Albrecht Durer

by Anja-Franziska Eichler

Albrecht Dürer embodied a new type of artist, one who represented a different attitude to art and enjoyed high social status of the kind already accorded to Italian artists of his time. With his revolutionary innovations in paining as well as printed artwork Dürer introduced the Renaissance to German art. Humanistic philosophy of his day proved as fruitful a source to him as his study of the art of antiquity or the works of his European artistic contemporaries, which he drew on for wholly novel purposes. The enduring enthusiasm for Albrecht Dürer highlights the nature of his genius and his unique role in giving German art the impetus to historic progress.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Biography, Germany

140 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Large format set book. The illustrations are fantastic; the accompanying text is a basic introduction. Though the author points out the multiple and contradictory interpretations of some of Albrecht Durer's works. Still given the relative richness of information about Durer and his circle - books that he wrote, letters, autobiographical writings and so on, I did find this basic text difficult to engage with, indeed I found an old bookmark about 40% of the way though, from an abandoned earlier attempt to read the book.

Still I bought the book in Nuremberg after visiting the Durer-house museum, which was rebuilt after the Second World war, though to my surprise not actually completely destroyed, and it was time to finally completely read this and let it go out into the world and find somebody else to read it. For my part I have to find a biography or history of Durer that is more satisfying and enriching to read rather than just pleasing to the eyes.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

In-depth work on Albrecht Dürer, well put into context, beautifully illustrated.

[MJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Covers the life of the artist including to two trips to Italy and a trip to Netherland, where he is treated as a celebrity. Only complaint abt this book is the print is really small and took a lot longer to read.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tiny print was a challenge to read. I ended up skimming a lot.

[Gille Liath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Physically this is an excellent book, with lots of large, good quality pictures. Durer was an artist who caught the Middle Ages just before they went extinct, and here you find a good selection both of his paintings and - what is perhaps more interesting and characteristic - his seminal engravings, like those of Revelation or 'The Knight, Death and the Devil'. So it fulfils the primary requirement of an art book, to present the actual art as well as possible.

He was a great artist in a technical sense. Was he a great philosopher or theologian? No, he was an artist. Ms Eichler, the author, tries to steer him towards the championship of Protestantism and Humanism, but these claims are somewhat undermined by various pictures of Popes, cardinals, and very many of the Virgin Mary. No doubt the subjects reflected the desires of his patrons, but so of course do his secular portraits. By her selection she implies that he was gradually shaking off the influence of the church, but in fact he continued to create religious scenes and portraits of saints throughout his life - it's just that the later ones are not included here.

It's not that I believe he was a deeply pious person of any sort, he was just a person in a pious culture and probably believed in the conventional manner of his time. Like most Renaissance artists he had too much interest in classical mythology to be deeply Christian. It's intriguing to see how, almost hidden among the teeming multitudes in his set piece Adoration of the Trinity, are one or two girls staring boldly back at the viewer while everyone else's attention is on the great eschatological events unfolding. Who are they, and what are they up to? Whatever their minds are on, it's not heaven.

But less still is there any cause to think Durer a humanist in the sense of someone rejecting religion. Once again, he was an artist; artists draw and paint the things that are relevant to their time. The greatest of them have some great thing to express, either something of their own like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, or the mystery of the Divine like Rublov or El Greco, but I don't believe Durer is in that class; certainly, to my mind, what is interesting about him is not what is personal or modern but what is medieval. It's a pity that people like Eicher can't resist hijacking him and his like for their own agendas.