Bear Riding on the Back of an Elk Art

"If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle."

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"What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things."

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"Why has God given me such magnificent talent? Information technology is a curse also as a corking blessing."

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"I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men."

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"No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty."

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"As I grew older, I realized that it was much meliorate to insist on the 18-carat forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest beautification of art."

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"And since geometry is the correct foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art."

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"Sane judgment abhors zip and then much equally a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with enough of care and diligence."

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Summary of Albrecht Dürer

Information technology's off-white to say that without Albrecht Dürer, printmaking as nosotros know information technology inside art history and contemporary art, would not exist. Despite living approximately 500 years agone, he remains one of the most famous and of import printmakers in art history, in item bringing woodcuts printed in large editions into the realm of fine art and the fine art history canon.

Fifty-fifty though Albrecht Dürer'southward fame was largely congenital on his prints and graphic style, his fiscal income was secured with commissions of paintings of religious subjects and portraits, and these works remain held in high esteem for their draughtsmanship and employ of colour. He was, and remains, the most famous artist of the Northern Renaissance who successfully integrated an elaborately-detailed Northern style with Italian Renaissance'south ideals of balance, coherence, and monumentality.

Accomplishments

Until the 1500s, the art of Renaissance Italian republic (focused on proportion, perspective and representations of 'man' in his environment) had remained most entirely independent from tardily medieval art in the n of Europe (focused on naturalistic studies). Dürer combined these 2 modes of art making, and was the kickoff non-Italian artist to apply gimmicky philosophy, medical, and theological ideas to his paintings.
Dürer felt it was important to produce artistic allegories for new conceptions of the man. For case, his famous serial of prints, Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), St. Jerome in His Study (1514), and Melencolia I (1514), represent the 3 spheres of human being action: the active, contemplative, and intellectual.
Later in his life Dürer became increasingly engaged in scientific topics, publishing treatises including his 4 Books on Measurement (1525), Treatise on Fortification (1527) and Four Books on Human being Proportion (1528), for which he created illustrations. He believed that geometry was essential for producing harmonic artworks, and thus that it should be taught to all immature artists, alongside other mathematical rigors.
Despite his incomparably Renaissance interest in Humanism and mathematics, Dürer connected to produce extremely detailed studies of the natural world, especially animals - be they newly discovered in Europe (such as the mythical rhino and lion) or common native creatures (such as the hare, owl, or cat).
Dürer was well aware of his own artistic genius, which as tortured and enlivened him. He painted a number of aggrandizing self-portraits, and would often appear as a graphic symbol in his painted commissions. He was 1 of the showtime artist celebrities, with copycats, followers, and fans; in a model that continues to this day.

Biography of Albrecht Dürer

Dürer was born in the city of Nuremberg on March 21st 1471 to Albrecht and Barbara Dürer as the third child of the two, who would go on to have at least fourteen, and possibly as many as 18 children. His male parent, a successful goldsmith, had moved to Nuremberg from Ajtós most Gyula in Hungary in 1455. He changed his surname from the Hungarian Ajtósi to its German translation Türer, meaning doormaker. Due to the local pronunciation, the family proper name eventually became established as Dürer.

Important Art by Albrecht Dürer

Progression of Art

1498

The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse

This is the third woodcut in Dürer'south terrifying Apocalypse series, which contains altogether fifteen scenes from the Book of Revelations. Information technology depicts the 4 Apocalyptic Riders equally they are described in the Old Attestation. From left to correct we see Death, Famine, War and Plague on their horses, trampling on a grouping of helpless people. An affections oversees the scene, with dramatic clouds and rays of calorie-free in the background.

In the Bible the three riders are mainly distinguished past their horses' colors. Dürer, having to make do with the blackness and white that the woodcut medium dictates, instead prominently depicts their weapons - bow, sword, a ready of balances and a trident - as identifying attributes. Death is furthermore distinguishable every bit an old haggard man with a beard on an emaciated equus caballus. The four figures are riding next to each other but are in slightly overlapping positions, cogent their order of appearance in the text. Death as the concluding to enter the scene brings with him Hell, depicted in the form of a broad-mouthed monster, who swallows a man wearing a bishop'southward miter and crown. The clergy and nobility are devastated past the Apocalypse just as the rest of society. Their contemporary wearable makes it easy for the sixteen^th-century viewer to imagine their own suffering ahead.

