Albrecht Durer (DYOO rer) was born in Nuremberg,
Germany. We know
little about his early life except the fact that he was the son of a
goldsmith and had seventeen brothers and sisters. We know a lot about
him as a man because of the abundance of art works he left and his
writings. He seemed to realize he would become famous and wanted people
to know a lot about him and the pictures he made.
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Also ten letters survive that he wrote to his friend
Willibald
Pirckheimer. They remained lost for 200 years until they were
discovered hidden in a wall.
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He made a thousand drawings and watercolors and is
considered to be the
greatest printmaker of all time. He liked making prints because he
could make many reproductions of the same picture, and it was a
lucrative business. He made a good profit from it. He made over 350
engravings and woodcuts. Connecticut College presents a large
collection of Durer
woodcuts.
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Sixty of his oil paintings remain. He was the first
artist to paint
portraits of himself. Let's examine four of his self-portraits.
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The first drawing he
made of himself was done in 1484 when he was thirteen years old. He
used a mirror and drew his likeness. He said, "I drew it when I was
still a child."
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The first painted
self-portrait was done when he was twenty-two years old. He married
Agnes Frey in 1494 during this time of his life.
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When he was twenty-six he painted a portrait of
himself as a young man dressed in elegant clothes. His friend said
the painting was so realistic that Durer's dog barked and wagged his
tail when he saw it.
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The fourth
portrait was painted when he was twenty-eight years old. (You can
look at a larger view of that portrait.)
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The featured work on this page is A Young Hare
which was done in watercolor in 1502.
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He died in 1528 at the age of fifty-six.
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Today if you go to Nuremberg you can visit the
four-story Durer House
and observe museum workers reproducing some of Durer's woodblock
prints.
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