ABSTRACT
Always a deeply religious man, Dürer’s spiritual power was early shown in the remarkable Apocalypse illustrations. After his second visit to Italy (1505-7) his style changed, for he had absorbed the Italian art theory based on harmony of macrocosm and microcosm, understood in subtle geometrical terms, on the proportions of the human body as related to laws governing the cosmos, as laid down by the Architect of the Universe. Dürer became the chief northern exponent of this theory,1 in which proportion is a link between man and the universe, expressed through proportion in architecture as laid down by Vitruvius, and in all the arts. It is the foundation of beauty, of aesthetic
satisfaction. In this theory, geometry was the primary mathematical science, on which beauty in architecture, painting, music, must be based. With his intense vision, Dürer penetrated to the religious core of this theory; with his brilliant mind he seized its mathematical basis; with his artist’s hand he executed designs of profound religious meaning with faultless geometrical precision. Dürer saw art as power, and the root of aesthetic power was in number.