Apocalyptic scenes became particularly popular in the years leading up to 1500, which was predicted past many to be the time of the 2d Coming of Christ. Dürer'southward Apocalypse series was published in 1498 every bit a collection of 15 folios, each verso showing the illustration and the recto containing a descriptive text in German or Latin. In 1511 the woodcuts likewise became bachelor to purchase as unmarried-canvass works. Today the prints even so survive in big numbers, which indicates that they were produced on a big scale, probably to run into their increasing demand and popularity, and circulated widely.

Dürer masterfully captures the panic and anarchy of the end of times by filling almost the unabridged page with painstaking detail. The diagonal shape formed by the riders placed on superlative of the minutely thin horizontal lines that create the dark background gives the scene a sense of forrad-thrusting dynamic. This work, besides every bit the accompanying illustrations of this series, shows the artist's unrivalled ability to achieve in the and so often crude unwieldy woodcut medium the same kind of fine dynamism and depth of expression as in a drawing.

Woodcut - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1500

Self-Portrait with Fur-Trimmed Robe

This painting of the artist as Christ could exist considered an adventurous, blasphemous statement, but is most likely an expression of faith aslope a confidence in the creative person'southward competency every bit creator. Information technology shows Albrecht Dürer the artist, his talents bestowed onto him by God. Set against a plain groundwork, the artist is directly facing the viewer. His right paw is lifted to his chest with two fingers spread apart, reminiscent of a gesture of blessing. His curly pilus falls to his shoulders and his monogram is emblazoned prominently to his correct. To his left stands an inscription in Latin that translates every bit "Thus I, Albrecht Dürer from Nuremberg, painted myself with enduring colors at the historic period of 28 years."

During the Renaissance era the convention for portraits was to prove the sitter in iii-quarter view, mostly fix inside a realistic background. By choosing a frontal view and a dark not-descript backdrop, Dürer evokes religious images of the Middle Ages, especially devotional images of Christ Pantokrator. With his approval gesture, long dark brown pilus (Dürer was nighttime blond) and idealized features, the artist here clearly depicts himself as Christ. And given the Apocalyptic yr of the work, the painting would therefore have been a strong expression of the artist's cocky-awareness every bit a devout Christian. Dürer was highly concerned with his public image, repeatedly inserting self-portraits into his works. The self-portrait from 1500 was sold or given by Dürer to the City Council of Nuremberg where it was on public display until the early 19^thursday century.

Mixed media on panel - Alte Pinakothek, Munich

1502

Young Hare

The incredible detail and care in this report of a minor wild animal is a predecessor to the detailed scientific illustrations it has influenced and endures every bit an extremely authentic and sensitive depiction of one of nature's mutual creatures. It shows a hare in three-quarter view, its hind legs folded underneath its body, with the front legs slightly extended forwards. Although the work commonly bears the title Young Hare, the creature can exist identified as a mature wild hare.

Dürer's nature pieces are famously detailed. Immature Hare is, notwithstanding, non only a scientific study of an animal. The work contains an innate tension, created by the contrast betwixt the subject and its depiction: a hare is a notoriously restless animal, fleeing when approached too closely. The artist has captured the hare in a fleeting moment of stillness. The slight plow of its ear and the middle that'south fixing the viewer, nonetheless, signal that the beast has noticed us. Its hind legs are aptitude, ready to bound.

Whether the artist sketched a hare in the wild and completed the last slice with a dead specimen, or he kept a live animal in his studio is a question yet to be solved. The left eye reflects what seems to exist a window. This has been taken every bit a clue that Dürer kept and painted the hare indoors. Adding a crossbar to the pupil of an center is a recurring feature of Dürer's work and could simply exist a technical method to create vitality in the eye. It could also exist some other testament to Dürer's meticulous attention to item, of him capturing the reflection of his workshop window in his bailiwick'due south eye. The prominent monogram and date indicate that the artist perceived the drawing as a consummate work in its ain right rather than a sketch.

