Portal:Albrecht Dürer
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Introduction
Albrecht Dürer (/ˈdjʊərər/; German: [ˈʔalbʁɛçt ˈdyːʁɐ]; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528) was a painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was still in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in communication with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 he was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I. Dürer is commemorated by both the Lutheran and Episcopal Churches.
Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his later prints, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books. The woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series (1498), are more Gothic than the rest of his work. His well-known engravings include the Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours also mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.
Selected general articles
The Portrait of Bernhart von Reesen is a painting by German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer, dating from 1521, now housed in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of Dresden, Germany.
The painting was executed during the artist's trip to the Low Countries (1520–1521). On 16 March 1521, Dürer wrote that he had portrayed in Antwerp one Bernhart von Reesen, being paid eight florins and some small gifts for his wife and maid. The subject is unknown, although he could be one rich merchant from Danzig who was active in the cosmopolitan Flemish port. Other scholars identify him with Bernard van Orley, a painter from Brussels. Read more...
Portrait of Dürer's Father at 70, 1497, attributed to Albrecht Dürer. National Gallery, London. 51 cm x 40.3 cm.
Portrait of Dürer's Father at 70 (or The Painter's Father) is a 1497 oil on lime painting attributed to the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer, now in the National Gallery, London. Along with the 1490 Albrecht Dürer the Elder with a Rosary, it is the second of two portraits of the artist's Hungarian father Albrecht Dürer the Elder (1427–1502). The sitter's similarity to the earlier portrait, as well to a 1486 silverpoint drawing believed to be a self-portrait by his father, leave no doubt as to his identity. The London panel is thought to be one of a number of copies of a lost original. It is in poor condition, having suffered paint loss in the background and in areas of the cloak. It was cleaned in 1955, revealing especial quality in the description of the face, leading some to believe that it is a Dürer original. However this claim is not made by the National Gallery who display it as "attributed to Albrecht Dürer".
Although a master goldsmith and well traveled, Albrecht the elder lived in poverty all his life. With his much younger wife Barbara Holper, he fathered 17 children, of which only two reached adulthood. He died in 1502, five years after this portrait was completed. He was supportive of his son's precocious talent and recognised it from an early age, sending him to apprenticeship with Michael Wolgemut, one of the highest regarded painters in Nuremberg at the time. From his travels Albrecht sr. came into contact with the second generation of northern renaissance painters, and through them passed on a key influence on his son's artistic development. Read more...
The Seven Sorrows Polyptych is an oil on panel painting by Albrecht Dürer. The painting includes a central picture (108 x 43 cm), currently at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and seven surrounding panels (measuring some 60 x 46 cm) which are exhibited at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of Dresden. Read more...
The Portrait of Frederick III of Saxony is a tempera on canvas painting by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, executed in 1496. It is housed in the Gemäldegalerie of Berlin, Germany. Read more...
The Apocalypse, properly Apocalypse with Pictures (Latin: Apocalypsis cum Figuris) is a famous series of fifteen woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer of scenes from the Book of Revelation, published in 1498, which rapidly brought him fame across Europe. The series was probably cut on pear wood blocks and drew on theological advice, particularly from Johannes Pirckheimer, the father of Dürer's friend Willibald Pirckheimer. Work on the series started during Dürer's first trip to Italy (1494–95), and the set was published simultaneously in Latin and German at Nuremberg in 1498, at a time when much of Europe anticipated a possible Last Judgment at 1500. The most famous print in the series is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (ca. 1497–98), referring to Revelation 6:1–8. The layout of the cycle with the illustrations on the recto and the text on the verso suggests the privileging of the illustrations over the text. The series brought Dürer fame and wealth as well as some freedom from the patronage system, which, in turn, allowed him to choose his own subjects and to devote more time to engraving. In 1511, Dürer published the second edition of Apocalypse in a combined edition with his Life of the Virgin and Large Passion; single impressions were also produced and sold. Read more...- The following is an incomplete list of woodcuts by the German painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer. Read more...
