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Credentials

Specialization:

Northern European Art from the 1400s to 1700s

  • Art from the Netherlands 1400s
  • Art from Germany 1400s to early 1600s

Albrecht

Dürer

"Geometry is the right foundation of all painting."

"Melancholia I" 1514

Speaker:

Jeffrey Chipps Smith

http://www.americanacademy.de/home/person/jeffrey-chipps-smith

Undergraduate Studies:

  • Duke University, Durham NC
  • B.A. in Art History 1973
  • Cum Laude with Special Honors

Graduate Studies:

  • Colombia University, New York City, NY
  • M.A. , M.Phil., Ph.D. in Art History 1979
  • Joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 1979
  • Professor of Art History
  • Kay Fortson Chair in European Art

Interests and Background

  • exposed to European art in high school
  • Lived in Europe - Brussels Belgium
  • First artistic interests: Pieter Bruegel, a Flemish Rennaisance painter and Netherlandish 15th-16th century art
  • After many years he developed an interest in Durer
  • Independent study on Durer during Graduate School at Colombia

Early Professional Career

  • Major exhibition: "Nuremberg, A Renaissance City, 1500-1618"
  • cemented interest in Durer and his contemporaries

Published Works

  • Author of numerous articles and essays on various artistic subjects
  • co-editor of a book on Dürer: “The Essential Dürer”
  • Writer of a general text on Dürer entitled “Dürer”
  • explores the artistic process of this amazing artist within the context of history and culture in Germany (late 1400s - early 1500s)
  • chapters and sections devoted to explanations of Durer's Geometry and his theoretical treatises

http://webmuseum.meulie.net/wm/paint/auth/durer/self/self-28.jpg

Biographical Information

  • born in 1471 in Nuremburg Germany
  • City between two art capitals of the time (The Netherlands and Italy)
  • Profound impact on his future
  • Third child of eighteen
  • Parents: Albrecht Durer Senior and Barbara Holfer
  • Family emigrated from Hungary (Ajtos -> Turer -> Durer)

Education and Interests

  • educated a Latin school in St Lorenz
  • 1485: Goldsmith and jeweler apprenticeship
  • Picked up painting when he was young
  • Amazing self portrait at age 13
  • 1486: Painting and Woodcutting apprentice under Michael Wolgemut
  • After four years he exceeded the skill of his teacher

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/images/durer-self-portrait-at-the-age-of-thirteen.jpg

Influences and Travels

  • Encouraged to travel and meet different artists for four years

Germany

  • Germany: Nordlingen, Ulm, Constance, Basel, Colmar, and Strasbourg
  • developed his own style while learning about other styles
  • saw Dutch influences
  • met with many artists

Italy

  • 1st Trip to Italy
  • -artistic center and center of mathematical revival
  • main destination Venice:
  • sketched, visited architectural sites, galleries, learned from Italian artists and mathematicians
  • Jacopo de Barbari
  • Luca Pacioli
  • mathematics in art and beauty
  • 1500: ideal beauty can be found through mathematics

“The new art must be based upon science – in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences.”

- Durer-

Durer in Mathematics

  • Began a serious study of mathematics
  • He studied geometry, and mastered perspective and proportion
  • Influences:
  • Euclid-
  • Vitruvius
  • Mathematical concepts showed by 1500
  • specifically proportion (seen in his series of wood carvings “Life of the Virgen” (1502-1505))
  • body's ratios - how the different parts relate to each other -> construction of ideal bodies 7, 8, or 9 heads
  • perspective

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/durer/engravings/birth-virgin.jpg

http://www.masterworksfineart.com/inventory/durer/original/durer2105.jpg

http://www.silesiancollections.eu/var/plain_site/storage/images/dziela/grafika/duerer-albrecht-zaslubiny-marii-z-jozefem/albrecht-duerer-zaslubiny-marii-z-jozefem/4646-1-pol-PL/Albrecht-Duerer-The-Betrothal-of-the-Virgin_width350.jpg

http://www.artclon.com/OtherFile/Durer_AlbrechtXXAdam_and_Eve.jpg

2nd trip to Italy

  • to learn about math, not art
  • Met with Barbari and Pacioli
  • Realized that he must study mathematics even more to further his understanding in how it aided art Compiled research for a book on mathematics and applications in art

http://www.smu.edu/~/media/Site/Bridwell/Exhibitions/Durer%202011/DurerMelancholiaI.ashx?as=1&w=300

  • Representative of an artistic genius of the Renaissance period that has all the tools of the trade, but lacks sufficient mathematical knowledge to realize "perfection".
  • This casts him into a state of Melancholy, the title of the engraving
  • Mathematics tools
  • Represent geometry and underlying mathematical skills in art
  • Irregular polyhedron stone
  • Magic square

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Albrecht_Dürer_-_Melencolia_I_(detail).jpg/220px-Albrecht_Dürer_-_Melencolia_I_(detail).jpg

1520s

Treatise on Proportion published 1523

Required more math knowledge than most had

Wrote a more basic text in 4 books 1525 to explain the math

"Unterweisung der Messung mit dem Wirkel und Richtscheit" (Instruction in measuring with compass and Straightedge)

Significance in Mathematics

What it included:

  • How to construct geometric curves
  • Construction of regular polygons
  • How to square a circle
  • How to trisect and angle using a compass
  • Study of pyramids,cylinders, conic sections
  • Five platonic solids
  • How to use tools to create perspective
  • Light and shading (proportion)

How Durer impacted mathematics

First math text in German

use of his theories and studied mathematics in his art

Space curves

  • projected them onto planes (spirals)
  • how to construct them

Epicycloids

Orthogonal projections of curves on 2 and 3 perpendicular planes

Origins of descriptive Geometry

Perfect Topic for a Convocation

  • not many people transcend art and math to this extent
  • as famous in math as he is in art

Works Cited

Finnan, Vincent. "Albrecht Durer." Italian Renaissance Art. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. <http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Durer.html>.

McNeely, Michael. "Dürer's "Melancholia I": A 16th Century Tribute to Mathematics." Pi in the Sky 1.11 (2008): 10-11. Pi in the Sky 300 years of Euler. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.

Nowlan, Robert. "Albrecht Durer." A chronicle of Mathematical People. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2012. <www.robertnowlan.com/pdfs/Durer,%20Albrecht.pdf>.

O'Connor, J.J., and E.F. Robertson. "Durer biography." MacTutor History of Mathematics. School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. <http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Durer.html>.

Silver, Daniel. "Slicing a Cone for Art and Science." American Scientist 100.5 (2012): 408-415. Print.

Smith, Jeffrey Chipps. Dürer. London: Phaidon, 2012. Print.

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