Albrecht Dürer (ahl-brekt dur-er) was born in Nuremberg, Germany. When Dürer was young, he showed unusual skill at drawing. At 15, he was sent to study with a local painter. In his early 20s, he traveled to Italy and became the first artist from the North to study Italian art and art theory, including ideas about perspective and proportions. In Italy, the period known as the Renaissance was in full progress. Dürer began to incorporate ideas from the Italian Renaissance into German art. Like Leonardo da Vinci, he wrote extensively about his own ideas of art.

Dürer became best known as an engraver and printmaker. In 1498, his series of 14 woodblock prints illustrating the Apocalypse became very successful and helped to establish his reputation as an artist. In these woodcuts, Dürer added subtle variations of shading similar to those seen in engraving. This innovation soon changed the way woodcuts were produced throughout Europe.

Dürer was a humanist as well as an artist, and his later art reflected his increasing dedication to the ideas of Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther. The clearest expression of the religious faith of Dürer's later years may be his oil-on-wood painting The Four Apostles (1523-1526).

The range of Dürer's work attests to his intensity and creativity and demonstrates the ways in which he changed Northern art forever.