Albrecht Dürer

After training as a goldsmith in his father’s workshop, Albrecht Dürer worked from 1486 with Michael Wohlgemut, the leading painter in Nuremberg at the time. He trained himself on contemporary copperplate engravings by Martin Schongauer, for example, and was probably involved in the drafts for Schedel’s World Chronicle.
In 1490 he travelled for four years to the Upper Rhine region, among others to Colmar, Basel and Strasbourg. In 1494 he returned to Nuremberg and immediately after his marriage set off on his first journey to Italy; whether he reached Venice is increasingly disputed today. In 1495 he settled in Nuremberg, where he left behind an extensive oeuvre as a painter and engraver until his death, which established his reputation as the most important German artist of the time.
In 1498 Dürer published the series of woodcuts on the Apocalypse and several individual sheets of the Great Passion, which appeared in book form in 1511, as did the Small Passion. In 1505 he sets off for Italy for a second time; in Venice he comes into contact with Giovanni Bellini and paints the “Feast of the Rosary” on behalf of the German merchants and the Fuggers. Back in Nuremberg, Dürer began work on the Heller Altarpiece in 1508; in 1513/14 he produced the master engravings The Horseman (Knight, Death and Devil), Jerome in the Casing and Melencolia I.
After Maximilian I’s visit to Nuremberg in 1512 Dürer began to work for the emperor; together with other artists he first produced the marginal drawings for Maximilian’s prayer book, followed by major commissions for the ‘Gate of Honour’ and the ‘Triumphal Procession’. In 1520 he set off on his journey to the Netherlands, which was well documented in his diary, and on his return created his main work of painting, the Four Apostles, which he donated to the city of Nuremberg in 1526.