However, in 1513 and 1514 Dürer created his three most famous engravings: Knight, Death, and the Devil ( 1513, probably based on Erasmus's treatise Enichiridion militis Christiani ), St. Jerome in his Study, and the much-debated Melencolia I ( both 1514 ).

In painting, Dürer had relatively little influence in Italy, where probably only his altarpiece in Venice was seen, and his German successors were less effective in blending German and Italian styles.

The second book includes eight further types, broken down not into fractions but an Albertian system, which Dürer probably learned from Francesco di Giorgio's ' De harmonica mundi totius ' of 1525.

He established the system of depicting volume by means of cross-hatching ( lines in two directions ) which was further developed by Dürer, and was the first engraver to curve parallel lines, probably by rotating the plate against a steady burin.

When L ' Antico and Dürer saw it, the Apollo was probably still in the personal collection of della Rovere, who, once he was pope as Julius II, transferred the prize in 1511 to the small sculpture court of the Belvedere, the palazzetto or summerhouse that was linked to the Vatican Palace by Bramante's large Cortile del Belvedere.

Dürer also made several portraits of the Emperor, including one shortly before Maximilian's death in 1519.

Dürer also appears to have been collecting for his own cabinet of curiosities, and he sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of coral, some large fish fins, and a wooden weapon from the East Indies.

In the third book, Dürer gives principles by which the proportions of the figures can be modified, including the mathematical simulation of convex and concave mirrors ; here Dürer also deals with human physiognomy.

However, unlike Alberti and Leonardo, Dürer was most troubled by understanding not just the abstract notions of beauty but also as to how an artist can create beautiful images.

* Albrecht Dürer also produced portraits of Erasmus, whom he met three times, in the form of an engraving of 1526 and a preliminary charcoal sketch.

Dr. Leo Ruickbie also notes that the traditional and artistic representation of witches cannot be overlooked as a source for nudity in Gardner's system, citing artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Salvator Rosa.

This accounts for the comparative unproductiveness as painters of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger, and also may explain why Cranach was not especially skilled at handling colour, light, and shade.

He is buried in Johannis-Friedhof Cemetery in Nuremberg, which is also where the artist Albrecht Dürer is interred.

Artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci, often working with naturalists, were also interested in the bodies of animals and humans, studying physiology in detail and contributing to the growth of anatomical knowledge.

Some important artists made such pieces, notably Albrecht Dürer, who worked on both large picture prints and also ornament prints intended for wall-hanging.

At the time of the fire there was also an exhibition with works of painters like Ruysdael, Dürer, Seghers and Kiefer, which were all lost, with damages estimated at about three million euros ( US $ 4, 000, 000 ).

Among the first to break free of religious meaning were Leonardo da Vinci, who created watercolor studies of fruit ( around 1495 ) as part of his restless examination of nature, and Albrecht Dürer who also made precise drawings of flora and fauna.

The collection consists in approximatively 2, 000 paintings ( including pictures by Nicolas Poussin, Anthony Van Dyck, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Hubert Robert and Ingres ), 600 pieces of decorative arts, 600 architectural elements, nearly 15, 000 medals, 3, 700 sculptures, 20, 000 drawings including works by Paolo Veronese, Primaticcio, Jacques Bellange, Michelangelo, Charles Le Brun, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Gellée, Dürer, Rembrandt, Ingres, François Boucher or Pierre Alechinsky, 45, 000 architectural drawings, 100, 000 etchings and engravings, 70, 000 photographs ( mainly form the period 1850-1914 ), 65, 000 books dating from the 15th to the 20th century ( 3, 500 for the 15th and 16th centuries ), and 1, 000 handwritten pieces of archive ( letters, inventories, notes ...) and also 390 important fragments or complete illuminated manuscripts.

The 1516 painted copy of the Shroud of Turin, commonly attributed to Albrecht Dürer, is also sometimes attributed to Bernard van Orley.

Dürer, who stayed as a guest in the house of Bernard van Orley between 27 August and 2 September 1520, also painted a portrait which some scholars identify with van Orley's.

This Dürer influence is manifest in a tendency to overcrowding in composition, in a degree of attenuation in the proportions of, and a poverty of contour in, the nude figure, and also in a leaning to the selection of Gothic forms for draperies.

There are also several original engravings by Rembrandt and Dürer, such as the ' Greater Passion ' and the ' Car of Maximillian '.

He also put forward an original excellent interpretation of the engraving Melencolia I of Albrecht Dürer.

The woodcut “ Rhinoceros ”, for the work Cosmographia ( or “ Cosmography ”) by Sebastian Munster is, along with his maps, also very famous and depicts a rhinoceros truly based on the Dürer sketch.

The landscape studies by Dürer clearly represent actual scenes, which can be identified in many cases, and were at least partly made on the spot ; the drawings by Fra Bartolomeo also seem clearly sketched from nature.

