ALBRECHT DÜRER
The flourishing school which had its centre at Nuremberg is represented at the Louvre by the master who marks its zenith and who, if his craftsmanship was not always on a level with the perfection of Holbein’s, shares with the Augsburg master the honour of uncontested leadership of all German artists. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was born at Nuremberg, of Hungarian descent. He studied his art under Michael Wohlgemut, a very able Nuremberg painter, who was, however, led by his popularity to factory-like production of pictures that passed under his name, although they were largely executed by inferior pupils. Dürer, who excelled equally as an engraver and as a painter, was, on the other hand, one of the most sincere and personal artists of his time—a profound thinker, a shrewd observer, a student of life in all its phases, an idealist who was ever striving for beautiful expression, even though the realistic tradition of his country did not allow him to attain to the abstract ideal of beauty which had been reached by some of the contemporary Italians. Indeed, Dürer may with justice be called the Leonardo of the North. He studied Venetian art on a visit to Venice in 1505, whither he had been preceded by his fame. He also travelled to the Netherlands in 1520, the year in which he painted the signed and dated Head of an Old Man (No. 2709), his other picture at the Louvre being the not very masterly Head of a Child (No. 2709a).