ALBRECHT DURER began his career in the Imperial Free City of Nuernberg with his father, a Hungarian goldsmith who had immigrated to Germany in 1455. Despite his goldsmith origins, however, by 1484 Durer had already begun painting. In 1486 he was apprenticed to the painter and printmaker Michael Wolgumut and began to work with woodcuts and copper engravings as well.

Beginning in 1490 Durer traveled widely for study, including trips to Italy and to Antwerp and the Low Countries. During his visit to Venice on his second Italian trip Giovanni Bellini and Bellini's brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, each especially influenced Durer then near the end of his career. His journeys enabled him "to fuse the Gothic traditions of the North with the achievements in perspective, volumetric and plastic handling of forms, and color of the Italians in an original synthesis which was to have great influence with the Italian Mannerists." (The Uffizi: A Guide to the Gallery [Venice: Edizione Storti, 1980, p. 57])

The period between his Italian trips was one of great productivity and artistic growth, characterized by his publication, 1496-8, of a portfolio of woodcuts, The Apocalypse of St. John. Scholars have suggested that the portfolio may have been intended as a veiled expression of support for the Reformation, with Babylon used as a surrogate for Rome.

Beginning at least as early as 1512, Durer became portraitist to the rich and famous of his time, including Emperor Maximilian I, c. 1518, and Christian II of Denmark, 1521. Other sitters included Jacob Fugger and other prominent merchants, clergy and government officials. An early chalk and watercolor portrait by Durer, 1494-5, appears to copy Gentile Bellini's profile painting, now lost, of Queen Caterina Cornaro (B-31) following her surrender of her throne in Cyprus and retirement to her native Venice. Shown here are Durer's own self-portraits at ages 22, 26 and 28 (now in the collections of the Louvre, Prado and Alte Pinakothek of Munich).

Durer expressed his theories on proportion in The Four Books on Human Proportions, published posthumously in 1528.