Albrecht Dürer
![Dürer's ''[[Self-Portrait (Dürer, Madrid)|Self-portrait at 26]]'' at [[Prado Museum]]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer%2C_Selbstbildnis_mit_26_Jahren_%28Prado%2C_Madrid%29.jpg)
Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his later prints, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books. The woodcuts series are stylistically more Gothic than the rest of his work, but revolutionised the potential of that medium, while his extraordinary handling of the burin expanded especially the tonal range of his engravings; well-known engravings include the three ''Meisterstiche'' (master prints) ''Knight, Death and the Devil'' (1513), ''Saint Jerome in his Study'' (1514), and ''Melencolia I'' (1514). His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, and with his confident self-portraits he pioneered them as well as autonomous subjects of art.
Dürer's introduction of classical motifs and of the nude into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, has secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatises, which involve principles of mathematics for linear perspective and body proportions. Provided by Wikipedia
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