Watercolor and gouache on newspaper - Albertina, Vienna

1504

Adam and Eve (the Fall of Homo)

Dürer's depiction of 'the autumn', the moment in Christian mythology where the first two humans - Adam and Eve - disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of Knowledge, remains unique in its bold depiction of 'homo' and of nature. This engraving was made shortly after the immature artist returned from Italian republic, and is more than about his own interest in the Renaissance, combined with a pride in his own dwelling, than the story in the book of Genesis. In Adam and Eve (the Fall of Man) the figures are based on classical nudes, and the platonic human proportions and poses as proposed past Greco-Roman artists and architects of the time. The wild foliage behind the couple bears resemblance to German forests, which the creative person would accept been familiar with and thus he literally places Italian figures inside his local surround. Adam holds a small co-operative with a sign hanging from information technology, which boldly proclaims the artist's name - written every bit '"Albert Dürer of Nuremberg" (reinforcing his German pride) in Latin (the classical language).

A parrot is perched on the end of the branch. The sound that parrots brand was and then interpreted as 'Ave Maria', and thus the birds were symbols of the Holy Virgin Mary, who is signified here as the woman who later compensates for Eve's original sin in Catholicism. Likewise as the ophidian, which is literally the devil according to the Bible, each animal has a particular symbolism. The rabbit, true cat, and elk, represent the 4 'humors'. According to Ancient Greek and Roman doctors and philosophers, in that location are four distinct bodily fluids in each person, and that an excess or deficiency in any one of these humors directly correlates with personality and health. In Dürer'due south Garden of Eden, the elk represents blackness bile, and a melancholic personality; the ox phlegm and a phlegmatic one; the rabbit blood and sanguinity, and the cat xanthous bile, and the choleric. Again, the artist ironically uses the Biblical story of the fall of 'man', the failure and expulsion, to illustrate human being beings' scientific and philosophical successes and ideals.

Engraving - Museum of Art, Boston

1506

The Feast of the Rosary

Dürer's visit to Venice in 1506 culminated in the creation of the Banquet of the Rosary, one of his most pregnant large-scale paintings. Information technology shows the Virgin Mary surrounded past a large group of male person figures and putti. She is beingness crowned with a wreath of roses by two cherubim whilst holding the Christ child on her lap. Saint Dominic stands to her correct and ii figures, thought to be Pope Julius II and Emperor Maximilian I, kneel at the forepart. Several more figures surround the throne. They are mostly believed to be members of the German community in Venice. Among them is Dürer himself, who is shown holding a piece of paper that reads EXEQUIT CUINQUE MESTRI SPATIO ALBERTUS DURER GERMANUS MDVI (It took five months Albrecht Dürer the German 1506).

The Feast of the Rosary is 1 of the near impressive results of the cultural relations betwixt sixteenth-century Venice and the creative centers northward of the Alps. It skillfully combines characteristics of Northern-European fine art such every bit the highly detailed composition and the landscape in the background, with Venetian elements like the Sacra Conversazione motif and musical angels, which tin be constitute in works by Giovanni Bellini such as his San Zaccaria Altarpiece (1505). Dürer used distinctly Venetian pigments in this work, including big quantities of lapis lazuli. North of the Alps azurite was much more than commonly used and Dürer never used lapis in whatsoever of his Nuremberg works. By combining materials, techniques and pictorial elements from both Northern and Italian schools of painting, fusing the Venetian obsession with color and light with the High german conventions of a religious altarpiece, he successfully bridges the gap between both Northern and Italian schools of painting.

Deputed by a group of German merchants for the church building of San Bartolomeo in Rialto, the presence of Venetian elements in a German language-made artwork takes on more than significance every bit it allow patrons show their loyalty to the state of Venice while at the same time expressing their patriotism. Dürer's own involvement to surpass his Venetian contemporaries by adopting their methods, skills, and qualities and taking them to a college level, certainly played a big role also. Beingness an established creative person in his domicile, but having not quite establish the same fame in Italy, he strove to prove his value to the Italian market. He himself was clearly satisfied with his work, writing to Pirckheimer that he had "silenced all those painters, who had said, I was proficient at engraving but at painting did not know how to handle colors."

