There is almost obsessive quality about a great Durer. One feels the weight of a sensibility searching into the inner truth of his subject. It is this inwardness that interests Durer, an inner awareness that is always well contained within the outer form, but that lights it from within.

Celebrated painter and engraver, born at Nuremberg, Germany, 21 May, 1471; died there, 6 April, 1528. Durer left his native city, then famous for its commerce, learning, and art, but three times in his life. His first journey was undertaken after he had completed his apprenticeships both to his father, a goldsmith, and to the painter and engraver Wohlgemut; on this occasion, he traveled through Germany and visited at Colmar and Basle the family of the recently deceased Schongaur; in 1505-07 he spent some time in Venice; in 1520-21 he went to the Netherlands, visiting especially Antwerp.

FIRST PERIOD (BEFORE 1505)

After the earliest works of his youth (portraits, Madonnas, coats-of-arms, landscape-sketches) he set up in 1494 a studio of his own. In the same year he married Agnes Frey but they had no children. Among his Nuremberg friends the learned humanist Willibald Pirkheimer held the first place. Besides great advancement in learning, Durer owed to Pirkheimer the happiness of a lifelong friendship and the acquaintance with classical antiquity which he occasionally drew upon in his work. Durer's art, however, with its sources in the German Middle Ages, remained essentially German; the influence of the art of Italy and the Netherlands was merely supplementary. In his own century there were few chances for mural paintings; but the demand for altar-pieces and portraits was all the greater. His woodcuts were eagerly sought after by the general public, his engravings on copper by connoisseurs. Among his fine compositions are: the Baumgartner altar-painting, the central panel of which represents the Adoration of the Christ Child, the wings the donors as Sts. George and Eustacious; the "Lamentation of Christ" in which the pathos is noteworthy; and the remarkable picture of himself (1500). These are preserved in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The portrait of himself just mentioned is greatly idealized as is also that of a lady of the Furleger family. On the other hand in the portraits of his father and mother realism predominates. But here, as in the "Prodigal Son." and in his drawings, Durer seeks to elevate his naturalism by sweet simplicity, depth of feeling, and grandeur of conception. The "Adoration of the Magi" in the Uffizi at Florence will bear comparison, at least for German taste, with the masterpieces of Italy and the Netherlands. Durer's own woodcuts have a quality entirely their own; though without colouring, they yet produced the effect of colour.