Diu Lei's works include woodcut prints and other prints, oil paintings, sketches and sketches. Among his works, printmaking is the most influential. He is one of the best woodcut and copperplate artists. His watercolor landscape painting is one of his greatest achievements, and the atmosphere and emotion of these works are extremely vivid.
His main works include Revelation, Cataclysm of Christ, Little Suffering, Hand of Prayer, Men's Room, Sea Monster, Prodigal Son, Great Destiny, Adam and Eve, Knight, Death and Demon, etc.
The Germans introduced movable type printing with the paper revolution, but the Italians used their artistic talent and the ability to make luxury goods to catch up and regain their dominant position.
How lucky Diu Lei is to show his talent.
As a teenager, he studied with his father. He showed a special talent for painting. At the age of 65,438+03, he was able to draw his portrait realistically. The portrait he painted for his father at the age of 65,438+09 fully shows his mature sketching skills, which can echo Leonardo da Vinci from a distance. Later, I worked as a painter Michaaeel Wolgemut for three years. Vogmut's studio also produces woodcut illustrations for Diu Lei's godfather, printer and publisher Anton Koberg. At that time, this largest factory had a great influence on Diu Lei. His first contact with bronze art was in his childhood, and this lasting impression played a decisive role in his later printmaking.
After the division, the young painter walked out of the studio, traveled along the Rhine River to major industrial cities in Germany, visited Frankfurt, and visited Cologne and Basel. The four-year study tour has played a decisive role in the formation of the painter's world outlook and artistic development. Diu Lei, 23, is already an influential artist. This year, he married Agresa Flaughey, the daughter of a musician in his hometown. From then on, Diu Lei began to work independently as a jeweler and painter.
During the period of 1485, German education was on the eve of reform under the influence of humanism, and Diu Lei entered a public primary school in Nuremberg. According to his family tradition, the father apprenticed his son in his workshop and wanted to train him as a jeweler. Diu Lei was trained in painting for the first time in the workshop and soon became proficient, which became the basis of his artistic activities. In order to learn the decorative arts necessary for jewelry technology, Diu Lei further copied the artist's figure painting and the sculpture of Martin Sanger, which created conditions for him to become an artist. At the age of thirteen, Diu Lei carved his first self-portrait with a silver needle and wrote: "1484 When I was a child, I painted myself in the mirror." His second year's pen-and-ink painting "The Virgin Mary and the Angel on the Throne" is one of the second earliest works, which has been preserved to this day.
In the process of learning painting, Diu Lei was very interested in the character structure and painting rules, so he asked his father to allow him to become a painter. His father obeyed his son's wishes and sent him to the studio of the painter Michael Oarga Mert near Nuremberg. The contract stipulates that he will be an apprentice for three years. Diu Lei copied the teacher's works, gradually learned a variety of painting skills, and began to study nature, human body and plants, and began to try to create. At the same time, he also carefully studied the deployment and application of colors, so when his apprenticeship ended, he was able to create according to the artistic rules. Diu Lei, 23, officially set up a studio near her home and began to paint portraits.
Later, Diu Lei completed the first great masterpiece-the woodcut group painting "Revelation". This Revelation originated from the mysterious fantasy of old Christianity in Nero Dynasty of Roman Empire. He produced a set of 15 immortal works, which showed the helpless horror and disappointment of mankind at the end of the fifteenth century due to the arrival of the end of the world. At that time, Germany was in the struggle between the bourgeoisie and craftsmen, between farmers and feudal lords, between hunger and exploitation, and the passionate feelings of the people eventually developed into numerous religious, political and revolutionary mass movements. Diu Lei wants to endow the visions in Revelation with realistic images and give them suggestive power. Several of the paintings openly criticized the ruling forces, and he gave his own opinions on everyone's conscience.
Since the publication of Revelation, Diu Lei has been among the glorious ranks of contemporary great artists. Frederick invited him to draw a second altar painting.
1498, Diu Lei painted a self-portrait in luxurious clothes (now in the Prado Exhibition Hall in Madrid), which was full of vitality and gained popularity.
Diu Lei painted a portrait of her mother two months before her death. In this charcoal painting, he created the most vivid and moving work in his life, which is the only portrait of Diu Lei's mother that has been handed down to this day. When his mother died in May 15 14, 17, he wrote a few words on the painting: "This is Albrecht Dürer's mother. She died at 2 pm on Tuesday before the 15 14 prayer week, at the age of 63." Explain his respect and love for his mother all his life.
From 1490 to 1507, he traveled to Basel, Strasbourg and Venice and visited giovanni bellini, which he admired for a long time. He not only tried his best to strengthen his artistic knowledge, but also began to study mathematics, geometry, Latin, classical literature and so on. His contact with scholars is more frequent and closer than that with artists.
15 12 became the royal painter of Emperor Maximilian. Later, he went to Antwerp, Brussels, Marion, Keren, Middlesbrough, Bruges and Ghent, and was well received.
