Dürer made a great impact on European art through his outstanding skills as a draughtsman and printmaker. He was also an accomplished painter and writer of theoretical treatises on measurement and proportion, and helped raise the status of artists in his native Germany. Born in Nuremberg, the son of a goldsmith, he first trained with Michael Wolgemut, a painter and woodcut designer. He extended his artistic education by travelling through Germany and Switzerland and also visiting Venice. Dürer was impressed by the achievements of the leading painters there and by the respect they commanded. He established a highly productive workshop in Nuremberg.
A period in European culture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries in which the visual arts flourished with advances in the treatment of anatomy and the use of perspective. It is particularly associated with Italy, where it began, though the term applies elsewhere. It is noted for a revival of interest in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome.
