50 Fun Facts About Albrecht Durer

Which animal did Albrecht Dürer depict in a famous 1515 woodcut without ever having seen one?

A rhinoceros was the subject, drawn only from a written description and another artist's sketch. Dürer gave it plates like a suit of armour, and Europeans copied his version for three centuries.

Albrecht Dürer's 1500 self-portrait startles viewers by echoing traditional images of which figure?

Jesus Christ was the figure viewers then associated with a full-face pose and a hand raised as if in blessing. Dürer set the year 1500 above his initials, A.D., so they double as Anno Domini.

The surname Dürer translates a Hungarian name meaning which object, shown on the family's coat of arms?

A door is what the name points to, because the artist's father came from the Hungarian village of Ajtós and 'ajtó' means just that. The family first wrote the name as Türer.

Which 1502 Dürer watercolour shows a window's crossbars reflected in its animal subject's eye?

Young Hare is so finely observed that the animal's eye mirrors a window frame. Dürer signed and dated the sheet prominently, a sign that he saw it as a finished work and not a sketch.

Which pop artist's tombstone carries a carving based on Albrecht Dürer's drawing Praying Hands?

Andy Warhol's gravestone near Pittsburgh carries the hands, one of the most widely reproduced images of prayer in the Western world. Dürer drew them in 1508 as a study for a figure in an altarpiece.

In 1988 a vandal attacked three Albrecht Dürer paintings in Munich's Alte Pinakothek with what?

Sulfuric acid was splashed on the Paumgartner altarpiece and two other panels by a serial art vandal. Restoring the altarpiece took 21 years, and it went back on display in 2010.

A crater 195 kilometres wide was named after Albrecht Dürer in 1976 on which solar system world?

Mercury carries the Dürer crater, one of 110 basins there with an inner ring of peaks. The International Astronomical Union adopted the name.

In 1520 Albrecht Dürer marvelled at a golden sun and silver moon shipped to Brussels from which land?

Mexico had only just been reached by the Spanish, and its treasures were on show for the king. Dürer's diary records a sun all of gold a whole fathom broad and two rooms full of strange armour.

Which Nuremberg transport hub was named in 2014 after Albrecht Dürer, who was born in the city?

The airport is marketed as Albrecht Dürer Airport Nürnberg, and the metro station that serves it was decorated with reproductions of his works.

The animal in Dürer's 1515 woodcut drowned in a shipwreck while being sent as a gift to whom?

Pope Leo X never received it, because the ship went down in a storm off Italy with the animal chained to the deck. Its carcass was later recovered, and the hide was stuffed.

Albrecht Dürer twice crossed the Alps to work in which Italian city, home of Giovanni Bellini?

Venice drew him in 1494 and again in 1505, and he wrote that the elderly Bellini was still the best painter there. German merchants in the city commissioned his altarpiece the Feast of the Rosary.

Who mostly handled the sale of Dürer's prints, taking them to fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig?

His wife, Agnes, regularly sold the prints at Nuremberg's weekly market and at trade fairs. As his sole heir, she went on selling his work after his death.

Before turning to painting, Albrecht Dürer first trained in which craft in his father's workshop?

Goldsmithing gave him the steady hand with the burin that later made his engravings famous. His father wanted him to stay in the trade, but his talent for drawing won out when he was fifteen.

The Four Horsemen is the best-known woodcut in Dürer's 1498 series on which book of the Bible?

Revelation supplied the visions for his Apocalypse, the book that made him famous across Europe. He published it himself in Latin and German editions, with the text printed on the back of each picture.

Dürer wrote in a 1520 letter of his wish to engrave a portrait of which religious reformer?

Martin Luther had, Dürer told the Saxon court chaplain, helped him out of great distress. The two never met, so the planned portrait was never made.

Dürer's 1507 panels of which pair were the first life-size nudes in German painting?

Adam and Eve let him paint the ideal human body at full scale, soon after a second stay in Italy that gave him new ways to portray the human form.

Which relative did Dürer draw in unflinching charcoal in 1514, two months before the sitter died?

