckheimer he talks about his modified judgement regarding taste compared to that of eleven years previously. Dürer had visited the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli (c. 1445-1518), and Italy was at that time a European centre for mathematical thinking.

There were two further attractions to Italy for the artist; first, the revival of the antique world of the gods found in Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), and second, the movement towards beautiful shapes, which was developing out of the transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance style. As well as the engravings by Mantegna and his pupils, and some later works by Bellini, the foundations for Dürer’s work were the unexpressive works of the Venetian Jacopo de Barbari (1440-1450 until approximately 1516), who had travelled to the European royal courts and also acted for the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise (1463-1525). Although de Barbari boasted about his specialised knowledge of human proportions, he passed on very little of this to Dürer, much to the latter’s disappointment.

It cannot be established exactly when Dürer came to the court of Saxony. However, in Wittenberg he painted the palace of Frederick the Wise and for the local church he executed two light-coloured Passion pictures. A further piece of work very clearly showing Mantegna’s influence was The Virgin Worshipping the Child (1496-1497) executed with great care in distemper on canvas, with the Madonna in the centre worshipping the Child, and Saints Antonius and Sebastian on the two side panels, foretelling Dürer’s mastery to come. In 1498, this altarpiece was followed by the Paumgartner Altar (c. 1500), commissioned by the family of the same name, consisting of a centre panel depicting the birth of Christ surrounded by worshipping shepherds and, in the two side panels, the shining armour of Saint George with the slain dragon and Saint Eustace. Compared to the flowing pennants it is an almost happy piece of work, showing closeness to nature. However, the Italian influence cannot be denied in the tempera painting Hercules Slaying the Stymphalian Birds (1500), created from a draught by the Florentine Pollaiuolo and showing Hercules standing above a landscape, shooting with a bow and arrow.

Self Portrait, 1493. Drawing, detail.

Dürers Wife (‘Mein Agnes’), 1494. Pen drawing in bistre on white paper, 15.6 x 98.0 cm. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria.

The Virgin, the Child, and St. Anne, c. 1519. Oil on linden, 60 x 49.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA.

Liber Chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle), Hartmann Schedel (author), Michel Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and Albrecht Durer, 1493. Page size: 47 x 32.4 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., USA.

During these years of change from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, Dürer received commissions from the native patricians with increasing frequency. This local patronage did not usually allow for an exclusive amount, or even a majority, of work to be given to foreign potentates. The portraits of the Tucher family (1499), the portrait of the Merchant Oswald Krell (c. 1499), and some self-portraits, which give us a good idea of Dürer’s appearance, come from this period.

The Half-length Portrait of 1498 in particular stands out among these self-portraits. Here Dürer portrays himself with a slightly thin beard, dressed in what is probably his Sunday best, with a striped hat, long flowing curls, hands folded calmly and self-confidently, and looking to the right.