The Four Witches, imprint at the National Gallery of Art, Washington
The Four Witches (German: Die Vier Hexen), or The Four Naked Women, or The Four Sorceresses or Scene in a Brothel) are titles given to a 1497 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. One of his earliest signed engravings, it shows four nude, exuberant women gathered conspiratorially in a circle in a confined interior setting, perhaps a bath house, which appears to have entrances from either side. Although clearly erotic, a small horned demon, perhaps representing temptation, is positioned in the left hand portal, peering out and holding what may be a hunting object, and is engulfed in flames.
Although the engraving has been subject to prolonged and significant scholarly analysis, it remains enigmatic, and there is nothing in his later writings to indicate his intent. There is no consensus as to its subject matter or its intended meaning, with art historians associating it with either witch hunting or figures from classical mythology. The women stand underneath a suspended globe or sphere, and before an open stone window, which, given the human skull and thigh bone placed across from it, may be a gateway to death, and that the women are engaged in some type of nefarious scheme, perhalps linked to the 1487 inquisition treatis Malleus Maleficarum. The alternative view is that the women represent Greek or Roman goddesses, perhaps Hecate, patroness of evil magic, poisonous plants, and ghosts, or her earthly counterpart Diana. Read more...
Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle (or Eryngium) is an oil painting on parchment pasted on canvas by German artist Albrecht Dürer. Painted in 1493, it is the earliest of Dürer's painted self-portraits and has been identified as one of the first self-portraits painted by a Northern artist. It was acquired in 1922 by the Louvre in Paris.
Dürer looks out at the viewer with a psychologically complex but rather melancholy and reserved, serious minded, facial expression. During the 15th century, thistles were symbols of male conjugal fidelity. Read more...
The Portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher is a painting by German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer, dated from 1526, now housed in the Gemäldegalerie of Berlin, Germany. The signature is in the upper left corner, and reads HIERONIMVS HOLTZSCHVER ANNO DO[MI]NI 1526 ETATIS SVE 57.
The work was executed in Nuremberg, the same year in which the German artist portrayed Johann Kleberger and Jakob Muffel. Holzschuher was a local patrician who was senator and septemvir in its councils. Read more...
The Paumgartner altarpiece (c. 1500) is an early triptych painting by Albrecht Dürer, commissioned by the Paumgartner family of Nuremberg. The central panel depicts a nativity scene, while the wings depict Saint George (left) and Saint Eustace (right). The saint's faces are donor portraits of the brothers Stephan and Lukas Paumgartner, respectively. Other members of the Paumgartner family are depicted as small figures in the center panel.
In 1616 the painting was bought by Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria and taken to Munich. There it was altered to suit 17th century tastes. This entailed adding helmets, horses, and landscape backgrounds to the portraits of the saints and painting over the small donor figures in the center panel. These embellishments were removed by restorators in 1903. Read more...
Christ among the Doctors is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to 1506, now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain. The work dates to Dürer's sojourn in Venice, and was executed (according to the inscription Opus Quinque Dierum, meaning "Made in five days") hastily while he was working at the Feast of the Rosary altarpiece.
According to some sources, it could have been given to painter Giovanni Bellini. In the latter's house it was perhaps seen by Lorenzo Lotto, who used one of the figures in the painting for his Madonna with Child between Sts. Flavian and Onuphrius now in the Borghese Gallery. The subject had been already treated by Dürer in a woodcut of the Life of the Virgin series and in a panel of the Seven Sorrows Polyptych. However, in the Venetian work the German artist adopted a totally new composition, with the characters occupying the whole scene and surrounding the young Jesus, leaving a little room for the black background. Read more...
The Dresden Altarpiece is a triptych by German Renaissance artists Albrecht Dürer, executed between 1496 and 1497, and perhaps continued in 1503-1504. It is housed in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of Dresden, Germany. Read more...
Melencolia I is a 1514 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. The print's central subject is an enigmatic and gloomy female figure thought to personify melancholia. Holding her head in her hand, she stares past the busy scene in front of her. The area is strewn with symbols and tools associated with craft and carpentry, including an hourglass, weighing scales, a hand plane and a saw. Other objects relate to alchemy, geometry or numerology. Behind the figure is a structure with a magic square embedded in it and a ladder leading beyond the frame. The sky contains a rainbow, a comet or planet, and a bat-like creature bearing the text that has become the print's title.
