Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, Fra Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.
The Renaissance is a period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. Associated with great social change in most fields and disciplines, including art, architecture, politics, literature, exploration and science, the Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence, then spread to the rest of Italy and later throughout Europe. The term rinascita ("rebirth") first appeared in Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari, while the corresponding French word renaissance was adopted into English as the term for this period during the 1830s.
Johann Reuchlin, sometimes called Johannes, was a German Catholic humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew, whose work also took him to modern-day Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France. Most of Reuchlin's career centered on advancing German knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1525.
Renaissance humanism is a worldview centered on the nature and importance of humanity that emerged from the study of Classical antiquity.
Ulrich von Hutten was a German knight, scholar, poet and satirist, who later became a follower of Martin Luther and a Protestant reformer.
The Northern Renaissance was the Renaissance that occurred in Europe north of the Alps. From the last years of the 15th century, its Renaissance spread around Europe. Called the Northern Renaissance because it occurred north of the Italian Renaissance, this period became the German, French, English, Low Countries and Polish Renaissances, and in turn created other national and localized movements, each with different attributes.
The Nuremberg Chronicle is an illustrated encyclopedia consisting of world historical accounts, as well as accounts told through biblical paraphrase. Subjects include human history in relation to the Bible, illustrated mythological creatures, and the histories of important Christian and secular cities from antiquity. Finished in 1493, it was originally written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel, and a German version was translated by Georg Alt. It is one of the best-documented early printed books—an incunabulum—and one of the first to successfully integrate illustrations and text.
Johann Froben, in Latin: Johannes Frobenius, was a famous printer, publisher and learned Renaissance humanist in Basel. He was a close friend of Erasmus and cooperated closely with Hans Holbein the Younger. He made Basel one of the world's leading centres of the book trade. He passed his printing business on to his son, Hieronymus, and grandson, Ambrosius Frobenius.
The German Renaissance, part of the Northern Renaissance, was a cultural and artistic movement that spread among German thinkers in the 15th and 16th centuries, which developed from the Italian Renaissance. Many areas of the arts and sciences were influenced, notably by the spread of Renaissance humanism to the various German states and principalities. There were many advances made in the fields of architecture, the arts, and the sciences. Germany produced two developments that were to dominate the 16th century all over Europe: printing and the Protestant Reformation.
The Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum was a celebrated collection of satirical Latin letters which appeared 1515–1519 in Hagenau, Germany. They support the German Humanist scholar Johann Reuchlin and mock the doctrines and modes of living of the scholastics and monks, mainly by pretending to be letters from fanatic Christian theologians discussing various topics. They tell each other stories about their lovers, give senseless recommendations, boast about their successes, meanwhile covering other topics such as whether all Jewish books should be burned as un-Christian or not. They are prone to quote the Bible along with Latin poetry, often mistakenly or in ill-suited context.
Johannes Pfefferkorn was a German Catholic theologian and writer who converted from Judaism. Pfefferkorn actively preached against the Jews and attempted to destroy copies of the Talmud, and engaged in a long running pamphleteering battle with humanist Johann Reuchlin.
Willibald Pirckheimer was a German Renaissance lawyer, author and Renaissance humanist, a wealthy and prominent figure in Nuremberg in the 16th century, imperial counsellor and a member of the governing City Council for two periods. One of the most important cultural patrons of Germany in his own right, he was the closest friend of the artist Albrecht Dürer, who made a number of portraits of him, and a close friend of the great humanist and theologian Erasmus.
Renaissance humanism came much later to Germany and Northern Europe in general than to Italy, and when it did, it encountered some resistance from the scholastic theology which reigned at the universities. Humanism may be dated from the invention of the printing press about 1450. Its flourishing period began at the close of the 15th century and lasted only until about 1520, when it was absorbed by the more popular and powerful religious movement, the Reformation, as Italian humanism was superseded by the papal counter-Reformation.
Johannes Stabius (1450–1522) was an Austrian cartographer and astronomer of Vienna who developed, around 1500, the heart-shape (cordiform) projection map later developed further by Johannes Werner. It is called the Werner map projection, but also the Stabius-Werner or the Stab-Werner projection.
Conrad of Leonberg, or Leontorius, or his real name, Konrad Töritz, (1460–1511) was a German Cistercian monk and Humanist scholar.
Knight, Death and the Devil is a large 1513 engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer, one of the three Meisterstiche completed during a period when he almost ceased to work in paint or woodcuts to focus on engravings. The image is infused with complex iconography and symbolism, the precise meaning of which has been argued over for centuries.
Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon is a woodcut of 1498 by Albrecht Dürer, part of his Apocalypse series, illustrating the Book of Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John.
Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63 is the title given to a small March 1514 charcoal drawing by the German printmaker and painter Albrecht Dürer, now in the Kupferstichkabinett museum in Berlin. The portrait is a tender but unflinching physical study of his mother, Barbara Holper, completed two months before she died. Dürer was close to her, and after her death wrote that she had "died hard" and that "I felt so grieved for her that I cannot express it".
Jacob ben Jehiel Loans was an Italian-Jewish rabbi, Court Jew and personal physician to Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor (1440-93), and who was the first Hebrew teacher to Johann Reuchlin. Loans had served for at least 7 years before he met Reuchlin, and was his teacher for nearly a year. They met in 1492. Reuchlin wrote a letter to Loans in Hebrew in 1500 that he later published, which triggered attacks from Johann Pfefferkorn, an anti-Judaic Jewish-to-Christian convert. Loans knew Reuchlin was looking to acquire a Hebrew Bible codex, and Loans arranged for the Emperor to give one to Reuchlin. He was raised to the nobility in 1465.
