It's fair to say that without Albrecht Dürer, printmaking as we know it within art history
and contemporary art, would not exist. Despite living approximately 500 years ago,
he remains one of the most famous and important printmakers in art history, in particular bringing
woodcuts printed in large editions into the realm of fine art and the art history canon.
Even though Albrecht Dürer's fame was largely built on his prints and graphic style,
his financial income was secured with commissions of paintings of religious subjects and portraits,
and these works remain held in high esteem for their draughtsmanship and use of color.
He was, and remains, the most famous artist of the Northern Renaissance who successfully
integrated an elaborately-detailed Northern style with Italian Renaissance's ideals
of balance, coherence, and monumentality. Dürer was well aware of his own artistic genius,
which equally tortured and enlivened him. He painted a number of aggrandizing self-portraits,
and would often appear as a character in his painted commissions. He was one of the first
artist celebrities, with copycats, followers, and fans; in a model that continues to this day.
Albrecht Durer: The Master of German Art.
1, Saint John’s Church.
Albrecht Dürer was born on 21 May 1471, the third child and second son of Albrecht Dürer the Elder,
a successful goldsmith, and Barbara Holper, the daughter of his master. Dürer’s godfather
was Anton Koberger, who left goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher in the
year of Dürer’s birth and quickly became the most successful publisher in Germany,
eventually owning twenty-four printing-presses, with numerous national and international offices.
Koberger’s most famous publication was the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in
1493 in German and Latin editions, featuring an unprecedented 1,809 woodcut illustrations
(albeit with many repeated uses of the same block) by the Wolgemut workshop.
After a few years of school, Dürer started to learn the basics of goldsmithing and drawing
from his father. Though his father wanted him to continue his training, Dürer demonstrated such a
precocious talent in drawing that he started in 1486 as an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut
at the age of fifteen. Wolgemut was the leading artist in Nuremberg at the time, with a large
workshop producing a variety of works of art, in particular woodcuts for books. Nuremberg was an
important and prosperous city, well-established as a centre for publishing and luxury trades,
with strong links to Italy, especially Venice, a relatively short distance across the Alps.
The following watercolour is now regarded as one of the earliest landscape paintings in European
art to depict a specific location. Dürer is likely to have completed it in the summer of 1489,
at the age of eighteen. Inscribed ‘Saint John’s Church’, it depicts the imposing church and a row
of houses, laying to the west of Nuremberg. Nearly forty years later the artist was to be buried
in the graveyard of this church. Offering an almost bird’s-eye view, the portrayed landscape
faces south, with distant hills beyond. There are hints of early struggles in delineation,
as the row of houses appears flat rather than three-dimensional. Nevertheless, great care has
been taken by the artist to faithfully record the scene in fine detail, in a medium that
requires conviction and confidence, with little opportunity to alter a brushstroke once made.
Interestingly, the painting was looted during the Second World War and lost for nearly fifty years.
Owned by the Kunsthalle in Bremen, it was among thousands of Old Master drawings that
had been hidden for safekeeping in the cellar of a mansion fifty miles from Berlin. In 1945, the Red
Army occupied the house, as soldiers ransacked the art works. Viktor Baldin, a young officer,
found Saint John’s Church on the floor, among a mass of works abandoned by the first looters.
He preserved the painting, along with 363 other drawings (including 22 works by Dürer), bringing
them back to Russia. Baldin later gave the drawings to the architectural museum near Moscow
where he worked and the existence of the missing Bremen pictures was kept secret until 1992.
2, Self-portrait, 1493.
After completing his term of apprenticeship, Dürer followed the common German custom of
taking Wanderjahre — a gap year of sorts — in which the apprentice learned skills from
artists in other areas. He was ultimately to spend about four years away, leaving Nuremberg in 1490,
possibly to work under Martin Schongauer, the leading engraver of Northern Europe. However,
Schongauer died shortly before Dürer’s arrival at Colmar, in the Alsace region
of north-eastern France. It is unclear where Dürer travelled in the intervening period,
though it is likely that he went to Frankfurt and the Netherlands. In Colmar,
Dürer was welcomed by Schongauer’s brothers, the goldsmiths Caspar and Paul and the painter Ludwig.
In 1493 the young artist went to Strasbourg, where he would have experienced the sculpture work of
Nikolaus Gerhaert. Dürer’s first painted self portrait, now housed in the Louvre,
was painted at this time, most likely to be sent back to his fiancée, Agnes Frey, in Nuremberg.
The canvas is the earliest known self portrait in European art to be produced
as an independent painting, as earlier artists had only portrayed themselves among figures in
an altarpiece or fresco. On the back of the painting, a sketched self portrait,
dated 1493 could well have been an early study for the oil painting.
