DURER, Albrecht, German painter and en graver: b. Nuremberg, Bavaria, 21 May 1471; d. there, 6 April 1528. His father, Albrecht Diirer, came to Nuremberg in 1455 at the age of 2& He was a goldsmith by trade, and it was not long before he found employment with a well-known burgher of the city and master goldsmith, named Hieronymous Holper. In his 40th year, Duren who had won the esteem of his master both because of his fine character and diligent devotion to his duties, married Holper's daughter Barbara, then 15 years of age. He became a citizen of Nuremberg, a master goldsmith in 1468, and moved to a back apartment in the house of Johanna Pirkheimer, a patron of arts and letters, who was an en thusiastic lover of classical learning. Here the artist Albrecht Diirer was born, the second son and third child of the Diirer family. After the death of Holper, the elder Darer acquired the property on the street called Unter der Vesten, since renamed Burgstrasse. Thither the family moved in 1475 and here a great part of the painter's life was spent. Eighteen children were born to the elder Albrecht, of whom two survived the painter. The others died before reaching any grown-up age. It was difficult work to support his numerous prog eny. The younger Diirer speaks with the greatest admiration and affection of his parents who were marked by their piety, simplicity and earnestness of purpose which earned them the well-deserved esteem of their fellow-citizens. After attending school where he learned to read and write and understand a little of Latin, Albert, who was his father's favorite, worked with him in the goldsmith shop and learned that trade. But he soon manifested, at a very early age, a natural predilection for drawing and painting. A likeness of himself drawn with the use of a mirror at the age of 13 is remarkable for its charming clarity of outline and its expressiveness. A year later, he made another drawing, of the 'Virgin and the Child,' which, in spite of defects of drawing, shows fine emotional promise in its tenderness and gracefulness. Accordingly, in 1486, the clever boy was apprenticed to the painter Michael Wohlgemuth for three years.
Painting and drawing in Germany at this period, especially at Nuremberg, were very pop ular and distinguished crafts. Under the pat
ronage of the burgher and peasant classes, the wood-cut and copper engraving began to turn toward the life and customs of the people for its inspiration. • Pictures were used in books as a means of instructing the illiterate. Reli gious paintings donated to the Church by the wealthy citizens made room on their canvasses for their donors in contemplative attitudes. Portrait and genre painting found its sources here. The artist was esteemed as a very clever artisan who wielded his tools for the benefit and glory of the people about him, rather than as a soul aloof, superior and apart from the life of the time, painting or drawing under the pat ronage of lords and high church. Each master artist had his apprentices and journeymen, as did other artisans; and they assisted him in cutting his drawings, securing orders and selling prints. It was in this wholesome environment that Dilrer worked. In 1490, his apprenticeship being over, he began his Wanderjahre. He went through Germany, stopping at the various studios, plying his trade and filling his sketch book with studies of people, pictures and land scapes. At Colmar, he probably came into con tact with Schongauer; and he studied also, it is said, at Basel and Strasshurg. Late in 1493 or early in 1494, Darer arrived at Venice, at a time when the reawakening of the classical spirit was combining with modern theories of exact proportion to developing original forms of art in the work of Mantegna, the two Bel linis and Jacopo de Barbari. In 1494, his jour neys ended and he returned home. He . then married Agnes Frey, the daughter of a burgher, Hans Frey, a very versatile and bril liant man. The pictures of Diirer's wife repre sent her as a modest, comely housewife. In spite of Pirkheimer's irascible testimony as to the sharpness of her tongue, and the shrewish ness of her disposition, there is every reason to believe that the marriage was happy after the fashion of the quiet uneventful domestic life of the city. Diirer moved with his wife to the home of his aged parents and settled there as a master artist, busy with the pressing task of supporting both himself and his parents.