152 1 7 returned to his hometown and his health deteriorated, but he still insisted on writing until his death.
As the greatest painter in Germany, Diu Lei's artistic exploration has a far-reaching influence on Germany. As someone commented, "Diu Lei is the representative of German national painters. At the same time, he was the artistic founder who brought the Italian Renaissance into Germany and created a new era of German national art. Engels also spoke highly of him and regarded him and Leonardo da Vinci as giants born in an era that needed giants.
Diu Lei is a representative figure of the Northern Renaissance. At that time, Germany was in the darkest period in history, and its thoughts and beliefs were very chaotic. Famine and plague (the Black Death) mercilessly claimed a large number of lives. The intensification of social contradictions makes German culture and art weak, which is nothing more than a serious downturn. At the same time, European countries, led by Italy, have stepped out of the Middle Ages and entered a period of political, economic and cultural openness and prosperity, and the glory of humanism has illuminated the European continent. Therefore, as a German artist, Diu Lei can only pursue and spread the advanced ideas of "modern" Europe in a once backward country.
This talented boy is going to introduce modern culture to Germany by himself. However, his curious and questioning eyes and his Christian fingers show that, unlike the Italian Renaissance's cheerful view of the world between people and the Dutch Renaissance's stubborn concern for the outside world, the German Renaissance will stare at people themselves with a little bitterness. This will make him a maverick avant-garde full of contradictions.
As a Renaissance man, Diu Lei believed that artists must observe nature deeply and try their best to discover the secrets of the universe in order to reveal and express beauty. But at the same time, he insisted on his semi-medieval belief that artists and their art should be the tools of God.
When Michelangelo used the statue of David (150 1-kloc-0/504) to show the perfection and rebirth of human beings, Diu Lei created the etching print "San eustace" (1501) with the same superb technique, showing the scene where martyrs met miracles. However, his masterpiece at that time was the woodcut group painting of Revelation, which was created earlier, and its content and expression style were more obvious with the characteristics of small Gothic inspiring portrait.
Like leonardo da vinci, Diu Lei has a scientific mind, so he studied mathematics and perspective deeply and wrote many notes and works. In perspective and human anatomy, he created many paintings reflecting social reality. He also studied architecture and invented an architectural system. Diu Lei is also an art theorist, who has written Introduction to Painting and Principles of Human Anatomy. He freed German art from the influence and bondage of Gothic art, and moved towards the realistic art road under the guidance of humanism. He pushed the naive printmaking art to a perfect new stage.
He supported the Reformation and sympathized with the peasant war. He took the initiative to draw prints and illustrations for the pamphlet of Martin Luther, the leader of the Reformation, and ended his creative path with the design of the peasant war memorial.
The accuracy of his sketches of animals and plants can be completely comparable to that left by Leonardo da Vinci, but at the same time he is convinced of the existence of various monsters recorded in the Revelation. Therefore, Diu Lei is not only a painter, but also a sculptor, alchemist, mathematician, mechanic, art theorist, philosopher, mystic, anatomist and architect. He once founded the theory of fortifications.
He traveled nonstop all his life, and his footprint and vision were almost unmatched at that time, but he always retained the ignorance and narrowness of some farmers. He believes that reason and knowledge will make people become noble beings, but he has a deep understanding of human imperfections.
He came from a medieval craftsman family and lived in a country with the lowest status as an artist, but he became the most independent and proud artist in Europe at that time. As the "father of self-portrait", he was the first painter in Europe who was attracted by his appearance and identity, thus becoming the pioneer of Rembrandt. It is comparable to Rembrandt's self-portrait in realism and artistic expression. He has more or less realized that art will make him immortal, but he has been pursued by the idea of approaching death all his life and can't get rid of the fear that his body will disappear.
As far as artistic style is concerned, although he is the pursuer and disseminator of Italian Renaissance art, the German tradition in which he lived makes his art retain a little medieval Gothic legacy, and at the same time, it is surprising to show some baroque characteristics first.
/kloc-at the end of 0/523, Diu Lei began to write an autobiography, which not only reviewed his life, but also described his parents, his seventeen brothers and sisters and his own life experiences. Only one of his younger brothers was still alive at that time.
1525, Diu Lei's important book "Course of Surveying Art" was published. Therefore, he became one of the first-rate art theorists in the Renaissance.
1526 is the year when Diu Lei created outstanding portraits, such as Ishmas Van Rotterdam, which became his greatest masterpiece.
1527, Diu Lei's second scientific work, The Principle of Building a City, was published.
From 65438 to 0528, Principles of Human Anatomy came out, which is the crystallization of his 27-year research on human anatomy. Unfortunately, he didn't see the great influence of this work. 57-year-old Diu Lei returned from the Netherlands, weak, repeatedly plagued by illness. This once brilliant cultural superstar suddenly fell on April 6, 1528.