De graflegging

1507–1528 · Workplace

Nuremberg

1511

Paints the “Adoration of the Trinity”

For the Nuremberg merchant Matthäus Landauer, Dürer painted the Adoration of the Trinity altarpiece, devising its programme himself after Augustine's City of God. Yet fame did not change patrons' view of the painter as a craftsman: the Frankfurt merchant Jakob Heller fretted over the time spent on his Assumption of the Virgin, and the fee barely covered the materials.

1511

Publishes the Great Passion and the Life of the Virgin

Dürer published two woodcut series as books, the Great Passion and the Life of the Virgin, with a second edition of the Apocalypse and the 37 woodcuts of the Little Passion. His post-Venetian woodcuts developed chiaroscuro modelling.

1512

Emperor Maximilian I becomes his chief patron

From 1512 Emperor Maximilian I was Dürer's chief patron. For him Dürer and his workshop produced the Triumphal Arch, a giant woodcut 295 × 357 cm printed from 192 blocks and modelled on the triumphal arches of ancient Rome.

1513

Engraves “Knight, Death and the Devil”

The first of Dürer's three most famous engravings, probably inspired by Erasmus's Handbook of a Christian Knight.

1514

Engraves “Melencolia I” with its magic square

With Knight, Death and the Devil and St Jerome in His Study, Melencolia I forms the three “master engravings”. It shows a 4 × 4 “magic square” summing to 34 in every direction, whose two middle numbers in the bottom row give the date, 1514; the meaning of these prints remains a puzzle to this day.