In the top centre, Dürer has inscribed: “Things with me fare as ordained from above”,
suggesting the artist’s strong faith. The composition presents Dürer as a youthful subject,
his innocent face framed with lank, ginger hair and a red tasselled cap.
His strong nose, heart-shaped upper lip and long neck are clearly emphasised in the painting.
Beneath his grey cloak, fringed with red, he wears an elegant pleated shirt with pink ribbons.
Dürer holds a sprig of sea holly, a thistle-like plant and the German name
for this plant means ‘man’s fidelity’; it was also regarded as an aphrodisiac,
sparking the suggestion that the canvas was intended as a gift for his fiancée.
While Dürer was on his travels, his father had arranged for Agnes Frey to become his wife and
they eventually married on 7 July 1494, two months following his return to Nuremberg.
However, it is also possible that the self portrait was a gift for his parents,
whom he had not seen for nearly four years. 3, Saint Jerome in the Wilderness.
Housed in London’s National Gallery, the following double-sided oil on panel painting was completed
in c. 1496, though it was not attributed to the artist until much more recently in 1957.
The resemblance between the lion and a similar animal on a membrane drawing from the artist’s
second trip to Venice, now at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, led to the generally accepted
claim. The lion was almost certainly drawn from St. Mark’s Lion depictions in the city.
Saint Jerome was a common subject of art at the time and Dürer was likely inspired by
similar depictions by Giovanni Bellini or Andrea Mantegna. Jerome is depicted during his hermitage,
surrounded by the symbols traditionally attributed to him, including the tamed lion,
his hat and the cardinal garments on the ground (a symbol of rejection of earthly honours), the book
(as Jerome was a translator of the Vulgate), the stone he used to hit himself and the crucifix for
the prayers. Jerome’s eyes stare upwards, beyond the small crucifix lodged in the tree trunk.
The image teems with realistic depictions of the natural world, as seen in the small birds,
the white butterfly in the lower part, as well as the fine rendering of the trunk’s bark and the
delineation of grass spear by spear. The dramatic rock formations were probably based on sketches
that Dürer made of the quarries near Nuremberg. On the reverse of the panel an intriguing image of
what appears to be a meteor or comet, portrayed as a red star on a streaking golden disc.
Dürer’s inspiration may have been the depictions of comets in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493,
though these woodcuts are highly stylised and not intended to depict historical comets,
while Dürer’s image is much closer to actual observation. A similar object to this body
of light was featured in the engraving of Melencolia I, some twenty years later.
4, Virgin and child before an Archway.
Within three months of his marriage, Dürer left for Italy, alone, perhaps due to the outbreak of
plague in Nuremberg. He made watercolour sketches as he travelled over the Alps.
In Italy, he went to Venice to study its more advanced artistic world, where Giovanni Bellini
was still regarded as the greatest of the Venetian artists. Also known as the Bagnacavallo Madonna,
the following canvas was created during the artist’s first sojourn in Italy. It represents
the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child sitting in her lap, while a space opens to right side behind
them, giving the view of a bordering interior courtyard. The composition is a particularly
intimate scene, as Christ reaches for his mother’s hand and their eyes meet in silent regard.
The plant held by Christ has only two leaves in the strawberry three-leaf configuration.
The missing leaf on the plant indicates the last person of the Trinity in the Child.
Dürer’s Madonna owes much to the Late Gothic German convention of representation,
while the Christ Child is reminiscent of Italian models.
Half length figures such as this canvas were widespread in Italy and the Netherlands,
and the depiction of the arch and its impression of spatial depth indicate Flemish influence.
The figural structure, including the impressive triangular composition of the two figures,
signals the influence of Italian art, especially by Giovanni Bellini.
Virgin and Child before an Archway was discovered after World War II in the Capuchin female convent
of Bagnacavallo, in the province of Ravenna. In 1961 the Italian art historian Roberto Longhi
recognised the canvas as a genuine Dürer work and a few years later, it was acquired by the
Magnani-Rocca Foundation of Traversetolo, in the province of Parma, Italy.
5, Portrait of Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony.
Frederick III (1463-1525), also known as Frederick the Wise,
had became Elector of Saxony in 1486 and would become Dürer’s first major patron.
The following plate was probably completed when Frederick visited Nuremberg in April 1496.
For this portrait, Dürer used quick drying tempera paint, instead of oil paint,
most likely so that the picture could be taken away soon after completion.
Aged thirty-three at the time, Frederick the Wise is represented from the waist up, dressed in rich
garments and set against a murky background, allowing our focus to remain on the sitter.
Frederick’s folded arms rest on a ledge, while in his left hand he holds a small scroll.
His frown and intense expression, demonstrated at its strongest in the piercing eyes,
connote a sense of authority and power that would have been requested by the patron to be conveyed.
Frederick was clearly pleased with the portrait as Dürer was subsequently commissioned to
paint a series of important altarpieces for the church at the Elector’s palace in Wittenberg.