The Influence of Family JC: Albrecht Dürer in many ways was very important to Albrecht Dürer, Jr’s development. Interestingly he kept a journal of his family history and Dürer drew upon this in 1524 to do his own family history. Albrecht Dürer, Sr. also recorded the dates and time of birth of each of his eighteen children and this is very interesting because of the eighteen brothers and sisters of Albrecht Dürer, only three survived including him [it’s] quite tragic and probably influenced the way he thought of himself as an unique individual, someone predestined for greatness, in the sense [that] he was a survivor. Albrecht Dürer, Sr. was a goldsmith, originated in Hungary and he traveled for his apprenticeship years and then ended up in Nuremberg about 1455 and started work with another goldsmith and eventually ended up marrying that goldsmith’s daughter and taking over that goldsmith’s studio. So Dürer was really from a long line of craftsmen in precious metals. He would have learned and been introduced to engraving in his father’s studio as goldsmith’s are required to engrave inscriptions and decorations on their work. [This] would have been his first introduction to engraving. Albrecht Dürer, Sr. was a very learned man in many ways. For a

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craftsman, he read, [and] he wrote very well. He was a very highly respected member of the Nuremberg community. In order to become a goldsmith you have to show a capital worth equivalent to the price of a house. You have to be entrusted with, precious metals, gold - so it was a position of great responsibility too, to be a goldsmith at that time. Unfortunately we don’t have any work by Albrecht Dürer, Sr. nothing has survived. It has probably been melted down and turned into some other type of object but interestingly Albrecht Dürer, Jr. designed goblets we see a goblet that he designed in his work of the Whore of Babylon for instance, she’s holding in her hand a cup of Nuremberg design, German renaissance design which Dürer himself invented and perhaps for his own interest but nevertheless it shows the influence of his father’s profession.

Dürer’s Early Years JC: Albrecht Dürer was going to become a goldsmith in his father’s studio but he realized at the age of thirteen that he wanted to be an artist. His father was quite disappointed but he encouraged and resigned himself to the fact that his son wanted to be an artist and he found him an apprenticeship in the studio of Michael Wolgemut, who was a famous Nuremberg artist at the time. Dürer painted his portrait many years later. Wolgemut’s studio was quite large at the time, he not only did book illustrations for the book publishers, he did stained glass designs, he also did paintings. Dürer was introduced to quite a full range of artistic practice in Wolgemut’s studio. In 1490 he embarked upon what are called his journeyman years in which he traveled all over Germany working at various studios. He was particularly interested in working in the studio of Martin Schongauer who was a celebrated German engraver at the time who really established engraving as a work of art in the sense he also painted. He was one of the first, what are called peintre/graveurs, painter engravers. He thought of his engravings as equivalent to his paintings as works of art and Dürer wanted to study with him but unfortunately when he arrived in

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Schongauer’s hometown of Colmar in 1492 he discovered the artist had died so his [Schongauer’s] brothers encouraged him to go to Basel, Switzerland which was the centre of book publishing at the time, and there Dürer found work [as a] freelance book illustrator.

Dürer and Nuremberg JC: Nuremberg at the time of Albrecht Dürer’s activity in the late 15th century was an imperial free city. That meant in fact that it had no guild system. The guild systems were banished in the 13th century, artistic commissions and artistic control was really [with] the city council. It was much like an Italian city-state in that sense but part of the Holy Roman Empire. In fact [it] was situated at the geographic centre of the holy roman empire and so was very well situated as a trade centre. There was a great sense of entrepreneurial spirit in Nuremberg as well. All of these factors really encouraged Dürer in his own practice later on. One very important fact about Nuremberg at that time was that it was a publishing centre. Dürer’s godfather was Anton Koberger who was, perhaps, the most successful and celebrated book publisher in Germany, [he] had branches all over Europe and so introduced Dürer really to the economic advantages of book publishing.

