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Europe 1300 - 1800
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 6
Lesson 4: Albrecht Dürer- Who was Albrecht Dürer?
- Albrecht Dürer
- Dürer, The Triumphal Arch or Arch of Honor
- Dürer, Self-portrait, Study of a Hand and a Pillow
- Dürer, Self-portrait (1498)
- Dürer, Self-portrait (1500)
- Dürer, Self-portrait
- Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
- Dürer, the Large Piece of Turf
- Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve
- Dürer, Adam and Eve
- Dürer, Melencolia
- Decoding art: Dürer's Melencolia I
- What is Melencolia?
- Dürer, Four Apostles
- Dürer's woodcuts and engravings
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Dürer, Self-portrait (1498)
Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait, 1498, oil on panel, 52 x 41 cm (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker . Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- How old was Dürer when he died?(6 votes)
- He was 56 years old when he died in Nuremberg in 1528.(17 votes)
- Since this a self-portrait of Durer does that mean that he was the patron and would he have held onto the painting himself in his workshop or home?(6 votes)
- Why is it that the bottom of the painting says 97 when the title says 98?(3 votes)
- Please look again, the painting does read 1498. Have a look here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer,Selbstbildnis_mit_26_Jahren(Prado,_Madrid).jpg(2 votes)
- i noticed in the close up that his eyes seem to have different colours, is it known if he actually had eyes with different colours, or was this just for him to show off how well he could paint different eye colours?(3 votes)
- Do you think he might have made himself look better than he really was?(3 votes)
- He does look like a "dandy" doesn't he? I wonder if he was seen that way during the era in which this was painted among his contemporaries?(3 votes)
- How did he paint him self? . . . . My mom said they did not have mirrors.(2 votes)
- There are many other reflective surfaces in existence - the first mirrors were made in Egypt out of bronze (I think).(2 votes)
- How did he paint himself in that position?(2 votes)
Video transcript
SPEAKER 1: We're in
the Prado in Madrid, and we're looking at Albrecht
Durer's self-portrait from 1498, where
he shows himself, for me, almost like a dandy. SPEAKER 2: He painted
this when he was 26, and that's what the inscription
says below the window. You can see that he's
proud of his looks and proud of his
clothes, and mostly proud of how he could paint. SPEAKER 1: It's so interesting
because he is creating himself here. But he's representing
himself not only in terms of his likeness, not
only in terms of the class that he's aspiring
to, not only in terms of his representation
of his own aesthetics in terms of his
choice of costume, but he's representing himself
as a painter as well, right? As a craftsman, as somebody
who is extraordinarily capable. And yet at the same time, he's
also negating that very ability by rendering himself not
in the guise of an artist, of a workman, but wearing
actually incredibly expensive kid gloves and very much not in
a workshop environment, but as if he were a nobleman. SPEAKER 2: Right. I mean, it's
important to remember that when an artist
paints a self-portrait, he's actually probably
looking in a mirror. And you know, he's got paint. He's got brushes in his hands. And he's in his studio,
and he's painting. So there's a real conscious
decision to remove those things and to show himself
in another way. And so the hands are
completely fabricated. SPEAKER 1: And yet
in some ways, this is still very much, for me, tied
to his identity as an artist. I think he's not only
representing himself, but he's representing
his abilities-- in a sense, a kind
of portfolio piece. SPEAKER 2: Laying claim
to art as something that is intellectual. SPEAKER 1: Ah, see,
that's the key, right? This notion that
painting is in fact, as you said, an intellectual
activity, not just the work of a craftsman,
of a cabinet maker. SPEAKER 2: Exactly. But something which happens
in the artist's mind, and therefore worthy
of a different kind and level of respect. And I think that's
very much here.