Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was born in Nuremberg, the son of the goldsmith Albrecht Dürer the Elder, who taught him the basics of goldsmithing and drawing. At fifteen he was apprenticed to Michael Wolgemut, the leading artist in the city, whose large workshop produced woodcuts for books. After about four years travelling as a journeyman he went twice to Italy, where he judged Giovanni Bellini the best painter in Venice, and in 1520 he travelled to the Netherlands. His woodcuts made his reputation across Europe while he was still in his twenties, and his handling of the burin widened the tonal range of engraving. He is counted among the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance for bringing classical motifs and the nude into northern art, and for his treatises on perspective and human proportion. From 1512 Emperor Maximilian I was his major patron. Four works here: Adoration of the Magi; the Adoration of the Trinity, painted for Matthaeus Landauer; Melencolia I, one of his three most famous engravings; and Praying Hands, a study for an apostle in the Heller altarpiece.