Dürer's engraving is one of the most well-known extant old master prints, but, despite a vast art-historical literature, it has resisted any definitive interpretation. Dürer may have related melancholia with creative activity; the woman may be a representation of a Muse, awaiting inspiration but fearful that it will not return. As such, Dürer may have intended the print as a veiled self-portrait. Other art historians see the figure as pondering the nature of beauty or the value of artistic creativity in light of rationalism, or as a purposely obscure work that highlights the limitations of allegorical or symbolic art. Read more...
Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman is a small bust-length oil on elm panel painting by the German artist Albrecht Dürer from 1505. It was executed, along with a number of other high-society portraits, during his second visit to Italy.
The woman wears a patterned gown with tied-on sleeves that show the chemise beneath. Her hair frames her face in soft waves, and back hair is confined in a small draped cap. The work's harmony and grace is achieved through its mixtures of tones, from her pale, elegant skin and reddish blond hair to her black-and pearl necklace and highly-fashionable patterned dress; all of which are highlighted against a flat black background. It is similar in pose and colour tone to his c 1507 A German Woman from Venice, while at least two studies of Venetian women are known, both of which are very daring. One shows the model with a plunging neckline, the other with bare shoulders. Read more...
The Large Triumphal Carriage or Great Triumphal Car (in German, Triumphwagen) is a large 16th-century woodcut print by Albrecht Dürer, commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The work was originally intended to be the central part of a 54 metres (177 ft) long print of a Triumphal Procession or Triumph of Maximilian, depicting Maximilian and his court entourage in a procession.
The work is one of three huge prints created for Maximilian, the other being a Triumphal Arch (1512–15, 192 woodcut panels, 3.0 metres (10 ft) high and 3.7 metres (12 ft) wide) also designed by Albrecht Dürer, and the Triumphal Procession (1516–18, 137 woodcut panels, 54 metres (177 ft) long). The monumental projects reflect Maximilian's position as Holy Roman Emperor, and link him to the triumphal arches and triumphs of Ancient Rome. Only the Triumphal Arch was completed before Maximilian's death in 1519, and distributed as Imperial propaganda as he intended. Read more...
The Triumphal Arch (also known as the Arch of Maximilian I, German: Ehrenpforte Maximilians I.) is a 16th-century monumental woodcut print, commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The composite image was printed on 36 large sheets of paper from 195 separate wood blocks. At 295 × 357 centimetres (116 × 141 in), it is one of the largest prints ever produced, and was intended to be pasted to walls in city halls or the palaces of princes. It is part of a series of three huge prints created for Maximilian, the others being a Triumphal Procession (1516–18, 137 woodcut panels, 54 metres (177 ft) long) which is led by a Large Triumphal Carriage (1522, 8 woodcut panels, 8 × 1.5 feet (244 × 46 cm)); only the Arch was completed in Maximilian's lifetime and distributed as propaganda, as he intended. Together, this series has been described by art historian Hyatt Mayor as "Maximilian's program of paper grandeur". They stand alongside two published biographical allegories in verse, the Theuerdank and Weisskunig, heavily illustrated with woodcuts.
Very large multi-sheet prints designed to decorate walls were a feature of the early 16th century, although their use in this way means their survival rate is exceptionally low. The prints were intended to be hand-coloured, but only two sets of impressions from the first edition survive with contemporary colouring (held in Berlin and Prague). Read more...
Albrecht Dürer's House (German: Albrecht-Dürer-Haus) is a Nuremberg Fachwerkhaus that was the home of German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer from 1509 to his death in 1528. The House lies in the extreme north-west of Nuremberg's Altstadt, near the Kaiserburg section of the Nuremberg Castle and the Tiergärtnertor of Nuremberg's city walls.
The house was built around 1420. It has five stories; the bottom two have sandstone walls, while the upper stories are timber framed; the entire structure is topped by a half-hip roof. In 1501, it was purchased by Bernhard Walther, a merchant and prominent astronomer. Walter remodeled the house, adding small windows to the roof so that it could function as an observatory. Walther died in 1504, and Dürer purchased the house in 1509. Read more...
Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63. Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.
Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63 (German: Bildnis der Mutter mit 63 Jahren) is a charcoal drawing from March 1514 by the German printmaker and painter Albrecht Dürer, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. It is a tender but unflinching study of his mother, Barbara Holper (c. 1451–1514), completed while she was gravely ill, two months before she died. Dürer was close to his mother and after her death wrote that she had "died hard" and that "I felt so grieved for her that I cannot express it". In its bleakness of mood, the drawing has been compared to his two great 1514 engravings, Melencolia I and Madonna by the Wall. This work is her second portrait; the c. 1490 oil on oak panel painting now in Nuremberg is today generally accepted to be either an original or a copy of a lost original. It was bought in c. 1877 by the Kupferstichkabinett from the Firmin-Didot auction house in Paris during a period of acquisition of over 35 Dürer drawings by the gallery.
Barbara Holper was the daughter of Hieronymus Holper, under whom Dürer's Hungarian father served his apprenticeship as a goldsmith. Albrecht Dürer most likely lived in the Holper household during his apprenticeship and saw his master's daughter grow from a child to a woman. Hieronymus Holper gave his daughter into marriage when Dürer's father was 40 and she was 15. Although they appear have been compatible and well-matched, according to their son they shared difficult lives and many set-backs. They had 18 children together, beginning in 1468 and ending in 1492, only two of whom survived into adulthood. Dürer biographer Jane Hutchinson suggests that Barbara Holper may have been trained and worked as a goldsmith. Read more...
Praying hands (German: Betende Hände), also known as Study of the Hands of an Apostle (Studie zu den Händen eines Apostels), is a pen-and-ink drawing by the German printmaker, painter and theorist Albrecht Dürer. The work is today stored at the Albertina museum in Vienna, Austria. Dürer created the drawing using the technique of white heightening and black ink on (self-made) blue colored paper. The drawing shows a close up of two male hands clasped together praying. Also, the partly rolled up sleeves are seen.
The drawing is a sketch (study) for hands of an apostle, whose full picture was planned to occupy the central panel of the triptych installed in Frankfurt entitled the Heller Altarpiece – destroyed by a fire in 1729. The sketched hands appear on the triptych on the right side of the central panel, and although the detail appears very similar, it is smaller in size in the triptych. Read more...
The Great Piece of Turf (German: Das große Rasenstück) is a watercolor painting by Albrecht Dürer. The painting was created at Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg in 1503. It is a study of a seemingly unordered group of wild plants, including dandelion and greater plantain. The work is considered one of the masterpieces of Dürer's realistic nature studies. Read more...
St. Jerome in His Study is an oil on panel painting by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, completed March 1521. It is in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga of Lisbon, Portugal. Read more...
Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon is a woodcut of 1498 by Albrecht Dürer, part of an Apocalypse based on the Book of Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John. Read more...
Adam and Eve is a pair of oil-on-panel paintings by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer.
Completed in 1507, the work followed a 1504 copper engraving by Dürer on the same subject, one which offered Dürer the opportunity to depict the ideal human figure. Painted in Nuremberg soon after his return from Venice, the panels were influenced by Italian art. Dürer's observations on his second trip to Italy provided him with new approaches to portraying the human form. Here, he depicts Adam and Eve at human scale—the first full-scale nude subjects in German painting. Read more...
Thalia is a c.1546 painting by Michele Pannonio, signed by the artist and produced for the 'studiolo' in Belfiore, begun by Lionello d'Este in 1447 and completed by his brother Borso in 1463. After the palace's destruction by fire in 1632 its paintings were dispersed - Thalia is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Long misidentified as Ceres, the work is one of the few known works by the artist, active in Ferrara but of Hungarian origins. Read more...
The Portrait of Jakob Fugger is an oil painting by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, executed around 1520. Read more...
Self-Portrait (or Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight) is a panel painting by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. Painted early in 1500, just before his 29th birthday, it is the last of his three painted self-portraits. Art historians consider it the most personal, iconic and complex of his self-portraits.
The self-portrait is most remarkable because of its resemblance to many earlier representations of Christ. Art historians note the similarities with the conventions of religious painting, including its symmetry, dark tones and the manner in which the artist directly confronts the viewer and raises his hands to the middle of his chest as if in the act of blessing. Read more...
