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ARCHIV · Albrecht Dürer

Science and proportion

Image as method

Dürer did not separate the workshop from the geometry laboratory: drawing, print and treatise obey the same demand for measure.

Geometry and perspective

The Instructions on Measurement teach perspective, polyhedra and compass constructions — tools visible in Melencolia I.

Human proportion

The project culminated in the Four Books on Human Proportion (1528), published by the workshop after his death. Adam and Eve (1504) anticipates it in engraving.

Nature and fortification

Young Hare and Great Piece of Turf: science of the visible. The fortification treatise (1527) applies mathematics to city defence.

Young Hare, watercolour by Albrecht Dürer, 1502
Young Hare · 1502 · Albertina, Vienna

Theoretical treatises

1525

Instructions on Measurement

Underweysung der Messung

Manual of perspective and proportion for artists and artisans.

The Met

1527

Fortification

Befestigungslehre

Military architecture and mathematics.

1528

Human proportion

Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion

Posthumous sum on the body.