b.May 21, 1471, Imperial Free City of Nernberg [Germany] d.April 6, 1528, Nernberg Albrecht Durer (May 21, 1471 ?C April 6, 1528) was a German painter, printmaker and theorist from Nuremberg. His still-famous works include the Apocalypse woodcuts, Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium. D??rer introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatise which involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Renaissance in Northern Europe ever since.
The Penance of St John Chrysostom
1496 Engraving, 180 x 119 mm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York St John Chrysostom, a poor student at school, in desperation kissed the image of the Holy Virgin. To the amazement of his fellow students he henceforth wore a golden circle around his mouth and therefore was called "golden-mouthed" (in Greek, chrysostomos). The Pope ordained him a priest at the age of sixteen, but St John Chrysostom felt unworthy of the priesthood and became a hermit in the desert. There the Emperor's daughter, having lost her way one day, sought refuge in his cave. Upon her insistence he admitted her and they sinned. As penance he vowed to walk on all fours until forgiven. Years later the Empress gave birth to another child who refused baptism except from St John Chrysostom. Everyone despaired of finding him, when some hunters brought a strange wild animal to the festivities. The child, seeing the animal, said, "You are forgiven." St John stood up and shed his long moss-covered hair, and the Pope recognized him. The courtiers searched the desert and found the Emperor's daughter, who had also survived the ordeal in the wilderness. Mrs. Heaton, D?rer's first biographer in English, describes the scene very poignantly: "The princess is quite naked and more graceful in form and more beautiful of face than most of D?rer's female figures. There is a certain tenderness about her that makes us think that perhaps D?rer's sympathies were not entirely with the repentant saint who is seen in the background." The composition was perhaps suggested to D?rer by Jacopo de Barbari's engraving Cleopatra (or vice versa). Raphael must certainly have known this engraving since he borrowed the landscape and the castle, which appear the same in the Oxford drawing for Raphael's Pasadena Madonna and Child. D?rer's figures, however, were of no interest to Raphael.