Albrecht Dürer
Nuremberg painter and engraver who around 1512 compiled the illustrated combat manuscript Öplodidaskalia on wrestling, the longsword, the dagger and the messer.
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Albrecht Dürer was a painter, engraver and art theorist who around 1512 compiled the illustrated combat manuscript Öplodidaskalia. He was born on 21 May 1471 in Nuremberg, the son of the goldsmith Albrecht Dürer the Elder, and died there on 6 April 1528 at the age of 56.
In 1486 he trained under the painter Michael Wolgemut. In 1500 in Venice he became acquainted with the principles of perspective from Jacopo de' Barbari. A close friend and intellectual collaborator was the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer. A fencing teacher we have not found in the sources.
The manuscript Öplodidaskalia (MS 26-232) depicts wrestling, combat with the longsword, the dagger and the messer. Among the manuscripts associated with his name are also, from around 1512, a manuscript on combat with the messer, MS Sloane 5229, and the so-called Berlin picture book (Libr.Pict.A.83), which draws on Nuremberg texts and on the works of Hans Talhoffer. Beyond the martial arts, his best-known works include the engravings Knight, Death and the Devil (1513) and Melencolia I (1514).