Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)

A key figure of the Renaissance, German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) achieved success as a painter, printmaker, and theorist.Dürer left a profound mark on the course of art history through his contributions to the field of printmaking.In the fifteenth century, reproducible woodcuts and engravings were made possible by new technologies and became accessible to a fairly wide audience. Dürer established innovative technical standards and formulated original iconographic models that would be repeated by many generations of artists. 

Dürer was also working within the changing religious and cultural world of the early 16th century. Growing discontent with the unfettered power of the Catholic Church gave way to the Protestant Reformation, which flourished in Northern Europe. The Reformation challenged the traditional relationship between religion and art and introduced more secular subject matter and patronage. Dürer, who was deeply religious, converted to Protestantism late in life, and his strong religious sentiments would underlie much of his oeuvre. Many of his prints featured portraits of saints or scenes from the life of Jesus, which were meant to inspire his religious audience to devotion, while other prints featured terrorizing monsters, and served as warnings for those who did not follow Christian teachings. 

Artistically, Dürer was a bridge between the Italian Renaissance and Northern Renaissance. While working within the technological and religious spheres of northern Europe (countries north of Italy), he was also intrigued by the artistic advances of the south. Dürer was deeply fascinated with the nude and human anatomy, an interest in part derived from his knowledge of Italian humanist scholars who had extolled man as God's most perfect creation. Dürer absorbed these ideas during visits in 1494 and 1505 to Italy, where he copied the precise, geometrically conceived paintings of Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431--1506). Following his trips to Italy, Dürer began to experiment with the depiction of classical subjects and the beasts of ancient mythology, the nude human body, and mathematically derived architectural perspective. This hybridization of visual culture would win Dürer the patronage of kings and emperors, as well as great popularity and fame during his time and beyond.