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Dürer and Italy JC: In 1494 Dürer was called back from his travels as a journeyman to Nuremberg, by his father to enter into an arranged marriage with Agnes Frey, the daughter of a metal smith and an important politician in Nuremberg. In that year he copied engravings by Andrea Mantegna, it was dated 1494, and he discovered really, the figure and the innovations of Italian art and so in order to discover more about Italian art and more about the classical ideals behind Italian art he embarked, right after his marriage, to Italy, into Venice, to discover more. He’s not only discovering classical ideals during his travels, his first trip to Venice, but he’s also discovering landscape which will become very important in his later engravings. So after two years in Venice and his study of the Venetian masters such as Giovanni Bellini, he returned to Nuremberg and began a series of engravings, which reflect his the influence of the Italian renaissance. For instance The Virgin and Child with the Monkey is a very intriguing work because it really juxtaposes this German river house, this realistic landscape with this classically posed Bellini like Madonna ---- very Italianate so he’s trying to, in this particular engraving suggest the compatibility of

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these two traditions. It’s just a wonderful engraving. It really shows his mastery of burin, the range of textures from the velvety sleeve of the virgin to the bristly hairs of the monkey. It’s just extraordinary and in the landscape background the trees are blowing in the wind but here this virgin is just sitting very calm and collected with the Christ child on her knee. Dürer in 1505 decided that he wanted to return to Venice for a second visit to learn more about perspective and the secrets of human proportion so he embarked in late 1505, arrived early in 1506 and was met with, very warmly by artists there and also by the German merchants who were living in Venice at the time. 01:15.47 01:16.52 This was I think the primary purpose of his trip to Venice in 1506-7 was to find out more about Italian art and art theory that the Italians were developing from their study of the classics. We can see how Dürer brought the Italian renaissance North in a number of ways. Not only in the [increased] interest classical subject matter, in perspective, in human proportions but also in the study of nature and landscape.

Copyright Infringment in the 1500’s JC: By 1506, Dürer was quite well known primarily through the distribution and popularity of his prints and so he when he arrived in Venice in 1506 for his second visit he was celebrated as a dignitary, he was, you know a famous artist. His prints were widely known and in fact copied. When Dürer arrived in Venice in 1506 he discovered that many of his woodcuts for the life of the Virgin series had been copied by this young Bolognase artist called Marcantonio Raimondi. He was outraged and he wrote home that in fact everyone here is copying me wherever they can find my work. It wasn’t unusual for artists to be copied at that time but the practice was that he would not include the artist’s monograph or signature. You would include your own signature on any copy of that artist’s work. Raimondi did not include his signature, he included only Albrecht Dürer’s monogram and was selling the work as Dürer. Dürer was outraged when he discovered this, and he approached the Venetian senate and he demanded that Raimondi stop copying his work. Unfortunately without precedent, this is really one of the first copyright infringement lawsuits in the visual arts; The Venetian senate

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prohibited Raimondi only from including Dürer’s monogram. That led Dürer when he finally published the life of Virgin series in 1511 to include a warning to would be copiers and envious thieves that they should not copy his work. He had received copyright protection from the Emperor himself. It was a very important event in the history of fine arts and in the history of copyright too. The Raimondi copies were engravings after woodcuts. They’re very good and they are very close to the woodcuts but they are engravings which is a completely different process than woodcuts so if you know anything about prints you can tell the Raimondi copies right away because they are an Itaglio process whereas the woodcuts are a relief process but that shows you the degree of popularity of Albrecht Dürer at the time. That in fact Raimondi could get away with selling engravings as original woodcuts by Dürer.

Humanism JC: Humanism can be summed up really in a phrase by the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things.” It really was the rediscovery of ancient Greece through the study of the classics, through the study of Aristotle, through the study of Plato Italy was the centre of the humanist studies and those ideas gradually immigrated to Germany. In the visual arts humanism can really be summed up by Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, that famous image of the man with his arms and legs outstretched within a circle, within a square, the notion of ideal human proportions, the notion of ideal beauty and based on a mathematical and theory really. Dürer thought of the classics and ancient Rome and Greece as lost kingdoms. For Dürer it was the discovery of a more advanced civilization, lost for a thousand years so he really responded to the study of the classics, really obsessed and wanted to find out more. This explains his interest in traveling to Italy. How do we know that he was a humanist.? Well I think one of the primary legacies of humanism is the emphasis on education and how important it is for everyone to have a good classic education and Dürer responded to this theme. We know he’s a