Oil on Panel - National Gallery, Prague

1508

Praying Hands

Praying Hands is likely i of the world's most reproduced images, and has go an international symbol for piety and for Christianity, up until and including the present day. Using printing technologies Dürer could never have dreamed of when he made this drawing more than than 500 years ago, the epitome has appeared on bibles, t. shirts, needlepoint, and even on Andy Warhol's tombstone. This sketch is made with ink and pencil on blue paper that the artist made himself and was produced not equally a standalone work, but but a preliminary drawing towards an altarpiece deputed by Jacob Heller in 1507. The altarpiece depicted the coronation of the Virgin Mary for a church in Frankfurt. These hands are drawn towards those of an apostle kneeling next to Mary's tomb. The altarpiece was destroyed in a fire in 1729, although Jobst Harrich made a close re-create in the 1600s, which is on display in Albertina Museum in Vienna.

Around the 1930s, a legend arose well-nigh the easily in this sketch, postulating that they were the easily of the artist's blood brother, worn from hard work and immortalized in this drawing. However, information technology is much more than likely that the artist modeled the drawing on his own easily, and similar hands can be seen throughout his oeuvre.

These floating, praying hands are extremely significant in the history of religious symbolism and remain and then popular due to the way they might belong to near anyone - with the rough shirtsleeves suggesting a worker or everyday man, as opposed to an of import priest or scholar. Even though the artist did non intend for this to be a standalone piece of work of fine art, it is an splendid and enduring example of the combination of theological, humanist, and naturalistic interests in Dürer's piece of work.

Ink and pencil on paper - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

1514

Melencolia I

This print is a very early depiction of affective, or depression, is an integral image both in the product of the myth of the "suffering artist" and in the progression of artists depictions of their own mental health and anguish. Melencolia I forms part of a group of three plates chosen Meisterstiche (Master Engravings) from 1514, the other ii titled St. Jerome in His Written report and Knight, Death and the Devil. In this limerick, a winged female figure is deep in contemplation, absent-mindedly holding a compass in her correct mitt. She wears a wreath and is surrounded past numerous objects, all of which take a particular symbolic meaning. A sad-looking putto sits behind her; an emaciated dog rests by her feet. A flying bat in the sky holds up a banner that states the title. Melencolia I is an archaic spelling of Melancholia, or profound and unnatural sadness.

Art historian Erwin Panofsky famously described this work as Dürer's "spiritual cocky-portrait", a reflection of the artist's ain affective or low. In the Renaissance, melancholy was besides believed to be closely linked to creative genius. The many objects depicted in the engraving underpin the notion that they were employed by Dürer to express his ain artistic country of heed. The carelessly scattered and unused tools symbolize geometry, one of the vii liberal arts and likely the almost pregnant to Dürer as an engraver, and the failure to use them. The hourglass, a well-known symbol for the transience of life, the ladder with no clear beginning or cease, and the empty scales speak of aloofness and aimlessness. The polyhedron seems to play on the famous Renaissance artistic concept of linear perspective, throwing it into confusion.

Both the personification of Melancholia and the putto accept wings, but are firmly grounded on earth, their thoughts as well heavy to let them wing. Fifty-fifty the dog seems too thin and weak to get up. The image radiates defeat and paralysis, anarchy and helplessness. The obvious skill with which this engraving was executed, however, stands in precipitous contrast to the artistic ineptitude the painting symbolizes and this work established Dürer every bit one of the greatest engravers of his time.

Engraving - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1515

The Rhino

Ever since its kickoff publication in 1515, Dürer's Rhino has remained one of his most pop artworks. The woodcut shows the creative person's interpretation of an Indian Rhino depicted from the side continuing on a small-scale patch of soil. The date, the title RHINOCERUS, and Dürer's monogram signature are located above the fauna's caput on the correct. An inscription on the acme reads in translation: 'On 1 May 1513 [this should read 1515] was brought from India to the great and powerful rex Emanuel of Portugal at Lisbon a live animal called a rhinoceros. His form is hither represented. It has the color of a speckled tortoise and it is covered with thick scales. It is like an elephant in size, but lower on its legs and almost invulnerable. It has a strong sharp horn on its nose which it sharpens on stones. The stupid animal is the elephant'southward mortiferous enemy. The elephant is very frightened of information technology as, when they run into, information technology runs with its head down between its front end legs and gores the tum of the elephant and throttles information technology, and the elephant cannot fend information technology off. Because the animal is so well armed, in that location is aught that the elephant can do to it. Information technology is besides said that the rhinoceros is fast, lively and cunning.'

