Penguin Books
1986
ISBN: 0140092714
English
124 pages
PDF


Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) set out to change the history of German art and to make his own work the seeds of this change. In his art he united two opposing artistic traditions. His background was the stylization ofthe Northern Gothic, and Durer early mastered the skills of the craftsman-artist. The first Self-Portrait, executed at the age of thirteen, reveals his peerless draughtsmanship and power of observation. But his visit to Italy in 1494 gave him first-hand acquaintance with 'the arts of measurement, perspective and other like matters', and his aspiration was to assimilate Italian ideals and visual forms into his work. From this emerges the dualism of Durer's art: the minute realism in The Great Piece of Turfand the mighty vision in The Four Apostles. Durer's oeuvre was enormous: he left drawings, paintings, engravings and woodcuts, as well as illustrated treatises on mathematics, fortifications and ideal proportions for human and animal figures.

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