Painter, draftsman and German engraver.

Resulting from the tradition of the blazing Gothic of Northern Europe, but also nourished Italian works of the Rebirth, Albrecht Dürer is interested in all the kinds, of the religious compositions to the profane allegories, the landscape and the painting of animals to the art of the portrait. By marrying the humanistic principles with a refined plastic language, it allows the advent of the modern art in Germany.

At the dawn of the XVI ^E century, whereas Germany knows great upheavals related to the Reform, with the country wars, Dürer seems the artist of the passage between the medieval plastic tradition and a new language. The evolution of the style follows that of the man; the apprentice becomes Master, the voyages follow one another, the intellectual is surrounded doctors, thinkers, astronomers, philosophers and theorizes his knowledge by the publication of many works.

It is in Nuremberg, city of the merchants, the goldsmiths, the printers and the intellectuals, that settles in 1455 Albrecht Dürer, that one will say the Old one later, Hungarian goldsmith. Extremely logically, his/her Albrecht son, born on on May 21st, 1471, works like apprentice in his workshop, of 1483 to 1486. Of this experiment, Dürer will keep a taste of the precision and meticulousness, visible more particularly in its graphic work.

On November 30th, 1486, Dürer decides to enter the workshop of the Michael Wolgemut painter, where it will remain more than three years. The period of training finished begins the turn of trade-guild: “When I finished my training, my father made me travel. I remained four years absent, until my father reminded to me. I had left after Easter, I returned to the house in 1494, after Pentecost.” This voyage is little known, only some stages are certain: with the beginning of the year 1492, Dürer, which wished to meet Martin Schongauer - which is deceased at the end of the year 1491 -, will be received in Colmar by the brothers of the large Rhenish engraver. He goes then to Basle, where he engraves his first xylography - whose wood is preserved at the museum of this city -, then in Strasbourg. The graphic work of the artist will be impregnated lessons, traditional, of this period of formation, during which it draws from the Germanic tradition his taste of realism.

In 1494 or 1495, To last share for Italy. In Venice, it is dazzled by the Rebirth, discovers the importance suddenly attached to the man and to the human body, the expressive force of the works of art and the new design of returned space. To this period in particular the Alpine landscapes with the watercolour (Seen valley of Arco) go back.

From 1505 to 1507, Dürer undertakes a second voyage in Italy; it passes by Augsburg and Padoue before arriving at Venice, where the scholars and the nobility of the German colony make him warm welcome. It painted there a Festival of the Rosary for the church San Bartolomeo, where the doge and the Venetian aristocracy come to admire it. On the other hand, the Italian great painters, if they greet the engraver, are not very sensitive to its talents of colourist. In 1517-1518, Dürer remains in Bamberg, then in Augsburg.

The following year, it leaves for Switzerland. Its last voyage leads it in Flanders. It is cordially received in Antwerp, Malines, Brussels and Aachen. It there meets Érasme, the painters Quentin Metsys, Patinir, Lucas de Leyde, and studies the old Masters: Van Eyck in Ghent, Van der Weyden and Van der Goes in Brussels. The portraits which it paints with the return of its voyage - the Portrait of gentleman (1524) - show a great control to return not only the flexibility of the textile and modelled face, but especially the psychology of the model.

This spirit of opening which leads the artist to travel also involves it to tie friendships, to work and study more largely arts. To last is allowed in the humanistic circle of Nuremberg (1496-1497). In addition to the friend and travelling companion Willibald Pirckheimer meet there then the doctors Dietrich Ulsen and Hieronymus Münzer, the lawyers Peter Dannhauser and Christoph Scheurl, the theologist and mathematician Johannes Werner, the merchant and astronomer Bernhard Walther, the astronomer Konrad Heinfogel.

This core of intellectuals come to be added printers and editors, among whom the godfather To last, Anton Koberger. Perhaps this with this last is that Albrecht Dürer owes the concern of writing her biography (Chronic family, 1524) and to publish many writings: in 1498, it prints on its account and sells as an editor the first of his great works, the Apocalypse.

Of its draft treaty on art remain only notes. It is also devoted to research on the proportions and the prospect, to studies on town planning and the fortifications. In 1525, it publishes in account of author a Treaty of geometry; To last, like many artists of the Rebirth, asserts the membership of painting either to the mechanical arts but to the liberal arts, because of the reports which it maintains with mathematics and the geometry. A Treaty on the fortifications of castles, cities and boroughs appears in Nuremberg (1527), dedicated with Ferdinand, king de Hongrie. Lastly, shortly after the death of the artist is published the third theoretical work on the proportions.

