Impressive
though others may be, the great German artist of the Northern
Renaissance is
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). We know his life better than the lives of other
artists of his time. Dürer traveled, and found, he says, more appreciation
abroad than at home. The Italian influence on his art was of a particularly
Venetian strain, through the great Bellini, who, by the time Dürer met him, was
an old man. Dürer was an extraordinarily learned person, and the only Northern
artist who fully infused the sophisticated Italian dialogue between scientific
theory and art, creating his exposition on proportion in 1528. Even though we know so much about his doings,
it is not easy to fathom his thinking.
Albrecht Dürer
was born in the imperial free city of Nuremberg on May 27,1471, at a time when
the city was shifting from its Gothic past to a more progressive form of
Renaissance Humanism. Dürer's father, a
goldsmith, departed Hungary to come to Nuremberg, where he met and married
Albrecht's mother -- Barbara Hopkins. At
age 13, Dürer accomplished an artistically precise and meticulous silverpoint,
entitled "Self Portrait at age 13."
This work of art not only reveals his premature aptitude as a youth, but
the unique details of northern art.
Albrecht Dürer was first apprenticed to his father at age 14, during
which time he learned techniques in metal working. It would be these techniques and his own
intrinsic talents that provide a stable base for his future engraving
masterpieces.
Dürer, who did not care for goldsmithing, was
apprenticed to one of his fathers' close friends, painter and book illustrator
Michael Wohlgmuth, in 1486. While an apprentice under Wohlgemuth, Albrecht
acquired the essential skills needed in painting, drawing, and the craft of
woodcut. Michael Wohlgemuth's workshop
was extremely busy and was aggressively designing and fabricating woodcuts used
in the making of books with detailed illustrations. It is believed that Albrecht may have
assisted in the preparation of illustrations in the Nuremberg Chronicles (1493,
Hartmann Schedel). This project would
have allowed Dürer to view works by the leading printmasters of the period,
including Martin Schogauer, the Housebook Master, and other Italian artists.
Albecht Dürer
left Michael Wohlgemuth's studio in 1490 after finishing his apprenticeship to
go on Wanderjahre (wandering journey).
The main purpose of Dürer's journey was to visit Martin Schongauer in
Colmar. It is believed, however, that he
first went to visit the Housebook Master working in the middle Rhine area,
after which he continued on to the Netherlands.
In 1492 Albrecht sadly discovered that Schongauer had recently died;
nonetheless, the master's brothers welcomed Dürer.
Shortly after,
Albrecht went onto Basel to work with another of the Schongauer brothers.
During this time he also made many contacts. In Basel and later in Strasbourg,
Dürer created illustrations for various publications, in addition to Sebastian
Brant's Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools, translated 1507) in 1494. At the this
early period of his life, amid his apprenticeship and his return to Nuremberg in
1494, Dürer's art exhibits his extravagant expertise with line and his astute
attention to detail.
Due to a
prearranged marriage, Dürer had to return to Nuremberg. On July 7, 1494, he married Agnes Frey, the
daughter of a wealthy local burgher.
Agnes and Albrecht appeared completely unsuited for each other;
consequently, only months after their wedding, Dürer left for his first trip to
Italy, accompanied by friends. While in
Italy, he visited his good friend Willibald Pirckheimer; in fact, it was Willibald
who introduced Albrecht to classical writings and humanist beliefs. It is believed, perhaps, that Dürer met
Jacopo dé Barbari, whose geometrically constructed figures motivated Dürer to
contemplate the dimensions of the human body.
Also, during his year long stay in Venice he completed illustrations of
mysterious animals and figures, as well as contemplating nature. During his stay in Italy Albrecht produced
some magnificently detailed watercolor landscape studies, presumably during his
return journey -- for example, a view of the Castle at Trent (1495, National
Gallery, London).
During the
ensuing ten years in Nuremberg, from the summer 1495 to fall of 1505, Dürer
generated a great abundance of works that strongly secured his notoriety. (The
Apocalypse (1498), a series 15 large, full-page woodcut drawings and the
engravings Fall of Man (1504)and Large Fortune (1501-1502)). On the whole,
these works and others of the period demonstrate his advancing technical
expertise of the woodcut and engraving media. They also demonstrate his
awareness of human proportions based on passages by the ancient Roman writer
Vitruvius, and reflect his dazzling ingenuity to combine the details of nature
into believable illustrations of reality. His Self-Portrait of 1500 (Alte
Pinakothek, Munich), in which he illustrated himself as a Christ-like figure,
reiterates in visual form his lifelong preoccupation with the elevation of the
artist's status surpassing that of a mere artisan.
