Albrecht Dürer is the undisputed genius of the Northern Renaissance, a visionary unbound by a single medium. He carved a career spanning painting, printmaking, drawing, and art theory, mastering each with dazzling skill. Famous in his own lifetime for his portraits of princes and patricians, his luminous drawings and watercolors transformed the sketch into an art form in its own right: works such as Young Hare stand as marvels of observation, capturing life with a precision and sensitivity that still amaze today.
He was native to the bustling city of Nuremberg, but his travels brought him face-to-face with Renaissance humanism, Venetian color, and classical ideals of beauty. These he absorbed and reimagined with northern precision. As court artist to Maximilian I, and confidant of humanists like Erasmus, he moved easily among the great minds of his age, his musings on measurement and proportion establishing him as one of Europe’s great thinkers. But he never stopped producing work of startling intimacy, from unflinching self-portraits and elaborate prints to meticulously observed studies of nature.
Featuring every known painting―many reproduced with brand-new photography―and nearly 500 drawings, this graceful volume captures the sweep of Dürer’s genius. From monumental altarpieces to intimate portraits, from delicate studies of the world around him to bold experiments, it reveals an artist both of his time and ahead of it, an innovator whose vision still feels urgent today. More than a compendium, it is a celebration of a polymath who continues to astonish and inspire.
Christof Metzger studied art history, and archaeology at the University of Augsburg and gained his doctorate in 1999. In 2011 he joined the Albertina Vienna, where he served since 2014 as Chief Curator. He published numerous books and essays on the art of the Dürer period and has curated several exhibitions.
Julia Zaunbauer studied art history, German philology and Celtic studies in Vienna, Paris and Edinburgh. She works as a curator at the Albertina in Vienna, and has contributed to numerous exhibitions and publications on Albrecht Dürer and art around 1500.
After completing his studies of art history and archaeology at the University of Vienna, Karl Schütz joined the staff of the Gemäldegalerie of the city’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, serving from 1972 as a curator and from 1990 to 2011 as its director. His particular scholarly interests include Netherlandish and Flemish painting, early-16th-century German painting, courtly portraiture, and the history of the Gemäldegalerie collection.