Editing Albrecht Dürer (section)

===''Four Books on Human Proportion''===
[[File:Dürer - Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion ita., 1594 - 168613 Illustrazione 3v.jpg|thumb|Illustration from the ''Four Books on Human Proportion'']]

Dürer's work on [[body proportions|human proportions]] is called the ''Four Books on Human Proportion'' (''Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion'') of 1528.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/hierinnsindbegri00dure|title=Hierinn sind begriffen vier Bucher von menschlicher Proportion durch Albrechten Durer von Nurerberg|last=Durer|first=Albrecht|date=1528|publisher=Hieronymus Andreae Formschneider|access-date=6 August 2018}}</ref> The first book was mainly composed by 1512/13 and completed by 1523, showing five differently constructed types of both male and female figures, all parts of the body expressed in fractions of the total height. Dürer based these constructions on both [[Vitruvius]] and empirical observations of "two to three hundred living persons",<ref name="Panofsky"/> in his own words. The second book includes eight further types, broken down not into fractions but an [[Leone Battista Alberti|Albertian]] system, which Dürer probably learned from [[Francesco di Giorgio]]'s {{Lang|la|De harmonica mundi totius}} of 1525. In the third book, Dürer gives principles by which the proportions of the figures can be modified, including the mathematical simulation of [[convex mirror|convex]] and [[concave mirror]]s; here Dürer also deals with human [[physiognomy]]. The fourth book is devoted to the theory of movement.<ref name="se">Schaar, Eckhard. "A Newly Discovered Proportional Study by Dürer in Hamburg". ''Master Drawings'', vol. 36, no. 1, 1998. pp. 59–66. {{JSTOR|1554333}}</ref>

Appended to the last book, however, is a self-contained essay on aesthetics, which Dürer worked on between 1512 and 1528, and it is here that we learn of his theories concerning 'ideal beauty'. Dürer rejected Alberti's concept of an objective beauty, proposing a relativist notion of beauty based on variety. Nonetheless, Dürer still believed that truth was hidden within nature, and that there were rules which ordered beauty, even though he found it difficult to define the criteria for such a code. In 1512/13 his three criteria were function ("Nutz"), naïve approval ("Wohlgefallen") and the happy medium ("Mittelmass"). However, unlike Alberti and [[Leonardo da Vinci|Leonardo]], Dürer was most troubled by understanding not just the abstract notions of beauty but also as to how an artist can create beautiful images. Between 1512 and the final draft in 1528, Dürer's belief developed from an understanding of human creativity as spontaneous or [[artistic inspiration|inspired]] to a concept of 'selective inward synthesis'.<ref name="Panofsky"/> In other words, that an artist builds on a wealth of visual experiences in order to imagine beautiful things. Dürer's belief in the abilities of a single artist over inspiration prompted him to assert that "one man may sketch something with his pen on half a sheet of paper in one day, or may cut it into a tiny piece of wood with his little iron, and it turns out to be better and more artistic than another's work at which its author labours with the utmost diligence for a whole year".<ref>Panofsky (1945), 283.</ref>

<gallery widths="140px" heights="140px">
File:AlbrechtDürer01.jpg|Title page of ''Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion'' showing the [[monogram]] signature of artist
File:Durer foot.jpg|Dürer often used [[multiview orthographic projection]]s.
File:Durer face transforms.jpg|Dürer's study of human proportions
</gallery>