Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, engraver, printmaker, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His high-quality woodcuts established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance. His vast body of work includes altarpieces, religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, and copper engravings. The woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series, retain a more Gothic flavour than the rest of his work. His well-known prints include the Knight, Death, and the Devil, Saint Jerome in his Study and Melencolia I, 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.
What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things. beauty
No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty. beauty
Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. knowledge
I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men. beauty