ABSTRACT
Printmaker, painter, art theorist, he received his early training in Nuremberg, a city exemplary for its artistic production and patronage. He learned the goldsmith’s craft in his father’s workshop and then was taught painting and printmaking as an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut. He later traveled in southern Germany, northern Italy, and the Netherlands. Although his childhood and adolescence were passed in the milieu of latemedieval craft traditions, he very early evinced an interest in the
artistic concepts of the Italian Renaissance. His mature art was a synthesis of Italian mathematical precepts and northern focus on particularity. He was justly praised during his lifetime for his skill as a printmaker and an engraver, and his paintings of sacred scenes and portraits gained him prosperity and social standing. From his circle of
humanist friends (Willibald Pirckheimer, Konrad Celtis), he gained access to ideas then current: ideas about a new role for the artist and a new position for the visual arts. He became acquainted with the theories of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and the teaching of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), who argued that the artist and the scholar share similar functions. Where the scholar explores the secrets of nature, the artist uses his creative power to make visible the power of the Creator.
