Dürer, Albrecht:

After 1500 Dürer became more interested in art theory, and his engravings reveal a meticulousness of craftsmanship, with a great richness of detail. Two woodcut cycles of thePassion of Christand aLife of the Virginappeared in the first decade of the 16th cent. Dürer made a second trip to Italy in 1505, staying in Venice for nearly two years. His sensitive perception of the natural world is shown in a number of drawings and watercolors of plants and animals and in a remarkable series of Alpine landscapes executed in the course of his journey to Italy.

A friend of some of the leading contemporary humanists, Dürer expressed his humanistic inclinations in such engravings asKnight, Death, and the Devil(1513),St. Jerome in his Cell,andMelencolia I(both: 1514). The artist's investigation of the ideal proportions of the human body culminated in theFall of Man(1514). For the Emperor Maximilian I, Dürer was the designer of more decorative projects, including a mammoth woodcut known as theTriumphal Arch,aTriumphal Procession,and a small prayer book. As a theoretician, Dürer composed a treatise on human proportions, a work on applied geometry, and a treatise on fortifications.

Converted (c.1519) to the cause of Protestantism, he reflected the doctrines of Luther in some of his later works, such as a woodcut of theLast Supper(1523) and drawings of saints for an unexecuted altarpiece. In 1520 Dürer went to the Netherlands, where he was received as a recognized master—the first German artist to achieve substantial renown beyond the borders of his native country. In the second decade of the 16th cent. he concentrated more on the translation of lighting and tonal effects into the graphic medium.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Early Life and Work
• Later Life and Work
• Paintings
• Achievement
• Bibliography

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