Albrecht left
for Italy in fall 1505 after completing Crowned Death on a Thin Horse (British
Museum, London). The plague epidemic in Nuremberg is quite possibly the reason
Dürer left for Venice. From 1505 to 1507 he remained in Venice where he met the
great master Giovanni Bellini and other artists. During his stay he secured a
significant commission for a painting, the Feast of the Rose Garlands (1506,
National Museum, Prague), for the German Merchants' Foundation. Albrecht Dürer also composed the following
three paintings in which there is a new gentleness of color and tonal
harmony: Christ Among the Doctors (1506,
Thyssen Collection, Lugano), Portrait of a Young Woman (1506-1507, Deutsches
Museum, Berlin), and lastly Virgin with the Siskin (1506, Deutsches Museum,
Berlin).
Upon returning
to Nuremberg in February 1507, Dürer began a second period of great
productivity. During this time he completed such works as: an Adoration of the
Trinity panel, an altarpiece for the Dominican church in Frankfurt (1508-1509,
destroyed by fire in 1729), portraits; many prints, two editions of the
Passion, woodcuts for the Triumphal Arch for Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I,
and a series of engravings that included The Knight, Death, and the Devil
(1513), Saint Jerome in His Study (1514), and Melancholia I (1514). Through the
linear process of engraving, Dürer was able to produce tones of varying
darkness and he used them to illustrate a three-dimensional appearance.
In 1520 Dürer
learned that Charles V, Maximilian's successor, was scheduled to be making a
voyage to Aachen from Spain. Upon
arrival in Aachen, Charles V was crowned Holy Roman emperor of the Habsburg
dynasty. Albrecht Dürer had received a yearly stipend from Maximilian for such
works as Triumphal Arch (1515-1517), an enormous woodcut measuring 11½ feet by
9¾ feet and other works of art. Albrecht
was eager to meet with Charles to have his salary continued. Armed with prints
and other artworks, which he sold along the way to finance his trip, Dürer
journeyed to Aachen and on to the Lowlands between 1520 and 1521. His audience
with Charles proved successful. Albrecht
kept a silverpoint diary that consisted of sketches of the many people and
places he visited on his pilgrimage to the Netherlands, the first of its kind
in the history of art.
He returned to Nuremberg in July 1521, at
which time he started to compose portrait engravings. The first, Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenbergwhich, was completed in 1523. The
second, was a portrait engraving of an old friend, Willibald Pirckheimer
(1524), and the last of his portrait engravings' was Erasmus of Rotterdam
(1526) are all remindful of the Flemish portrayals of St. Jerome. His last
monumental works are two large panels depicting the Four Apostles (1526?, Alte
Pinakothek), were presented originally as his gift to the city of
Nuremberg. Albrecht Dürer also wrote
disquisition's on perspective (1525, Underweysung der Messung...), on
fortification of towns (1527, Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett...)
and lastly on human proportion (1528, incomplete, Vier Bücher von menschlicher
Proprtion). On April 6, 1528 Albrecht
Dürer died, but shall never be forgotten.
The quality of
Dürer's work, his astonishing output, and his influence on his contemporaries
all underscore the significance of his place in the history of art. In a
broader context, his curiosity in geometry and mathematical proportions, his
keen sense of history, his observances of nature, and his awareness of his own
individual potential demonstrate the intellectually inquiring spirit of the
Renaissance.
Essay two: Albrecht Durer vs Brett Whiteley 1238
Essay two: Albrecht Durer vs Brett Whiteley 1238
In this paper I
will compare and contrast the work of two well-known and quite contrasting
artists that stand out in their approach towards the handling of the figure in
their art. While searching for two
artists that would be not only interesting to compare and contrast, but in
doing so, further my understanding of the relationship between the artist and
their attitude towards their artwork, I came across Brett Whiteley and Albrecht
Dürer. I was drawn to these artists because of their capacity to capture so
clearly what they saw. Their talents in approach and craftsmanship while so
vastly different in some areas were closely related in others.
Both of these
artists were exceptionally talented draftsmen and shared a keen sense of
observation for realistic detail. Dürer
believed that, by using geometry and measurement, he could create a rational
system of perspective and bodily proportions, whereas, Whiteley, although
having the ability to draw realistically, was more concerned with abstraction,
distortion and exaggeration to create emotion, especially when portraying the
human figure. Both Dürer and Whiteley's
art demonstrates their extreme proficiency with line and their ability to
depict the human form in ways that many artists could only dream of.
Whiteley's use
of line was equal to none, in that with just a few lines he could encapsulate
the sensual, feminine curves of a voluptuous female nude. He had a highly evolved instinct for making
marks on surfaces, he had the ability to change a dull, blank sheet of paper
into an emotionally charged artwork with a fluid like swipe of a
paintbrush. Dürer's use of line on the
other hand was quite different. The use
of millions of fine lines to render an image is typical of German renaissance
engravers but Durers astonishing and unequalled achievements in woodcut and
engraving permanently changed the graphic arts and heightened its
possibilities. Through his two visits to Italy, and his contact with such
brilliant renaissance artists like his contemporaries Mantegna, Leonardo and
Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), Durer was stimulated and influenced to develop
his unique style.
