Albrecht Dürer - Portrait of Michael Wolgemut - 1516
Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),[4] sometimes spelt in English as Durer or Duerer, without umlaut, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in communication with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 he was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I. Dürer is commemorated by both the Lutheran and Episcopal Churches.
Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his later prints, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books. The woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series (1498), are more Gothic than the rest of his work. His well-known engravings include the 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 also mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.
Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, has secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatises, which involve principles of mathematics, perspective, and ideal proportions.
Dürer has been credited with inventing the basic principle of ray tracing, a technique used in modern computer graphics.
Michael Wolgemut (formerly spelt Wohlgemuth; 1434 – 30 November 1519) was a German painter and printmaker, who ran a workshop in Nuremberg. He is best known as having taught the young Albrecht Dürer.
The importance of Wolgemut as an artist rests not only on his own individual works, but also on the fact that he was the head of a large workshop, in which many different branches of the fine arts were carried on by a great number of pupil-assistants, including Albrecht Dürer, who completed an apprenticeship with him between 1486-9. In his atelier large altar-pieces and other sacred paintings were executed, and also elaborate carved painted wood retables, consisting of crowded subjects in high relief, richly decorated with gold and colour.
Wolgemut trained with his father Valentin Wolgemut (who died in 1469 or 1470) and is thought to have been an assistant to Hans Pleydenwurff in Nuremberg. He worked with Gabriel Malesskircher in Munich early in 1471, leaving the city after unsuccessfully suing Malesskircher's daughter for breach of contract, claiming she had broken off their engagement. He then returned to his late father's workshop in Nuremberg, which his mother had maintained since Valentin's death.
In 1472 he married Pleydenwurff's widow and took over his workshop; her son Wilhelm Pleydenwurff worked as an assistant, and from 1491 a partner, to Wolgemut. Some consider Wilhelm a finer artist than Wolgemut, however he died in January 1494, when he was probably still in his thirties. Wilhelm's oeuvre remains unclear, though works in various media have been attributed to him.