His mother, Barbara, had borne eighteen children, of whom only three survived. Dürer wrote afterwards that she had died hard and that he could not express his grief for her.

An outbreak of what in Nuremberg may have prompted Albrecht Dürer to leave alone for Italy in 1494?

Plague may be why he left, and he painted watercolour sketches as he crossed the Alps. Some of them survive, and others can be traced in the landscapes of his later prints.

Dürer's 1525 Four Books on Measurement, written in German for craftsmen, is a treatise on which subject?

Mathematics was his theme: the book teaches geometry with compass and ruler. He wrote in German rather than Latin, borrowing the everyday language of craftsmen.

Around 1515 Albrecht Dürer sent a self-portrait, now lost, to which Italian Renaissance master?

Raphael was sent a gouache that has since vanished, and he sent drawings of his own to Nuremberg in return. At least twelve other images Dürer made of himself survive.

Which emperor, a patron of Albrecht Dürer from 1512, is said to have held Dürer's wobbly ladder himself?

Maximilian I, the story goes, took hold of the ladder after a nobleman refused to serve a commoner. He remarked that he could make a noble out of a peasant any day, but never an artist like Dürer out of a noble.

Which 1514 Dürer engraving of a winged figure holds Europe's first printed magic square?

Melencolia I has drawn more scholarly writing than probably any other print, yet nobody has settled what it means. One reading sees the figure as a Muse waiting for inspiration, and so as a veiled self-portrait.

In the magic square on a famous Dürer engraving, what do the bottom row's two middle numbers record?

The date of the print, 1514, sits there as 15 and 14 side by side. Every row, column and diagonal of the square also adds up to 34.

A magic square adapted from Dürer's, with every row adding to 33, decorates which famous church?

Sagrada Família carries the square on its Passion façade, rotated and with one number in each row lowered by one so that the rows give 33 instead of the usual 34.

Which animal lies beside a sleeping dog in Dürer's engraving Saint Jerome in His Study?

A lion is the saint's traditional companion, taken from his story in the medieval Golden Legend. The print is one of the three engravings known as Dürer's master prints.

On his journey to the Netherlands, Dürer saw a Madonna in Bruges carved by which Italian sculptor?

Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges was one stop on a tour that also took in Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece. Dürer logged the trip in a diary, down to the prices his own prints fetched.

By his own complaint, why did Albrecht Dürer all but give up painting for engraving around 1513?

Prints paid far better for the time they took, he grumbled, so he gave those years to engraving. They produced his three most celebrated plates, among them Knight, Death and the Devil.

Dürer's drawing Head of a Walrus is linked to a 1520 trip to Zeeland, where he had hoped to see what?

A stranded whale had drawn him to the coast, but he arrived too late to see it. He is thought to have seen a dead walrus on the same trip and drawn it later from memory, which may be why it looks so odd.

Which keepsake of Dürer was sent to his former pupil Hans Baldung after the master died in 1528?

A lock of his hair went to Baldung, a sign of how close the two had become. Baldung had worked in Dürer's Nuremberg workshop, and Dürer sold the younger man's prints on his travels.

Dürer's Nuremberg house had small rooftop windows because its previous owner pursued which science?

Astronomy was the passion of the merchant Bernhard Walther, who added the windows so the roof could serve as an observatory. Dürer bought the house in 1509 and lived there until his death.

Dürer's Triumphal Arch, a woodcut printed on 36 large sheets, was meant to be displayed how?

Pasted onto walls in city halls and palaces, the sheets built a paper arch roughly three metres wide and taller still, one of the largest prints ever produced. It glorified the emperor who ordered it.

Emperor Rudolf II bought Dürer's Feast of the Rosary and moved it to which city, where it remains?

Prague still has it, and the Czech art historian Jaroslav Pešina called it probably the most superb painting a German master ever created. Dürer painted himself into the scene, holding a signed sheet.

Which Vienna museum holds Dürer's drawing Praying Hands and his self-portrait at the age of thirteen?

The Albertina keeps both, along with his watercolour of a roller's wing, painted from a dead bird.

