Albrecht Durer
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50 free Albrecht Durer trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Albrecht Dürer was famous across Europe before he turned thirty. Born in Nuremberg in 1471, he turned the humble woodcut and the engraved copper plate into high art, signed his work with a monogram that became a trademark, and painted himself with a confidence few artists had shown before. This quiz collects the fun facts behind the masterpieces: the exotic beast he drew without ever seeing one, the puzzle hidden in a square of numbers, the drawing of two hands that turns up everywhere from posters to gravestones, and the emperors, scholars and fellow artists who crossed his path. Every answer comes with a short explanation. The questions start easy and get harder, so they suit art students, museum-goers and anyone who enjoys a good story about a restless Renaissance mind.
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Q 01Which animal did Albrecht Dürer depict in a famous 1515 woodcut without ever having seen one?
A rhinoceros
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.
Q 02Albrecht Dürer's 1500 self-portrait startles viewers by echoing traditional images of which figure?
Jesus Christ
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.
Q 03The surname Dürer translates a Hungarian name meaning which object, shown on the family's coat of arms?
A door
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.
Q 04Which 1502 Dürer watercolour shows a window's crossbars reflected in its animal subject's eye?
Young Hare
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.
Q 05Which pop artist's tombstone carries a carving based on Albrecht Dürer's drawing Praying Hands?
Andy Warhol
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.
Q 06In 1988 a vandal attacked three Albrecht Dürer paintings in Munich's Alte Pinakothek with what?
Sulfuric acid
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.
Q 07A crater 195 kilometres wide was named after Albrecht Dürer in 1976 on which solar system world?
Mercury
Mercury carries the Dürer crater, one of 110 basins there with an inner ring of peaks. The International Astronomical Union adopted the name.
Q 08In 1520 Albrecht Dürer marvelled at a golden sun and silver moon shipped to Brussels from which land?
Mexico
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.
Q 09Which Nuremberg transport hub was named in 2014 after Albrecht Dürer, who was born in the city?
The airport
The airport is marketed as Albrecht Dürer Airport Nürnberg, and the metro station that serves it was decorated with reproductions of his works.
Q 10The animal in Dürer's 1515 woodcut drowned in a shipwreck while being sent as a gift to whom?
Pope Leo X
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.
Q 11Albrecht Dürer twice crossed the Alps to work in which Italian city, home of Giovanni Bellini?
Venice
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.
Q 12Who mostly handled the sale of Dürer's prints, taking them to fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig?
His wife, Agnes
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.
Q 13Before turning to painting, Albrecht Dürer first trained in which craft in his father's workshop?
Goldsmithing
Q 21Which emperor, a patron of Albrecht Dürer from 1512, is said to have held Dürer's wobbly ladder himself?
Maximilian I
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.
Q 22Which 1514 Dürer engraving of a winged figure holds Europe's first printed magic square?
Melencolia I
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.
Q 23In the magic square on a famous Dürer engraving, what do the bottom row's two middle numbers record?
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.
Q 14The Four Horsemen is the best-known woodcut in Dürer's 1498 series on which book of the Bible?
Revelation
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.
Q 15Dürer wrote in a 1520 letter of his wish to engrave a portrait of which religious reformer?
Martin Luther
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.
Q 16Dürer's 1507 panels of which pair were the first life-size nudes in German painting?
Adam and Eve
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.
Q 17Which relative did Dürer draw in unflinching charcoal in 1514, two months before the sitter died?
His mother
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.
Q 18An outbreak of what in Nuremberg may have prompted Albrecht Dürer to leave alone for Italy in 1494?
Plague
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.
Q 19Dürer's 1525 Four Books on Measurement, written in German for craftsmen, is a treatise on which subject?
Mathematics
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.
Q 20Around 1515 Albrecht Dürer sent a self-portrait, now lost, to which Italian Renaissance master?
Raphael
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.
The date of the print
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.
Q 24A magic square adapted from Dürer's, with every row adding to 33, decorates which famous church?
Sagrada Família
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.
Q 25Which animal lies beside a sleeping dog in Dürer's engraving Saint Jerome in His Study?
A lion
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.
Q 26On his journey to the Netherlands, Dürer saw a Madonna in Bruges carved by which Italian sculptor?
Michelangelo
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.
Q 27By his own complaint, why did Albrecht Dürer all but give up painting for engraving around 1513?
Prints paid far better
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.
Q 28Dürer's drawing Head of a Walrus is linked to a 1520 trip to Zeeland, where he had hoped to see what?
A stranded whale
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.
Q 29Which keepsake of Dürer was sent to his former pupil Hans Baldung after the master died in 1528?
A lock of his hair
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.
Q 30Dürer's Nuremberg house had small rooftop windows because its previous owner pursued which science?
Astronomy
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.