The rhino depicted in the piece of work was a gift from Sultan Muzafar II of Gujarat to the governor of Portuguese India. The latter sent information technology to Rex Manuel I in Lisbon, who in turn gifted in to Pope Leo Ten in Rome. The animal was loaded onto a ship but, afterwards a brief stop at Marseille where it was admired by Rex Francis I of France, the rhino drowned when the transport sank in a storm.

Dürer never got the chance to see the animal himself. Its advent was simply available to him through written accounts and it is no surprise that Dürer'due south work does not prove a realistic representation of a rhino. The brute is shown with thick plates that resemble a suit of armor. The surface is covered in a pattern of round marks. In addition to the horn on its nose, there is a 2d horn between its shoulders. Its legs are scaly, about like that of a reptile.

As the first rhinoceros to go far in Europe alive since the third century ACE, the emergence of this about mythical creature was seen in the context of the Renaissance as role of a rediscovery of antiquity and roused huge involvement. Dürer's woodcut depiction of the creature became popular throughout Europe. Choosing the woodcut technique over the more laborious and cost-intensive copper engraving allowed for a quicker and easier reproduction.

The offset version of the print from 1515 was followed by birthday eight editions over the following three centuries. Later editions include an extended text. The prototype was repeatedly included in scientific texts. It also inspired subsequent artworks, from a panel in the west doors of Pisa Cathedral to Jean Goujon'southward obelisk outside the Church of the Sepulchre in Paris (1549) and Salvador Dalí's sculpture Rinoceronte vestido con puntillasvon (1956).

Woodcut - The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

1519

Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I

In this oil painting of 1519 the emperor Maximilian I is shown in one-half-length and three-quarter view in forepart of a green background. He is turned towards his correct and in his left hand he holds a pomegranate, a symbol of abundance as well equally of his empire, with the seeds representing his subjects. The emperor is clothed in a fur-trimmed robe with a blackness wearing apparel underneath. His black hat is wide-brimmed and adorned with a brooch. The coat of arms of the Habsburg family together with the symbol of the Society of the Gilded Fleece is depicted in the upper left corner of the painting. An inscription in capital letters in a higher place the emperor relates his titles and virtues.

The Habsburg Emperor Maximilian I, whom he met in 1512 during a royal visit to Nuremberg, was among his about prestigious patrons. In 1518 Maximilian visited the imperial city of Augsburg where information technology is believed that the influential banker Jacob Fugger the Elder deputed Dürer to paint the emperor's portrait. Earlier executing the work in oil, he sketched a pencil drawing, now in the Albertina in Vienna, annotating it: "Is the emperor Maximilian that I Albrecht Dürer portrayed in Augsburg, up in the high palace, in his small room, Monday 28 June 1518".

Maximilian I made no hugger-mugger of the fact that he used creative commissions every bit a tool for cocky-promotion. He was highly concerned with his image as a ruler and the commemoration of his life and achievements. In Dürer's portrait the emperor is shown in expensive dress, the heavy fur collar of his robe taking upwardly a large part of the motion-picture show. His grey pilus denotes his age and wisdom and the pomegranate lies heavy in his hand, reminding the viewer of his responsibility every bit a ruler. The expression on his face is stern and determined. Rather than having the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece displayed around his neck, as was usually custom, the fleece is dangling off his family's coat of arms, engraining the condition farther into his lineage. Information technology has to be kept in heed that the portrait was painted afterwards the emperor's decease. The work, therefore, became one of the final pieces in Maximilian'southward series of artistic propaganda. Dürer later adapted the painting into a woodcut, which would have been widely circulated and was eventually accustomed equally the best-known portrait of the emperor.

Oil on panel - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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Content compiled and written past Alexandra Rivett-Carnac

Edited and published past The Fine art Story Contributors

"Albrecht Dürer Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Alexandra Rivett-Carnac
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 03 October 2018. Updated and modified regularly
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Source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/durer-albrecht/