Albrecht Durer, born on May 21, 1471 in Nuremberg, Germany, was a man of pure, noble character. Durer, the second son of his parents Albrecht Durer the Elder and Barbara Holper, was known as the “northern renaissance man.” Albrecht was not only an artist, printmaker, and theorist, but also a man of high moral standard. Durer’s uncanny talent in woodworking helped him to spread his reputation through not only his home country of Germany, but across all of Europe as well.
His hard working and charismatic character earned him the friendship of the Holy Roman Emperors Charles V and his processor Maximilian I. He soon became the official court artist for the both of them. He helped complete a large quantity of artistic projects; mainly portraits using oil on either canvas or wooden panel. He distinctly combined the techniques…
He inspired Albrecht to add to a more geometric appealing and an arthmatic feeling to his work. The painting Albrecht is most famous for, his self-portrait was done in a proportionally geometric way. These years were highly productive for him. As he started to become more and more well known in Europe, he coined his famous monogram to protect his work from being counterfeited. Adding geometric aspects to his artwork drove him to write two series of theoretical works. Each series was composed of four books in total. The first book was focused on measurement and the second human proportion. A few months after writing his books, while still in this phase of his career, Albrecht met a very important man, Willibald Pirckheimer. Willibald was the man of his most famous engraved portraits. The friendship Albrecht had with Pirckhemer was very important, he introduced Albrecht to the study of humanities, which later played a key role in the images he painted and the things he…
