Albrecht Dürer Redux

Albrecht Dürer, self portrait, ca. 1500
(Photo: The Yorck Project/Wikimedia Commons)

In this fascinating article recently posted by Spiegel Online International (the English-language version of top German newsmagazine Der Spiegel), the genius of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is revisited and his life illuminated via state-of-the-art investigative methods conducted by microbiologists and other experts.

Idolized in 19th-century Europe as "a devout German craftsman with a long beard," this article underscores that he was by contrast actually "astonishingly modern."

Long before there was a Pablo Picasso or an Andy Warhol, there was an Albrecht Dürer:

"He had already begun painting in the open air and signed his works with a monogram -- the beginning of the copyright. Agents sold his woodcuts, which were reproduced on presses, to customers as far away as Spain and England. He was widely famous even during his lifetime -- the art world's first international star."

I particularly like this sentence about the Nuremberg-based Dürer: "He emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages like a god of color."