Famous German painters

Albrecht Dürer was born on May 21, 1471 in Nuremberg near the main market at Winkelgasse 20. This house was destroyed in World War II.

The young Dürer attended Latin school and then learned the trade of goldsmith from his father. Since his talent for drawing was obvious to his father, he sent him to the apprenticeship of Michael Wohlgemut, the most famous Nuremberg painter at the time. In addition to drawing and woodcuts, Albrecht Dürer also learned painting here. Between 1490 and 1494, Dürer traveled to Colmar, Basel and Strasbourg. He then returned to Nuremberg and married Agnes Frey there in 1494. In November 1494, Dürer went on his study trip to Italy.

His first noted landscape watercolors and self-portraits were created in Venice. In 1495 Dürer returned to Nuremberg and created the "Wittenberger Altar" in the same year. Graphic cycles and 15 woodcuts for the "apocalypse" followed from 1498 onwards. His Jesus-like self-portrait in 1500 now clearly referred to his claim as an artist. Albrecht Dürer no longer saw himself as just a craftsman, but as a creative creator.

In 1505 he traveled to Italy again and learned perspective drawing in Bologna. On his two trips to Italy (1495 and 1505-07) he became familiar with the specific colorism of Venetian painting. He studied perspective, anatomy, and the ancient ideal standards of beauty. He was convinced that his native art tradition had to be preserved. His work also bears witness to this. Albrecht Dürer increased the technical and conceptual scope of the graphics and the chiaroscuro woodcut. His etched landscapes led to a movement that established landscape painting as a genre. Dürer did not take full advantage of these new techniques, but laid the basis for the path followed by others after him.

Dürer`s oeuvre combines a large number of paintings, watercolours, hand drawings, copper engravings and woodcuts as well as stained glass windows. Dürer is best known as a great graphic artist, but he also explored the theoretical foundations of his art in his three published books on geometry, fortification and human proportions. In doing so, he advanced to the limits of mathematics known at the time, especially in descriptive geometry, and thus provided important impulses for the works of Galileo and Kepler.

Known works of art:

• The Small (Woodcut) Passion (1509 and 1510)
• The Great Passion (1510), consisting of 11 scenes from the life of the Savior and a title page
• Marienleben or The Life of Mary (1510 and 1511) in 20 depictions.
• The Holy Trinity (woodcut, 1511)
• The Mass of Saint Gregory
• Saint Christopher
• The Holy Family with Mother Anne
• Joachim with the Rosary