Albrecht Durer was the commanding figure of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremburg, the son of a goldsmith, he was apprenticed at age 15 to a painter and printmaker, from whom he learned the precision of detail that is one of the hallmarks of his great art, both in his woodcuts and in his drawings (The Hare is a famous example). As a young man, he traveled widely throughout Germany and also to Italy, where he was profoundly affected by the emerging art of the High Renaissance, of which he became the primary exponent in the North. He settled in Nuremburg, which he left in 1520 on a trip to the Netherlands, the diaries of which are among the most interesting documents in the history of art. Besides being a fine painter, Durer was one of the greatest graphic artists of all time. He left behind more than 350 woodcuts, 100 engravings, and approximately 900 drawings and watercolors. As a humanist artist of his time, he was also deeply concerned with art theory and wrote treatises on measurement, fortification, proportion, and on artistic theory itself.
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