From Nature's Artist by Victoria Salley
From Nature's Artist by Victoria Salley |
In 1525, Albrecht Dürer wrote:
For God often gives the ability to learn and the insight to make something good to one man the like of whom nobody is found in his own days, and nobody has lived before him for a long time, and nobody comes after him very soon.
Considering he was writing about himself, Dürer's observations can be called a little arrogant, but he was exactly that talented. He was born in 1471 in Nuremberg, Germany, the son of a goldsmith. As a boy, he apprenticed with his father, but Dürer's artistic talent became apparent at an early age. In his early teens, he drew a self-portrait that could shame the skills of most adults. Two years later, he was sent to Nuremberg's largest artist workshop.
Nuremberg was a wonderful place for a budding artist. Known for technical innovations, the city enjoyed a bustling trade with several countries, and astronomers and nautical travelers flocked to the city for its high-quality astrolabes and compasses. Though it had no famous university, Nuremberg was a glittering jewel of arts and sciences. Traveling with Nuremberg merchants, Dürer made two trips to Italy, where he may have met Leonardo da Vinci.
After completing an artistic apprenticeship and traveling for a few years, Dürer returned to his hometown to marry a young woman from a family of successful merchants. The marriage was likely arranged, and apparently without much affection. When the plague broke out shortly after the wedding, Dürer left town, but didn't bother to take his wife with him. (One of his most famous woodcuts showed the horror of the plague, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.) Although the plague killed a third of the population, his wife survived, and after Dürer returned to the city, they worked together in his own workshop.
Many of Dürer's works were religiously themed, but he often incorporated exotic animals: a monkey in an engraving of the Virgin Mary, an elk in a picture of Adam and Eve. He also produced spectacular pictures of natural subjects: irises, storks, parrots, lions, baboons, stag beetles, lobsters, dolphins and crabs. (Shown here are a hare and a detail of a blue roller wing.) A watercolor he made of a small piece of turf sporting several plants became known as one of the most accurate depictions of the natural world that an artist had ever produced. He produced Four Books on Human Proportion which delineated the "proper" proportions of 13 types of male, and 13 types of female figures. Another of his famous pictures was of a rhinoceros, which he published in leaflet form in 1515. That depiction, complete with scaly legs, dominated the science world's beliefs about rhinos for over two centuries.
Dürer combined artistic talent with keen observation of nature, and observed in his theory on proportion:
Life in nature makes us recognize the truth of these things, so look at it diligently, follow it, and do not turn away from nature to your own good thoughts. . . . For, verily, art is embedded in nature; whoever can draw her out, has her.
Dürer's work was admired almost too well. Decades after his death, artists began copying his work, and dealers often sold the copies by passing them off as Dürer's own. Art historians have consequently had a difficult time identifying his works with certainty.
For more information:
Nature's Artist by Victoria Salley
The Body of the Artisan by Pamela H. Smith
Merchants and Marvels edited by Smith and Findlen
The Naming of Names by Anna Pavord
The Pope's Elephant by Silvio Bedini
Seen|Unseen by Martin Kemp
Visualizations by Martin Kemp
Nature and Its Symbols by Lucia Impelluso, translated by Stephen Sartarelli
Narrative text and graphic design © by Michon Scott - Updated December 20, 2006