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humanist primarily through his writings and his books on perspective, his books on human proportions, they emulated the classics and he was much inspired by Vitruvius the ancient Roman architect and whose treatise on the ten books of architecture was of great importance to Dürer because it established a mathematical basis for ideal beauty. It established a theoretical basis for art. Dürer was interested in raising the level of artistic practice from mere craft run by a guild to a learned discipline, the equivalent of poetry and philosophy to humanist discipline. The Nemesis print for instance, also called The Great Fortune is thought to be a careful study in human proportions. The scholars have worked out that the head is 1/7th of the total body length, the distance from the elbow to the fingertips is ¼, the length of the toes is 1/10th of overall body length, so Dürer’s very carefully following Vitruvius and his cannon of human proportions and trying to work out a sort of ideal figure type. The subject too shows his interest in classics and his drawing upon the ancient allegorical figure of fortune, Winged Victory. In Florence at that time Angelo Poliziano wrote a poem about Nemesis as

being someone who could reward human endeavors but also could punish them through castigation. We see that Dürer is really merging the earlier notion of fortune as victory with this more contemporary notion of human destiny, we’re all responsible for our own destiny; in one hand she holds the cup of reward, in the other hand the bridle of restraint so one is led to believe that victory is in our own hands.

Modern Man JC: Dürer was really a renaissance man in many ways. He not only painted, he made prints but he also wrote extensively. He invented so many images that to-day are still very current, Melancholia, The Knight, Death and the Devil. Very influential, very inventive in a way really reflects his study of the classics. His study of humanist texts. He also was someone who was very engaged in life around him. He was a defender of Luther, Martin Luther the founder of reformation. He collected Luther’s pamphlets. He appealed to Erasmus of Rotterdam to come to Luther’s defense in 1521 after he was abducted, after [he was summoned before], the Diet of Worms. Dürer was someone who was very much engaged in the world around him. We see this reflected in his writings on art theory and how he could be considered one of the first academicians in raising the status of the arts, the status of the painter to a humanist discipline which is [to say] he didn’t want the arts to be left behind, he wanted their status to be raised to the level of poetry and philosophy. We see this reflected in his writings, we also see the status of the arts reflected in his self-portraits. He portrays himself in a number of different ways that reflect the elevated status of

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the artist. He portrays himself as a courtier, he portrays himself as a poet and philosopher, he portrays himself as the messiah as divinely inspired so he is in his own self-portraits he’s reflecting the elevated status of the artist. In his practice of printmaking we also see Dürer, the modern man. He was able to achieve through printmaking financial economic independence. He did not rely on commissions for his livelihood which was traditionally the case but he made prints, stock-piled prints on his own initiative in order to achieve the kind of financial and economic and artistic independence that was perhaps, until that time, really achieved only by book publishers.

Dürer’s Fame JC: Dürer’s fame was really based on primarily his prints, his engravings, the way they were distributed all over Europe he was on a friendly basis with all of the important figures in the German humanist and reformation movement. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Philip Melanchthon and he was friends also with Giovanni Bellini, it’s even thought that Raphael in Rome had a personal relationship with Dürer. So he was, in his own time, celebrated as a dignitary, as an ambassador, also a political figure. It would be very unusual for an artist to be celebrated like that at that time and so this is a very interesting phenomenon, from the point of view of the elevated status of the artist. Dürer was very savvy though, I mean he was able to take advantage of new technologies, new distribution systems that book publishers were using in terms of getting their work out to internationally through the use of agents. After the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in about 1450, book publishing just took off and became quite a lucrative business. It also encouraged the development of the German language. Latin became purified out of existence to use the words of Marshall McLuan and so I think really

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[that] Dürer can really be thought of as a child of the Guttenberg galaxy. He clearly understands that the medium was the message.

Dürer at the NGC JC: The National Gallery is very privileged to have such a wide-ranging selection of Dürer prints. Dürer made about a hundred engravings in his lifetime, about a hundred or so woodcuts and the National Gallery holds a very representative selection of those works. They were collected very early in the National Gallery history. Nemesis for instance was purchased in 1913 and we acquired many works in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Very important works, very good quality works, I mean the advantage of collecting at that time was that there were still very good quality impressions on the market and the National Gallery took advantage of that, acquired these works at very reasonable prices and they’re exceptionally good quality. In many cases we know provenance of these prints back to the early 19th century, even the 18th century due to, what are called collector’s stamps on the back. Collectors when they acquired works often designed a special stamp which they put on the print to indicate that it was their property and these now can tell us the history of the work the Adam and Eve for example, we know the history of that print back to the late 18th century. It’s in the collection of the Duke d’Albert, Cesare Poggie, and [Joseph] Grüling,

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names that are not perhaps familiar to us now but they were very important printmakers at the time.