An Essay On Albrecht Durer

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Albrecht Dürer (1471 - 1528) was born May 21, 1471 in the city of Nuremberg, Germany. At the age of twelve Dürer became an apprentice of his father’s, a master goldsmith. Not only did he learn to shape the metal, but he also honed his skills of design and drawing. Dürer had drawn his first self-portrait at thirteen simply from his reflection in the mirror. In 1486, at age fifteen, Dürer decided to switch professions, becoming the apprentice for the town’s principle and most successful painter Michael Wolgemut. Dürer studied many mediums including painting, copper engraving, and wood carving. In 1490 Dürer finished his apprenticeship and traveled as a journeyman throughout northern Europe for four years before returning back home to Nuremberg in 1494.
In July 1494 Dürer was married, an arrangement that was while he was touring Europe. Dürer was married to the daughter of a merchant Agnes Frey. Agnes used a dowry to help Dürer start his own shop, and her family introduced him to many of the elites in the city. Agnes also assisted him in selling his art, taking some of his works to other cities and posing as a model for some of his paintings.
Dürer became extremely interested in making new art, based upon mathematics, as it would become the backbone of his art and a pillar of his legacy. in 1495 Dürer visited Venice, he would return to Nuremberg with Euclid’s Elements and Vitruvius’ De Architectura as the basis of his studies. This was the beginning of Dürer’s perspective experiments and mathematical human proportion. The Venetian artist Jacob de Barbari came to Nuremberg to assist Dürer with those new studies, as Dürer would create a series of drawings leading up to his famous Adam and Eve (1504) engraving, showing his full und...

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...ww.encyclopedia.com/topic/Albrecht_Dürer.aspx

Albrecht Dürer - Rare Book Collections – National Library of Scotland at http://www.nls.uk/collections/rare-books/collections/Dürer

• The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer at http://www.clarkart.edu/exhibitions/Dürer/content/about-the-artist.cfm

• Albrecht Dürer Biography at http://www.albrecht-Dürer.org/biography.html

• Historical Anatomies on the Web: Albrecht Dürer at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/Dürer_home.html

• Feature Column from the AMS at http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-alberti1

• St.Jerome in his Study with Perspective Lines at http://www.evl.uic.edu/davidson/1997/Nails_String/One_Point2.html

• The Polygons of Albrecht Dürer at http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1205/1205.0080.pdf

• Albrecht Dürer – Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer

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