His paintings also show the influence of Albrecht Dürer, Guercino, and above all Raphael.

It also contains a large collection of incunabula, prints, and drawings of European artists — Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough, Dürer, and Picasso, early printed Bibles, amongst them, three Gutenberg Bibles, and many examples of fine bookbinding.

There is also a new circle of intellectual friends, including Sextus Kridwiß (' kreideweiß = chalk-white ') the art-expert, Chaim Breisacher, Dr. Egon Unruhe (' Unrest ') the palaeozoologist, Georg Vogler (' fowler ') ( literary historian ), Dr. Holzschuher (' Clogs ') ( a Dürer scholar ), and the saturnine poet Daniel zur Höhe (' to height ').

The Venetian artist Jacopo de ' Barbari, whom Dürer had met in Venice, visited Nuremberg in 1500, and Dürer said that he learned much about the new developments in perspective, anatomy, and proportion from him.

He most likely met Holbein more than once on his way to England, and Dürer is believed to have visited his house at Antwerp in 1520.

When Albrecht Dürer visited the Netherlands in 1520 in order to be present at the coronation of the new emperor, Charles V, he called Barend van Orley flatteringly " the Raphael of the Netherlands ".

It was often visited by Albrecht Dürer.

When Albrecht Dürer visited the Netherlands in 1521, apart from artworks he sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of coral, some large fish fins and a wooden weapon from the East Indies.

Michelangelo's two Slaves were among the rich appointments of the château Richelieu, where there were the Nativity triptych by Dürer and paintings by Mantegna, Lorenzo Costa and Perugino, lifted from the Gonzaga collection at Mantua by French military forces in 1630, as well as numerous antiquities.

The earliest painted Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle ( Albrecht Dürer ) | Self-Portrait ( 1493 ) by Albrecht Dürer, oil, originally on vellum ( Louvre, Paris )

Dürer was born on 21 May 1471, third child and second son of his parents, who had between fourteen and eighteen children.

Dürer may well have worked on some of these, as the work on the project began while he was with Wolgemut.

Very soon after his return to Nuremberg, on 7 July 1494, at the age of 23, Dürer was married to Agnes Frey following an arrangement made during his absence.

Through Wolgemut's tutelage, Dürer had learned how to make prints in drypoint and design woodcuts in the German style, based on the works of Martin Schongauer and the Housebook Master.

Between 1507 and 1511 Dürer worked on some of his most celebrated paintings: Adam and Eve ( 1507 ), The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand ( 1508, for Frederick of Saxony ), Virgin with the Iris ( 1508 ), the altarpiece Assumption of the Virgin ( 1509, for Jacob Heller of Frankfurt ), and Adoration of the Trinity ( 1511, for Matthaeus Landauer ).

Dürer worked with pen on the marginal images for an edition of the Emperor's printed Prayer-Book ; these were quite unknown until facsimiles were published in 1808 as part of the first book published in lithography.

On his return to Nuremberg, Dürer worked on a number of grand projects with religious themes, including a crucifixion scene and a Sacra Conversazione, though neither was completed.

Despite complaining of his lack of a formal classical education, Dürer was greatly interested in intellectual matters and learned much from his boyhood friend Willibald Pirckheimer, whom he no doubt consulted on the content of many of his images.

Dürer wrote of his desire to draw Luther in his diary in 1520: " And God help me that I may go to Dr. Martin Luther ; thus I intend to make a portrait of him with great care and engrave him on a copper plate to create a lasting memorial of the Christian man who helped me overcome so many difficulties.

Dürer exerted a huge influence on the artists of succeeding generations, especially in printmaking, the medium through which his contemporaries mostly experienced his art, as his paintings were predominately in private collections located in only a few cities.

In all his theoretical works, in order to communicate his theories in the German language, rather than Latin, Dürer used graphic expressions based on a vernacular, craftsmen's language.

In typography, Dürer depicts the geometric construction of the Latin alphabet, relying on Italian precedent.

Finally, Dürer discusses the Delian Problem and moves on to the ' construzione legittima ', a method of depicting a cube in two dimensions through linear perspective.

Dürer based these constructions on both Vitruvius and empirical observations of, " two to three hundred living persons ," in his own words.

Appended to the last book, however, is a self-contained essay on aesthetics, which Dürer worked on between 1512 and 1528, and it is here that we learn of his theories concerning ' ideal beauty '.

Dürer rejected Alberti's concept of an objective beauty, proposing a relativist notion of beauty based on variety.

File: Albrecht Dürer 012. jpg | St Jerome in the Wilderness, 1495, oil on panel, National Gallery, London

File: Selbstporträt, by Albrecht Dürer, from Prado in Google Earth. jpg | Self-portrait, 1498, Museo del Prado, oil on wood panel

File: Albrecht Dürer 058. jpg | Mary with the squatting child, 1516, oil on panel, Metropolitan Museum of Art