Dürer's 1498 self-portrait in fine gloves, once a gift to England's king, now hangs in which museum?

The Prado has had it since Philip IV of Spain acquired it. Nuremberg had earlier given it to the English king as a pair with Dürer's portrait of his father.

Dürer's 1493 self-portrait in the Louvre is traditionally titled after which prickly plant in his hand?

A thistle gives the picture its name, though botanists identify the sprig as an eryngium, whose German name means a man's fidelity. That suggests a betrothal portrait, painted the year before he married.

Dürer drew Praying Hands in black ink and white highlights on paper he had prepared in which colour?

Blue was the ground he prepared the sheet with himself, so the white highlights stand out. The sheet once also carried a sketch of the figure's head, which has since been separated from it.

Which German philosopher held up Dürer's Knight, Death and the Devil as an emblem of pessimism?

Friedrich Nietzsche invoked the print in The Birth of Tragedy in 1872. Its armoured rider presses on past Death and a goat-headed devil without a glance, so he is often read as a symbol of courage.

Dürer went to the Netherlands in 1520 partly to see which new emperor crowned at Aachen?

Charles V was the new emperor whose favour he needed to keep the pension granted by the old one. Dürer secured it, but came home with an illness that dogged him for the rest of his life.

Anton Koberger, publisher of the lavish Nuremberg Chronicle, had which personal tie to Albrecht Dürer?

His godfather turned to printing around the time Dürer was born and became Germany's most successful publisher, eventually running twenty-four presses.

Which last great painting did Dürer give to the city of Nuremberg in 1526?

The Four Apostles shows John, Peter, Mark and Paul, although strictly only the first two were among the twelve. The city gave Dürer 100 guilders in return for his gift.

At fifteen, Dürer was apprenticed to which leading Nuremberg painter, whose workshop made woodcuts for books?

Michael Wolgemut ran a large workshop that was illustrating the Nuremberg Chronicle while Dürer trained there. The apprentice may have worked on some of its woodcuts.

Dürer reached Colmar in 1492, perhaps hoping to train under which leading engraver, who had died the year before?

Martin Schongauer was the foremost engraver in northern Europe, and Dürer arrived too late to meet him. The dead man's brothers welcomed the traveller instead.

Which wealthy Nuremberg lawyer and humanist was Dürer's closest friend and guide to classical learning?

Willibald Pirckheimer advised him on the learned content of his pictures and sat for several portraits. He had studied law in Italy for seven years.

Dürer's second written treatise, printed in Nuremberg in 1527, gave practical advice on which subject?

Fortifying cities, castles and smaller places was the theme, and the book was later translated into Latin and printed in Paris in 1535.

Two Dürer drawings stolen in 1993 and later recovered were taken from which country's national art museum?

Azerbaijan lost Women's Bathhouse, valued at about ten million dollars, and a drawing of Mary and her child in the theft. Both were later recovered.

Dürer painted the interior of the Heller Altarpiece, but which German master painted its exterior panels?

Matthias Grünewald was commissioned in 1510 to paint four panels for the exterior. Dürer's central panel was destroyed by a fire in Munich in 1729, so it is known today from a copy made in 1615.

Albrecht Dürer made his earliest surviving self-portrait, dated 1484, in which drawing medium?

Silverpoint was his choice at twelve or thirteen, two years before his apprenticeship as a painter. The sheet is his oldest known drawing and one of the earliest self-portraits in European art.

Which Elector of Saxony commissioned Dürer's Seven Sorrows Polyptych and the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand?

Frederick the Wise ordered the polyptych in 1496, when Dürer was in his mid-twenties, and later sat for one of his engraved portraits.

In 1515 Albrecht Dürer made the woodblocks for the first printed Western charts of what?

The stars of both the northern and southern skies were mapped in the two prints, which he made with the scholars Johannes Stabius and Konrad Heinfogel.

Which renowned humanist, a friend and correspondent of Dürer, appears in one of his last engraved portraits?

Erasmus was one of the scholars whose friendship and letters Dürer prized, and one of his books probably inspired the engraving Knight, Death and the Devil.