Albrecht dürer art style

Despite living approximately years ago, he remains one of the most famous and important printmakers in art history, in particular bringing woodcuts printed in large editions into the realm of fine art and the art history canon. He was, and remains, the most famous artist of the Northern Renaissance who successfully integrated an elaborately-detailed Northern style with Italian Renaissance's ideals of balance, coherence, and monumentality.

It depicts the four Apocalyptic Riders as they are described in the Old Testament. From left to right we see Death, Famine, War and Plague on their horses, trampling on a group of helpless people.

Albrecht dürer family

An angel oversees the scene, with dramatic clouds and rays of light in the background. In the Bible the three riders are mainly distinguished by their horses' colors. Death is furthermore distinguishable as an old haggard man with a beard on an emaciated horse. The four figures are riding next to each other but are in slightly overlapping positions, denoting their order of appearance in the text.

Death as the last to enter the scene brings with him Hell, depicted in the form of a wide-mouthed monster, who swallows a man wearing a bishop's miter and crown. The clergy and nobility are devastated by the Apocalypse just as the rest of society. Their contemporary clothing makes it easy for the 16 th- century viewer to imagine their own suffering ahead.

Where did albrecht dürer live

Apocalyptic scenes became particularly popular in the years leading up to , which was predicted by many to be the time of the Second Coming of Christ. In the woodcuts also became available to purchase as single-sheet works. Today the prints still survive in large numbers, which indicates that they were produced on a big scale, probably to meet their increasing demand and popularity, and circulated widely.

The diagonal shape formed by the riders placed on top of the minutely thin horizontal lines that create the dark background gives the scene a sense of forward-thrusting dynamic.