Collection: Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer (Nuremberg, present-day Germany, 1471 - 1528) was a German painter and engraver. He was undoubtedly the most important figure of the Renaissance in northern Europe, where he exerted an enormous influence as a transmitter of Renaissance ideas and style through his engravings. He was educated at a Latin school and received knowledge of painting and engraving from his father, a goldsmith, and from Michael Wolgemut, the most prominent painter in his hometown. As was customary at the time, after completing his studies he went on a trip that took him to various cities in Germany and to Venice (1494), a city to which he would return between 1505 and 1507 and where he would be influenced by Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, as well as assimilating the principles of humanism. He had previously married and opened a workshop in his native Nuremberg, where he devoted himself to painting (Paumgärtner Altarpiece) and especially to engraving.

Such was his fame that he was appointed court painter to Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg (1512); Emperor Charles V also claimed him. Albrecht Dürer enjoyed painting himself from the early age of thirteen and always maintained this habit, reflecting the new Renaissance interest in man, and in particular the artist.

However, it is his engravings that best demonstrate his genius; the most notable are those from 1513-1514, on imaginative themes that allow for several levels of interpretation: The Knight, Death and the Devil, Saint Jerome in his Study and the sad Melancholy I, his crowning achievement as an engraver, which constitutes a complex allegory on the difficulties that the artist encounters in the realization of his creative work.

Data from: Ruiza, M., Fernández, T. and Tamaro, E. (2004). Biography of Albrecht Dürer. In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia. Barcelona (Spain). Retrieved from https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/d/durero.htm on September 15, 2020.