The evolution of the iconographic choices and stylistics throughout the career To last corresponds at the big steps of its life. One of the first panels of the artist, Portrait of his father (1490), carried out at the end of the period of training at Wolgemut, is located in a still Gothic vein. The character, with the vague glance, of three quarters on a uniform bottom, lets show through no emotion, no feeling; its hands are treated with a certain awkwardness.

A few years later, the Portrait of Oswolt Krel (1499) concerns a rare psychological quality: the image is intense and worrying, the apprehensive glance accentuates the internal tension of the character. In the landscapes or the large religious scenes, To last control, after its two voyages in Italy, the direction of space and the light. The space prospect confers on the watercolours of then a certain monumentality which the luminosity and the effects of transparency attenuate. In the great compositions, the axial prospect is often reinforced by a guiding line highlighted by the characters.

In certain works, Dürer innovates and puts into practice its theories on Article the representation of Adam and Eve (1507), for example, is the occasion of a study of the proportions of the human body, of which the height is estimated at nine times that of the head, whereas, in a former engraving on the same topic (1504), the size of the characters corresponded, according to the traditional proportion, with eight heads. Ultimate monumental work To last, its Four Apostles, painted in 1526, two years before the death of the artist, constitute to some extent his pictorial will: symmetry between the two panels is perfect; the silhouette of the characters, far from the hieratism often associated with the representations in foot, gives to the unit an imposing character; their position on two different levels produces an impression of depth. The rhythm is caused by the luminosity and the color. The panel where holy Jean and holy Pierre appear is cherished of a low-angled light, on hot colors; contrary, those of the coats of Paul saint and Marc saint are of a coldness which shows a white and violent light.

The expression of the faces makes it possible to identify the saints with the four temperaments of the man: the blood one is personified by the soft but rubicund face of Jean saint, the colérique one under the features of a certain aggressiveness of Marc saint, the melancholic person by the austere Paul saint and the phlegmatic one by a Pierre saint with the tired face. In this work, Dürer summarized the state of its knowledge, but it is however an engraving, Mélancolie I, which could be described as proclamation of the painter: this graver must be understood like the synthesis symbolic system of the Melancholy and the personification of the Geometry. The dark face of the allegory, the reason for the closed fist, the purse, the keys and the bat are the images chosen quite front Dürer to represent the Melancholy. With these elements, the artist adds the compass, the sphere, the square, the plane, the hammer, as many symbols related to the Geometry: To last referred to the artistic activity and illustrates the matter of Aristote, taken again by humanistic Marsile Ficin, noting that the gifted and creative men show tendencies melancholic persons.

Whereas, with the Middle Ages, the painters represent themselves modestly - silhouettes drowned in a vast religious composition or drawn studies -, Dürer is an artist concerned about its own figuration. On a drawing carried out at the thirteen years age, carrying a posterior annotation - “In 1484, whereas I was still a child, I made my portrait in an ice. Albrecht Dürer” -, the still awkward child retracts under his sleeve the hand which holds the feather.

In another work with the feather which one can locate around 1491, the artist carries the hand to his face and seems to give up himself with a feeling of melancholy, or perhaps with a physical suffering. A board of Kunsthalle of Bremen shows the barechested To last, with the mention “I have badly where my finger indicates the yellow spot”, and a drawing of Schlossmuseum of Weimar (1500-1505) presents one To last in foot and quasi naked, only precedent in the art history before the XX ^E century.

With these very original studies are added many painted portraits, including one, of 1493, is surmounted inscription “My business follow the course which is assigned to them up there”, by which the painter admits that its destiny rests between the hands of God, while a table of 1498 expresses the feeling of superiority of the artist, independent and proud man: “I made this portrait according to myself when I had twenty-six years.”

In the self-portrait of 1500, To last, of face, uses a diagram employed before for the representations of Christ; the painter is identified by his talents with the Creator, but, to the image of the Son of God, it carries also his cross. Thereafter, the artist will mix with the assistance: in the Festival of the Rosary, the Martyrdom of the ten thousand Christians, the Heller Retable and the Worship of the Holy Trinity, holding a sheet of paper or a sign with its signature, it forms from now on integral part of its work.