Engraver of the Reformation

Albrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg, Germany, on May 21, 1471. The Anglicized version of his name would be Albert, and his last name means “door.” Albert the Door was quite an artist. His father was a goldsmith, and as a very young man, Albert started learning the family business. By the time he was twelve or thirteen years old, his father recognized his artistic abilities, so Albert was sent to be an apprentice to an artist in Nuremberg. This artist specialized in paintings and also in woodcuts. For a woodcut, they would carve an image into a block of wood, which would leave raised surfaces. They would blot ink onto those surfaces and then press the block onto paper. Eventually, woodcuts gave way to iron plates and then to copper plate engraving. Even in his own lifetime, Dürer transitioned from wood blocks to copper plates. No doubt, his experience in his father’s goldsmith shop helped him to hone his artistic abilities and talents. Dürer went on to use his gifts to advance the message of the Reformation.

But we are not quite there yet. After his teenage years, Dürer traveled to Italy, where he was influenced by the Renaissance artists. He was fascinated, as most of the Renaissance artists were, with the notion of human proportions, and he worked that into his artwork. In the early 1510s, he worked for Emperor Maximilian of the Holy Roman Empire, and then, in 1518, at Augsburg, he met Martin Luther.

Dürer was immediately impressed by Luther. What impressed him was not simply the content of his ideas—the potency of the gospel that Luther preached and the clear focus on the Word of God that was so much a part of Luther—but also Luther’s clarity, how he was able to express these doctrines so clearly.

After Luther took his famous stand at the Diet of Worms, his friends captured him for his own safety and hid him away at Wartburg Castle in Eisenach. For a time, word circulated that Luther had been kidnapped and killed. When this word reached Dürer, he said: “If we have lost this man who has written more clearly than any other that has lived for well over a hundred years and to whom, Thou, and to whom God has given such a spirit of the Gospel, we pray to You, O heavenly Father, that you would again give your Holy Spirit to another. O God, if Luther is dead, who will henceforth deliver the holy Gospel to us with such clearness?”

Unbeknownst to Dürer, Luther was not dead. He was alive and well and working on translating the New Testament into German. When that New Testament was published, it had woodcuts by Dürer himself. Dürer went on to read just about everything Luther ever wrote and truly admired this Reformer, and the feeling was mutual. When Dürer died, Luther said, “It is the duty of pious men everywhere to mourn for Dürer.”