Renaissance_Period

A supremely gifted and versatile German artist of the Renaissance period, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was born in the Franconian city of Nuremberg, one of the strongest artistic and commercial centers in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He was a brilliant painter, draftsman, and writer, though his first and probably greatest artistic impact was in the medium of printmaking. Dürer apprenticed with his father, who was a goldsmith, and with the local painter Michael Wolgemut, whose workshop produced woodcut illustrations for major books and publications. An admirer of his compatriot Martin Schongauer, Dürer revolutionized printmaking, elevating it to the level of an independent art form. He expanded its tonal and dramatic range, and provided the imagery with a new conceptual foundation. By the age of thirty, Dürer had completed or begun three of his most famous series of woodcuts on religious subjects: The Apocalypse (1498), the Large Woodcut Passion cycle (1497), and the Life of the Virgin (1500), He went on to produce independent prints, such as the engraving Adam and Eve (1504), and small, self-contained groups of images, such as the so-called Master Engravings featuring Knight, Death, and the Devil, Saint Jerome in His Study (1514), and Melancolia I. A self-portrait at twenty-eight years old wearing a coat with fur collar is a painting on wood panel by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer that was painted in 1500, just before his 29th birthday. It was considered the most personal, iconic and complex of his self-portraits, and the one that had become very popular. The self-portrait is most remarkable because of its resemblance to many earlier representations of Christ and art historians, the similarities with the conventions of religious painting, including its symmetry, dark tones and the manner in which the Albrecht Durer confronts the viewer and raises his hands to the middle of his chest as if in the act of blessing. It is like Dürer portrayed himself in this way through a combination of arrogance and a desire by a young and ambitious artist to acknowledge his talent as God-given. I interviewed this artist because its directness and apparent confrontation with the viewer, the self-portrait is unlike any that came before. It is half-length, frontal and highly symmetrical; its lack of a conventional background seemingly presents Dürer without regard to time or place. The placement of the inscriptions in the dark fields on either side of Dürer is presented as if floating in space, emphasizing that the portrait has a highly symbolic meaning. Its somber mood is achieved through the use of brown tones set against the plain black background. The lightness of touch and tone seen in his earlier two self-portraits has been replaced by a far more introverted and complex representation. In this work, Durer’s style seems to have developed into what art historian Marcel Brion described as classicism like that of Ingres. The face has the inflexibility and impersonal dignity of a mask, hiding the restless turmoil of anguish and passion within." Louvre self-portrait was executed on the reverse of that canvas. The similarity in the position of the artist's fingers, in this drawing he showed his left rather than right hand. Geometric analysis of the composition demonstrates its relatively rigid symmetry, with several highlights aligned very close to a vertical axis down the middle of the painting. However, the work is not completely symmetrical; his head is slightly right of center, his hair not quite in the middle——the strands of hair fall differently on either side while his eyes look slightly to the left. Dürer chooses to present himself monumentally, in a style that unmistakably recalls depictions of Christ—the implications of which have been debated among art critics. A conservative interpretation suggests that he is responding to the tradition of the Imitation of Christ. A more controversial view reads the painting is a proclamation of the artist's supreme role as creator. This latter view is supported by the painting's Latin inscription, composed by Celtes’ personal secretary, translates as; "I, Albrecht Durer of Nuremberg portrayed myself in everlasting colours aged twenty-eight years". A further interpretation holds that the work is an acknowledgement that his artistic talents are God-given. Art historian Joseph Koerner wrote that "to seeing the frontal likeness and inward curved left hand as echoes of, respectively, the "A" and nestled "D" of the monogram featured at the right ... nothing we see in a Dürer is not Dürer's, monogram or not." During the last years of his life, Dürer produced little as an artist. In painting, there was only a portrait of Hieronymus Holtzschuher, a Madonna and Child (1526), Salvator Mundi (1526), and two panels showing St. John with St. Peter in background and St. Paul with St. Mark in the background, and the last great work, the Four Apostles, was given by Dürer to the City of Nuremberg—although he was given 100 guilders in return, an inscription relates the figures to the four humours. The portraits include Cardinal-Elector Albert of Mainz; Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony; the humanist scholar Willibald Pirckheimer; Philipp Melanchthon, and Erasmus of Rotterdam. For those of the Cardinal, Melanchthon, and Durer’s final major work, a drawn portrait of the Nuremberg patrician Ulrich Starck, Dürer depicted the sitters in profile, perhaps reflecting a more mathematical approach. Despite complaining of his lack of a formal classical education, Dürer was greatly interested in intellectual matters and learned much from his boyhood friend Willibald Pirckheimer, whom he no doubt consulted on the content of many of his images. He also derived great satisfaction from his friendships and correspondence with Erasmus and other scholars. Dürer succeeded in producing two books during his lifetime. "The Four Books on Measurement" were published at Nuremberg in 1525 and was the first book for adults on mathematics in German,] as well as being cited later by Galileo and Kepler. The other, a work on city fortifications, was published in 1527. "The Four Books on Human Proportion" were published posthumously, shortly after his death in 1528 at the age of fifty-six.