The Haller Madonna is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to between 1496 and 1499. It is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The reverse also contains a full Dürer painting, entitled Lot and His Daughters. Read more...
Knight, Death and the Devil, 1513, engraving, 24.5 x 19.1 cm
Knight, Death and the Devil (German: Ritter, Tod und Teufel) is a large 1513 engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer, one of the three Meisterstiche (master prints) completed during a period when he almost ceased to work in paint or woodcuts to focus on engravings. The image is infused with complex iconography and symbolism, the precise meaning of which has been argued over for centuries.
An armoured knight, accompanied by his dog, rides through a narrow gorge flanked by a goat-headed devil and the figure of death riding a pale horse. Death's rotting corpse holds an hourglass, a reminder of the shortness of life. The rider moves through the scene looking away from the creatures lurking around him, and appears almost contemptuous of the threats, and is thus often seen as symbol of courage; the knight's armor, the horse which towers in size over the beasts, the oak leaves and the fortress on the mountaintop are symbolic of the resilience of faith, while the knight's plight may represent Christians' earthly journey towards the Kingdom of Heaven. Read more...
Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents (or Dürer's Parents with Rosaries) is the collective name for two late-15th century portrait panels by the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer. They show the artist's parents, Barbara Holper (c. 1451–1514) and Albrecht Dürer the Elder (c. 1427–1502), when she was around 39 and he was 63 years. The portraits are unflinching records of the physical and emotional effects of ageing. The Dürer family was close and Dürer may have intended the panels either to display his skill to his parents or as keepsakes while he travelled soon after as a journeyman painter.
They were created either as pendants, that is conceived as a pair and intended to hang alongside each other, or diptych wings. However this formation may have been a later conception; Barbara's portrait seems to have been executed some time after her husband's and it is unusual for a husband to be placed to the viewer's right in paired panels. His father's panel is considered the superior work and has been described as one of Dürer's most exact and honest portraits. They are among four paintings or drawings Dürer made of his parents, each of which unsentimentally examines the deteriorating effects of age. His later writings contain eulogies for both parents, from which the love and respect he felt toward them is evident. Read more...
Young Hare (German: Feldhase) is a 1502 watercolour and bodycolour painting by German artist Albrecht Dürer. Painted in 1502 in his workshop; it is acknowledged as a masterpiece of observational art alongside his Great Piece of Turf from the following year. The subject is rendered with almost photographic accuracy, and although the piece is normally given the title Young Hare, the portrait is sufficiently detailed for the hare to be identified as a mature specimen — the German title translates as "Field Hare" and the work is often referred to in English as the Hare or Wild Hare.
The subject was particularly challenging: the hare's fur lay in different directions and the animal was mottled with lighter and darker patches all over, Dürer had to adapt the standard conventions of shading to indicate the outline of the subject by the fall of light across the figure. Despite the technical challenges presented in rendering the appearance of light with a multi-coloured, multi-textured subject, Dürer not only managed to
create a detailed, almost scientific, study of the animal but also infuses the picture with a warm golden light that hits the hare from the left, highlighting the ears and the run of hair along the body, giving a spark of life to the eye, and casting a strange shadow to the right. Read more...
Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate is a 1504 woodcut by the German artist Albrecht Dürer that depicts the standard scene of the parents of the Virgin Mary, Joachim and Anne meeting at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, upon learning that she will bear a child.
The story of the Meeting at the Golden Gate is not in the New Testament, but is in the Protoevangelium of James and other apocryphal accounts; however it was tolerated by the Church. It featured in the medieval Golden Legend and other popular accounts. The print shows an embracing couple beneath an ornamental archway, surrounded by neighbours and fools. Read more...
The Feast of the Rosary (German: Rosenkranzfest) is a 1506 oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, now in the National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic. Read more...
The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to 1508 and now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Austria. It is signed on a cartouche which hangs from the artist's self-portrait in the center, saying Iste fatiebat Ano Domini 1508 Albertus Dürer Aleman. Read more...
