Dürer, Albrecht, (圖)

The Age of Renaissance 1420-1600
Melancholia, 1514 / Self portrait at 28 / A yuong hare, 1502

Private collection / Alte Pinakothek, Munich / Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria

Dürer, Albrecht, German painter, printmaker, draughtsman and art theorist, generally regarded as the greatest German Renaissance artist. He was the son of a goldsmith who taught him the art of drawing in silver-point. In 1484 he was apprenticed to the leading Nuremberg painter and book illustrator of his time, Michael Wollgemut (1434-1519), from whom he learned the techniques of woodcut engraving. He then traveled extensively in Italy, where the works of Leonardo, Bellini and Mantegna had a profound influence on his later career, both as a practicing artist and as and art theorist who wrote extensively on the subject. D ü rer was thus responsible for introducing many of the ideas of the Italian Renaissance to northern Europe. Although not remembered chiefly for his engravings (including the Triumphal Car, at nine square metres the worlds’ largest woodcut), he was an accomplished painter whose mastery of detail and acute observation have seldom been surpassed.