Heilige Sebastiaan

1494–1495

First journey to Italy

Within three months of the wedding Dürer left alone for Italy, perhaps fleeing an outbreak of plague in Nuremberg. Crossing the Alps he made watercolour landscapes; in Venice he studied its art and judged Giovanni Bellini the best of its painters; Mantegna and Pollaiuolo left their mark on him.

1495

Opens his own workshop

Dürer opened his own workshop in Nuremberg, where over the next ten years he created much of his printmaking. His godfather, the publisher Anton Koberger, helped issue the first series; the city's crafts were governed by the Council rather than guilds, leaving him free to try new techniques and sell his own impressions.

1500

Jacopo de' Barbari and the secret of proportion

The Venetian Jacopo de' Barbari, whom Dürer had met in Venice, came to Nuremberg, and Dürer said he learned much from him about perspective, anatomy and proportion. Feeling that de' Barbari would not explain everything he knew, Dürer began studies of his own that became a lifelong preoccupation.

1501–1502

In the circle of Nuremberg's humanists

Through his lifelong friend Willibald Pirckheimer, Dürer entered the circle of Nuremberg's humanists. He engraved illustrations for Conrad Celtis's editions of Hrotsvitha (1501) and of his Four Books of Love (1502), and decorated 14 books in Pirckheimer's library with drawings.

1502

Death of his father

Albrecht Dürer the Elder died, and his son took on the care of his mother and his two younger brothers, Endres and Hans.