While looking
for two specific artworks to compare and contrast, I first found Durer's widely
familiar work 'Hands of an Apostle' or 'The Praying Hands', which was finished
down to the last detail. Above a network of veins the somewhat thin but gnarled
fingers point skywards and come to a 'point like a Gothic arch'. I then came
across Brett Whiteley's 'My God, My God…Why…' which depicts
Christ on the crucifix with his arms and his largely out of proportion hands
held sky ward. The hands are cartoon-like and are grotesquely distorted
becoming a strong image of intense of pain, so much so that the rest of the
painting becomes seemingly insignificant. Whiteley used his ability to distort
an image to intensify the feeling of the picture to its full extent but he also
knew he could rely on his tremendous skill as a draughtsman to rescue him if he
took it too far. Durer however, made constant attempts to find a general
proportional law that held constant with all varieties of human physique. He
diagrammed the proportions of different parts of the body according to a fixed
scale. It is understood that the hands were a section of a larger work and that
Durers capacity for scale meant that each part could be placed like a jigsaw
and be accurately in proportion. He collected his thoughts on human proportion
into four volumes of books called Treatise on Human Proportions. He only
completed two before his death in1528.
Whiteley's
paintings most of the time, were quite highly sexualised, in fact, Whiteley was
the first Australian artist to directly portray sex in art. I think Durer would
be quite disgusted with Whiteley's blunt theme, but Whiteley was more intrigued
with the manner not the subject matter of the artwork. Whiteley seemed to have
a cool sentimental detachment with the themes in his paintings. For instance,
in his work Head of Christie which is a portrait of an English murderer,
instead of concentrating on directly painting a picture of death and despair to
repulse the viewer, he simply uses a subtle form of composition and distortion
of the face to entice the viewer to look at the face of a murderer. He aims not
to shock or repulse but to intrigue. It's interesting in that Whiteley's
pictures of nudes, giraffes and monkeys seem to have the same emotional level
as The Head of Christie. Durer on the other hand chose his theme quite
carefully. His main themes were usually spiritual or religious, although he
like Whiteley, also had a keen eye for landscapes and some sort of connection
with animals. Almost all of Durer's paintings or etchings of animals or
landscapes were so detailed that they could perhaps be accurate enough for a
botanist or biologist to use today. I think, Durer's connection with animals
sometimes led him to mix his themes, as in his Virgin with a Multitude of
Animals, 1503, where he surrounds the Virgin with a gathering of gentle animals
including a parrot, a fox, a poodle, some owls and a crab.
One of Durer's
favourite themes however, was himself. His self-portraits were all precisely
finished and all portrayed him as a handsome young man. He completed four
self-portraits during his life the first of which when he was only thirteen. It
is an amazingly accomplished self-portrait and was not only his earliest known
work but is also the first recognised self-portrait in German art. The last
self-portrait he painted was at the age of 29 in 1500, where he deliberately
portrayed himself in the style of a painting of Christ. He idealised his own
features to resemble that of Christ, not to show himself as the reincarnation
of Jesus, which to a good Christian would be blasphemous, but he believed that
his gift of art was god given. Although Durer often painted self-portraits he
hardly ever painted his wife, and when he did they weren't that flattering.
Whiteley nevertheless, used his girlfriend as a constant theme in his art. He
painted her not to show her in a sense but to show the female form.
Two widely
different personalities in two vastly different eras, the fifteenth Century and
the twentieth Century have shown me how the quality of draughtsmanship and line
can have such a strong impact on the viewer of the figure. Whilst Durer struggled
in the changing time of the German Gothic era to the beginning of the
wonderfully flamboyant Italian Renaissance, Whitely was also an artist of a
changing era. His paintings especially the abstracted figure encapsulated the
sexual revolution of the sixties and enriched the Australian art tradition.
They both were drawn to the human and animal form and while Durer embraced
realism in the time where developing science was the changing the way the world
saw itself, Whiteley was seeking the abstract when science was being
questioned, and the search for more inner truths was a sign of the times. Their
construction of the figure displays all these concepts.
Bibliography:
GAUNT, William,
"Everyman's Dictionary of Pictorial Art",Vol 1. 1962. K.M Dent and
Sons. London
GLEESON James
(ed) 'Masterpieces of Australian Painting',1969. Landsdowne Press Melbourne
HORTON, M.
"Australian Painters of the '70's", 1975 Ure Smith Press, Sydney
HUGHES, Robert,
"The Art of Australia" 1966 Penguin Aus.
RUSSELL Francis,
"The World Of Durer c. 1471-1528" 1967 Time Life Inc. NY.