Visitation, Albrecht Dürer, 1503
Visitation is 1503 a woodcut engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, held in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich. The work recounts an episode form the biblical tale of when Mary, heavily pregnant, travels to see her much older cousin Elisabeth, who is now also late with child.
Visitation shows the women as they embrace at the house of Elisabeth's husband Zacharias, who is shown standing at the doorway to the left of the woodcut. Both Zacharias and his wife are old; and he is struck into silence by the fact of his long barren wife having finally conceived a child. Read more...
Portrait of Erasmus, 24.8 x 19.1 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art
Portrait of Erasmus is a late period 1526 woodcut engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer. The portrait was commissioned by the Dutch Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (c.1466-69 – 1536) when the two men met in the Netherlands between 1520 and 1521. Erasmus was then at the height of his renown, and required representations of himself to accompany his writings. It was not completed until some six years later, but proceeds a number of preparatory sketches made at that time.
It is not a close representation of Erasmus' physical characteristics, for which has sometimes been criticised, including by Erasmus himself, and by Martin Luther, with whom Erasmus had a prolonged and thorny relationship. It is today viewed by art historians as a pioneering capture of his moral integrity, intellectualism and scholarship, and is one of the most popular and recognisable portraits of the sitter. Read more...
The Jabach Altarpiece is an oil on lime tree panel painting by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, executed around 1503–1504. Originally a triptych, only the side panels are now preserved: the right picture, measuring 96×54 cm, is housed in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum of Cologne; the left picture, measuring 96×51 cm, is housed in the Städel of Frankfurt. Read more...- The following is an incomplete list of paintings by the German painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer. Read more...
The Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to 1519 and now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Austria. It portrays the emperor Maximilian I. Read more...
Avarice (German: Allegorie des Geizes) is a small (35 × 29 cm) oil-on-limewood painting of 1507 by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). It shows a grotesque and wrinkled old woman with one sagging breast hanging out of her crimson robe holding a bag of gold coins with both hands. The work is found on the reverse of his Portrait of Young Man; it has been speculated, though it is impossible to know, that they were intended to form part of a diptych. Avarice is allegorical and serves as a warning at both the transience of life and the ultimate worthlessness of earthly fortune. It is generally grouped, along with Melencolia I, as one of Dürer's vanitas images.
Intended to represent both avarice and the passing nature of youthful beauty, the woman is shown in half-length, painted in thick impasto. She has long straight blond hair, glazed eyes, a long nose, a pinched jaw and a mouth with only two remaining teeth, which is twisted in a scornful laugh. Her visible right arm is muscular and out of proportion to the rest of her body, while a dark tuft of hair sprouts from her underarm. Only her hair and the regular and almost noble outlines of her face hint at former beauty. The intense focus of the image is achieved by tight cropping and the contrasting of the lush colouring of the woman's gown and hair against a flat black background. Read more...
Lamentation of Christ (also known as Glimm Lamentation) is an oil-on-panel painting of the common subject of the Lamentation of Christ by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, executed around 1500 and now in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich, Germany.
The work was commissioned by goldsmith Jakob Glimm as a memorial of his first wife, Margaret Holzmann, who a died in 1500. The removal of later re-painting in 1924 showed the original figures of the donors (Glimm and his three sons) and of the dead woman, depicted in far smaller proportions than the religious characters. Read more...
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Selected images
Adoration of the Magi (1504), oil on wood Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
The earliest painted Self-Portrait (1493) by Albrecht Dürer, oil, originally on vellum (Louvre, Paris)
Self-Portrait at 28, 1500
Dürer often used multiview orthographic projections
Visit of Albrecht Dürer in Antwerp in 1520, Henri Leys, 1855, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, 2198
Self-portrait silverpoint drawing by the thirteen-year-old Dürer, 1484
Feast of the Rosary (1506)
Woodcut by Dürer of his coat of arms, which featured a door as a pun on his name, as well as the winged bust of a Moor
Melencolia I (1514), engraving
Praying Hands, pen-and-ink drawing (c. 1508)
Adam and Eve, 1507, Museo del Prado
Portrait of Oswolt Krel, a merchant from Lindau (Lake Constance), participating in the South German medieval trade corporation Große Ravensburger Handelsgesellschaft, 1499.
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