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Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 6
Lesson 4: Albrecht Dürer- Who was Albrecht Dürer?
- Albrecht Dürer
- Dürer, The Triumphal Arch or Arch of Honor
- Dürer, Self-portrait, Study of a Hand and a Pillow
- Dürer, Self-portrait (1498)
- Dürer, Self-portrait (1500)
- Dürer, Self-portrait
- Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
- Dürer, the Large Piece of Turf
- Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve
- Dürer, Adam and Eve
- Dürer, Melencolia
- Decoding art: Dürer's Melencolia I
- What is Melencolia?
- Dürer, Four Apostles
- Dürer's woodcuts and engravings
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Dürer, Self-portrait (1500)
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1500 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker & Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Did he really have hair like that?
Does anyone know how acceptable or common it was for a man to have long hair like that at the time?(3 votes)- Long hair was also a sign of the upper classes because the hair would be put up in a bun under a helmet when armor was worn; this would cushion the head from the enormous weight of the helmet.
This was one reason why Christian monks would wear a special short haircut called a tonsure; this prevented them from wearing a helmet and also identified their (supposedly) neutral status in armed conflict.(16 votes)
- Could somebody provide the Latin inscription, untranslated? I haven't been able to find it clearly online and would be interested to know.(4 votes)
- "Albertus Durerus Noricus ipsum me propriis sic effingebam coloribus aetatis anno xxviii"(12 votes)
- At the beginning of video Dr. Zucker said that portrait painted in 1498 is first Durer's self-portrait. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but isn't first one self-portrait the one in 1493 Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle..?(2 votes)
- You are quite right, good catch. I think I meant of the two paintings I was referring to (the 1498 and the 1500 canvases) but indeed that is not what I said. Thanks for pointing out the earlier work.(3 votes)
- why does he have red face?(2 votes)
- It is just how he decided to shade his face!(1 vote)
- Is there any reason why his fingers seem un-naturally long?(1 vote)
- Is it just me or does Dürer slightly resemble Thorin from The Hobbit in this painting?(1 vote)
- It may be just you. When I was reading the book in 1982, none of the characters looked like Durer.(1 vote)
- Is there any knowledge of whether this caused as much controversy at the time as when John Lennon said the Beattles were more famous than Jesus Christ?(0 votes)
Video transcript
(music) ("In The Sky With
Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy) Steven: Two years after Durer finished his first painted self-portrait, he produced another in the year 1500. We're looking at it now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. If you look on the left, you can see the 1500 painted in gold paint and just below that, a large A and a small D, his signature, his insignia. Beth: And it's really different from that earlier self-portrait. Steven: Oh, it's so different. In the early portrait,
he is dressed up as if he's a court hearer and he seems to be trying to show what he
can do as a painter, "Hire me. Look what I can do." Beth: Here he seems to
liken himself to Christ. Steven: Well, he's rendered
himself full frontal and that's a pose that's is almost always reserved for Christ. It's not the most flattering pose, but it is very powerful and very direct. Beth: This passivity, the emotionlessness of the face also remind me of images of Christ as a judge. Steven: But at the same time, there's also solemnity and a powerful sense
of his creative potential. Durer was very much a humanist. He was like some of the
great Italian artists. I'm thinking about Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, here's somebody who also is deeply interested in the way in which science and art work together. He was interested in philosophy. He was interested in ancient literature. He was very much a product
of the Renaissance. Beth: And a writer as well as a painter. The idea of the artist that is born in the Renaissance no
longer as a craftsman, just as someone who makes something with his hands, but someone who is a gifted intellect, a scholar. Steven: There is really
a sense of seriousness, of purpose in this painting. This is a man who is bringing that northern interest in
highly developed detail. It does not speak to a general, but renders the particularity of
every element in the face. Beth: Right, so you can think of van Eyck, for example, or Campin,
that northern tradition of paying attention to detail and clarity. Steven: At the same
time, this is a man who's crossed the Alps, gone south, gone to Italy and
studied what the Italians had achieved and is bringing that back north of the Alps. Beth: Durer was certainly one of the most important artists of the 16th century, the contemporary of Michaelangelo. He's a print maker, a painter ... Steven: And he's a theoretician. He's actually writing
books to help other artists understand what the
Renaissance has established. Beth: And he's also painting for the Holy Roman Emperor, he's
painting for the King of Spain, Durer was as important
as an artist could be in the 16th century. In the inscription on this painting, he wrote "Thus I, Albrecht
Durer of Nuremberg, made an image of myself
in appropriate colors in my 28th year." He's only 28 when he painted this. Steven: I'm interested in where he places the inscription. He places the inscription and the date and his insignia at eye level so that we would read across his eyes. Beth: Durer asks us to focus on his eyes and his hands, the tools of an artist. (music) ("In The Sky With
Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)