Albrecht Dürer: The Artist Who Put Himself in the Picture

Dürer was born in Nuremberg on 21 May 1471, the son of a goldsmith who had come from Hungary. He first trained as a draftsman in his father's workshop. A self-portrait he drew in 1484, at 13, already shows his precocious skill.¹

In 1486 he was apprenticed to the painter and woodcut illustrator Michael Wolgemut, then traveled for several years as a journeyman before returning home in 1494.¹ Nuremberg was one of the strongest artistic and commercial centers in Europe.²

Dürer's first and probably greatest impact was in printmaking. The Met credits him with revolutionizing the medium and raising it to an independent art form, with a new tonal and dramatic range.²

By 30 he had completed or begun three famous woodcut series, starting with The Apocalypse of 1498.² His prints traveled widely, and his graphic work eventually influenced the Italian Renaissance art that had first inspired him.¹

All his life Dürer was gripped by the idea that the perfect human form follows a system of proportions. In Adam and Eve the two figures stand in almost symmetrical, idealized poses, and Adam recalls the ancient Apollo Belvedere.³

Look at the details: skin, fur, bark and leaves are each rendered differently. Four of the animals stand for the medieval four temperaments: the cat is choleric, the rabbit sanguine, the ox phlegmatic and the elk melancholic.³ Dürer later set out his theories in books, including the Four Books of Human Proportion, published in 1528, just after his death.³

More than any other northern European artist, Dürer was drawn to Italy, which he visited twice.² He became official court artist to the emperors Maximilian I and Charles V, and portrayed scholars such as Erasmus.²

He also painted nature with a scientist's eye, as in his famous Young Hare, and his Alpine landscapes in watercolor are among his most beautiful creations.¹