1000 Museums

German artist Albrecht Dürer the Younger (May 21st 1471 – April 6th 1528) was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, woodcutter, and designer.

Dürer was born the 21st of May in 1471, in what would become the Holy Roman Empire, in Nuremburg, Germany, to goldsmith Albrecht Dürer (the Elder) and painter Barbara (neé Holper) Dürer. He showed promise at an early age, and, surrounded by art, became an artist himself. He was taught goldsmithing by his father and mentored by a friend of his father’s while he was too young to join an artists\’ guild.

Dürer was considered the first accomplished Italian Renaissance artist who lived outside of Italy. He travelled to many places and met with both Italian Renaissance humanists and artists alike. Known for his talent, Dürer achieved great renown and, in turn, a grand reputation. He was awestruck by classical ideas popular with artists of the Italian Renaissance and, in 1494, was amongst the first Northern European artists to travel to Italy to study Italian art, with their underlying theories or themes. After visiting, he took to integrating styles of the Italian Renaissance into his works.

He is said to be the first accomplished Northern European artist to understand the basic ideas of the Italian Renaissance. Like Da Vinci, he understood ideas from papers written on various subjects such as the use of perspectives and perspective itself, fortification, the ideal in human proportions, and humanism. Unlike Da Vinci, he was the first to publish and complete a record of his observations in his journal, all of which are still legible to this day.