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Greatest German Artist Of All Time

© Suzanne Hill

Introduction

Albrecht Dürer is the most famous artist in the history of German art. He was born in 1471 in Nuremberg and lived during the exciting era of great painting that took place in Europe during the Renaissance.

German artists had a previous medieval history of creating devotional imagery using rich textures and naturalistic detail in their work. During the Renaissance they were exposed to new ideas from the Italians in perspective, form, color, mythological themes, and idealized figures. The Germans still tended to consider the artist as a craftsman, as had been the conventional view during the Middle Ages. This was unacceptable to Dürer - he did not consider himself a mere provincial. So his self-appointed task was to provide a model for his German contemporaries by which they could combine their more conservative tastes with the new artistic ideas of Italian art and thus modernize their work.

His Travels

We know a good deal about Albrecht Dürer because of the prodigious amount of works he left behind: his books and theoretical writings on art and science, his travel diaries, letters to friends, his self portraits, and certainly his paintings and prints.

Dürer traveled widely, making various trips to Italy and to Antwerp to study art. This travel exposed him to many new ideas. He kept extensive travel diaries. On a journey to the Lowlands to meet with the new emporer Charles, Maximilian's successor, he sold his prints and other artwork along the way to finance his trip. His diary provides a fascinating account of his travels, his audiences with royalty, and receptions by fellow artists.

Besides travel diaries, Dürer wrote many letters to friends. Based on his studies of the ancient Roman writer Vitruvius, he believed geometry, measurement, and the study of proportion were the key to understanding classical art. He talked about this especially in letters to his friends and in his treatise, The Four Books of Human Proportion.

His Paintings

Between the ages of 13 and 40 Dürer created a series of revealing self portraits that include a painting of himself at 13, another as an extremely confident young man at age 26 (1498), and his Self-Portrait in Furcoat at age 28 (1500). This latter painting has been described as downright Christ-like in appearance, perhaps a result of his effort to modernize art and bring artists to a high status level.

Dürer became portraitist to the rich and famous of his time, including Emperor Maximilian, Christian II of Denmark, and prominent merchants, clergy, and government officials. His travels to Italy inspired production of many detailed landscapes and still life watercolors. He was among the first artists to paint realistic watercolors from nature. For example, study his watercolor The Hare. This painting shows the animal with its every detail, even individual hairs and whiskers, as though the animal is captured frozen in time. His nature studies also include landscapes of the Alps and scenes from his native Nuremberg.