Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

I went to the library today and I found a book about Albrecht Dürer. I got interested in his work and in his life while reading the 10^th Chapter about Pre-Renaissance and humanism. I started reading this book tonight and I am just very fascinated by his life. First because he was one of the first artist to make accurate, detailed self portraits of himself throughout his life, second because his work shows the individuality of a person and other than just showing the look of a person and how other people viewed them he rather focused on the expression of the feelings, soul-like expressions in the portayed person’s face and gesture.

He described himself as melancholic and sometimes it showed in his art. Today we know a lot about him as he portrayed himself often and he kept a diary throughout his life with sketches, texts, things he observed while travelling and paintings of his own. He was born as the 3^rd of 18 children (21 May 1471), his father was a goldsmith and as it was common at that time Albrecht Dürer started working in his father’s shop during his teenage years. The first self portrait that is known is from when Dürer was about 12 years old. His father saw his talent and Dürer studied under the artist Michael Wolgemut for three years until he was 18. He developed his skills not only in painting and sketching but also studied xylography (woodcarving). After finishing his studies he traveled for 4 years unfortunately there are no detailed documents about where he traveled but it is possible that he went to the Netherlands and throughout Germany.

Documents found about Dürer describe him as very charming, fond of traveling, open to new places and people, very religious; an ingenious, adroit good looking man. He married a goldsmith’s daughter when he was 23 years old and he had a quiet family life – the only source of information about his family life comes from a “family chronic” that he published himself.

He also went to study Renaissance and Humanism in Italy, he was under great influence of Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione and during his time travelling through Italy he learned about the importance of perspective and proportion. Dürer was finally able to live his passion. Most artists during the Renaissance set themselves to a specific type of painting or subject that they painted, but Dürer did all kinds of things although portraits seem to have been his favourite. Instead of just capturing the uglyness or beauty he wanted to capture their inner world, their feelings, their soul, the pressure that they felt inside, their passions and secrets, he tried to capture what was for most people unseen.

Some of his most famous work include portraits of himself and different people, Mary with child or without child paintings, printmaking and Adam and Eve.

Albrecht Dürer died in 1528.  

References:

Bibliography:

Stefano Zuffi, Albrecht Dürer, DuMont Buchverlag, Köln, 1998