Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a painter and printmaker born in Nuremberg and considered the most important German artist of the Renaissance. Contemporary with Nicolaus Copernicus, Christopher Columbus, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli of Zürich, and other great men of the age, Dürer had a clear idea of what perfection meant and strove his whole life to achieve this excellence. At the same time, he mastered better than anyone else the complexity of techniques and materials available at the beginning of the 16th century, feeling at ease as a draftsman in charcoal, chalk, coloured pencil, pen and ink, and even in silverpoint. Albrecht Dürer also worked in oil and egg tempera and was among the first artists to master watercolor successfully. He was also an indisputable theorist and the author of several reference treatises. The aesthetic-philosophical issues that preoccupied Dürer in those years had to do with the nature and plausibility of representation, each of them exemplified by one of his three splendid masterpiece engravings known as “Meisterstiche”: Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513); Saint Jerome in His Study (1514); Melencolia I (1514). In 1515, Dürer’s Rhinoceros, a woodcut reproduced from a sketch by a friend who had seen in Lisbon the fabulous animal sent by the governor of Portuguese India to King Manuel I, would decisively influence the world of art. Despite minor anatomical inaccuracies, Dürer’s engraving would influence the European imagination for centuries, becoming a reference for scientists and famous artists alike.

Albrecht Dürer (Nuremberg 1471-1528 Nuremberg), The Rhinoceros, 1515, woodcut with letterpress text, 24.3 x 30.8 cm (sheet size); provenance: Donation Heinrich Schulthess-von Meiss 1894/98; courtesy: Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, Inv. no. D 13000;