Albrecht Dürer (1471 - 1528)

Born 21 May 1471 in Nürnberg, Holy Roman Empire

Ancestors

Died 6 Apr 1528 at age 56 in Nürnberg, Holy Roman Empire

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Biography

From Wikipedia:^[1]

Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in the Holy Roman Empire in Nürnberg, Bavaria, which would become Nuremberg, Germany, he established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints.

Albrecht was the third child and second son of his parents, who had at least fourteen and possibly as many as eighteen children. His father, Albrecht Dürer the Elder (originally Albrecht Ajtósi), was a successful goldsmith who in 1455 had moved to Nuremberg from Ajtós, near Gyula in Hungary. He married Barbara Holper, daughter of his master, when he himself qualified as a master in 1467.

After a few years of school, Dürer started to learn the basics of goldsmithing and drawing from his father. Though his father wanted him to continue his training as a goldsmith, he showed such a precocious talent in drawing that he started as an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut at the age of fifteen in 1486.

The German name "Dürer" is a translation from the Hungarian, "Ajtósi". Initially, it was "Türer", meaning doormaker, which is "ajtós" in Hungarian (from "ajtó", meaning door). A door is featured in the coat-of-arms the family acquired. Albrecht Dürer the Younger later changed "Türer", his father's diction of the family's surname, to "Dürer", to adapt to the local Nuremberg dialect.

On 7 July 1494 at the age of 23 Dürer was married to Agnes Frey following an arrangement made for him. Agnes was the daughter of a prominent brass worker (and amateur harpist) in the city. However, no children resulted from the marriage, and with Albrecht the Dürer name died out. The marriage between Agnes and Albrecht was not a generally happy one, as indicated by the letters of Dürer in which he quipped to Willibald Pirckheimer in an extremely rough tone about his wife. He called her an "old crow" and made other vulgar remarks.

Albrecht 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 died in Nuremberg at the age of 56, leaving an estate valued at 6,874 florins – a considerable sum. He is buried in the Johannisfriedhof cemetery. His large house, where his workshop was located and where his widow lived until her death in 1539, remains a prominent Nuremberg landmark. It is now a museum.

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia: Albrecht Dürer

• National Gallery of Art: Albrecht Dürer, German, 1471 - 1528