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Albrecht Durer
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Willibald_Pirckheimer
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Willibald Pirckheimer
new21/Albrecht Durer-474396.jpg
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| 1524 Engraving, 181 x 115 mm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The celebrated humanist Willibald Pirckheimer, counselor to the Emperor, friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam, member of the Nuremberg city council, translator of Greek and Latin classics, commander of the Nuremberg contingent of troops in the Swiss War, was Albrecht D?rer's closest friend and mentor. Suffering from severe gout, Pirckheimer had retired from the city council shortly before D?rer engraved this portrait. The copper plate portrait is an example of the new portraits he created using printed graphics. The bust is placed, like a monument, above an inscription that reads like an epitaph. It refers to the contributions and character of Pirckheimer, and the inscription beneath the portrait reads: "Image of Willibald Pirckheimer at age 53. Man lives through his intellect; all else will belong to death. 1524" (based on Livy III, 36). In this likeness, too, D?rer could not resist the temptation to show the reflection of windows in the eyes. The magnificent bulldog head of D?rer's best friend is not so much embellished as transfigured. Mass is converted into energy, and the heavy features of the learned irascible giant appear illumined, as it were, by the enormous eyes which flare from their sockets like powerful searchlights. This engraving was used as a bookplate by Pirckheimer. Many volumes containing it, formerly in the possession of the Royal Society, were sold at auction in London in 1925. Until 1945 there was an impression on white satin, probably posthumous, at Bremen.Artist:D?RER, Albrecht Title: Willibald Pirckheimer Painted in 1501-1550 , German - - graphics : portrait |
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b.May 21, 1471, Imperial Free City of Nernberg [Germany]
d.April 6, 1528, Nernberg
Albrecht Durer (May 21, 1471 ?C April 6, 1528) was a German painter, printmaker and theorist from Nuremberg. His still-famous works include the Apocalypse woodcuts, Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium. D??rer introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatise which involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions.
His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Renaissance in Northern Europe ever since.
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