ALBRECHT, one of the best engravers and painters of his age, was descended of a Hungarian family, and born at Nuremberg in May 1471. He was the son of a goldsmith, but early relinquished his father's trade for the study of art under Michael Wohlgemuth. After obtaining his mastership, Dürer travelled in Holland and Italy, where he gained the friendship of Raphael. He was appointed painter to Maximilian I. and Charles V. He was a man of letters and a philosopher, and an intimate friend of Erasmus, who revised some of the pieces which he published. He was a man of business also, and for many years the leading magistrate of Nuremberg. Though not the inventor, he was one of the first improvers of the art of engraving; and he also wrought in wood, on which he engraved the life and passion of Christ in thirty-six pieces, which were highly esteemed. In many of those prints which he executed on copper, the engraving is exceedingly elegant. His Hell scene particularly, engraved in 1513, is as highly finished and as happily executed a print as ever was engraved. In his wood prints too, it is surprising to find so much meaning in so early a master; the heads being well marked, and every part admirably executed. His composition is often pleasing, and his drawing generally good; but he knew very little of the management of lights, and still less of grace. Yet his ideas are purer and more elegant than might have been expected from the awkward archetypes which his country and education afforded. Albert Dürer was certainly a man of great natural genius; and, as Vasari remarks, he would have been an extraordinary artist if he had had an Italian instead of a German education. His prints are very numerous, and were much admired and eagerly bought up in his own lifetime. He was rich, and chose rather to practise his art as an amusement than as a business. He died at Nuremberg, April 6, 1528; and the well-known discomforts of his marriage have induced his countrymen to attribute his death principally to domestic misfortune. He was interred in St John's Church, where a public monument was erected to his memory. He is sometimes regarded as the inventor of woodcuts and etching. Besides his artistic productions, Dürer wrote several books in German, which were translated into Latin by other persons, and published after his death. Among these we may mention, 1. De Symmetria Partium in rectis formis Humanorum Corporum, Nuremberg, 1532, Paris, 1537, fol.; 2. Institutiones Geometriae, Paris, 1532; 3. De Urbibus, Areibus, Castellisque condendis et munendis, Paris, 1531; 4. De Varitate Figurarum, et flexuris Partium, et gestibus Imaginum, Nuremberg, 1534. (See Reliquien von Albrecht Dürer, seinen Verbrüdern geeicht, Taschenbuch für Deutschlands Kunstfreunde, zu Albrecht Dürer's dritter Secular-feier, Nürnberg, 1828.)