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
J. Collins – Clip 1
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
J. Collins – Clip 2
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.
J. Collins – Clip 3
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
J. Collins – Clip 4
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
J. Collins – Clip 5
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
J. Collins – Clip 6
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
J. Collins – Clip 7
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
J. Collins – Clip 8
[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,
J. Collins – Clip 9
names that are not perhaps familiar to us
now but they were very important
printmakers at the time.