Printmaker and painter Albrecht Dürer was born on May 21, 1471, in Nuremberg now part of the free state of Bavaria in Germany. He was one of three surviving children of eighteen boys born to Hungarian parents Albrecht Dürer the Elder and Barbara Holper. The elder Dürer was a successful goldsmith, as well as a painter, who trained his sons in art and the goldsmithing trade with the intention of having them continue the business. However, the younger Dürer proved to be such a gifted artist that his parents sent him instead to train with leading Nuremberg painter and printmaker Michael Wolgemut in 1486. 

Following his apprenticeship, Dürer took a journeyman's year, a widely practiced custom for European tradesmen in which they traveled to various countries to practice their craft with leaders of their chosen industry. Dürer traveled to Basel, Switzerland; Colmar and Strasbourg, France; and the Netherlands between 1490 and 1494. His travels were interrupted by an arranged marriage to Agnes Frey, daughter of a prominent brass worker. It would be a childless and apparently unhappy marriage, orchestrated by their parents for the purposes of Dürer gaining certification to open a studio in Nuremberg. Within three months of the nuptials, Dürer left to travel alone to Italy on a sketching trip, remaining there for the better part of a year. This trip would become a seminal chapter in Dürer's life and career, as his exposure to the leading artists of Venice greatly influenced his own style.

Upon his return to Nuremberg, Dürer opened his workshop, and over the next decade produced a large body of oils, watercolors, woodcuts, and copper engravings that combined his early German style with the elements of Italian art that would remain significant to him throughout his career. He quickly established a reputation as one of the finest printmakers in Germany, creating large, finely carved works that focused primarily on religious themes. Dürer’s reputation as a painter was also reaching new heights, and he was commissioned to create a polyptych for Frederick III of Saxony titled The Seven Sorrows (ca. 1500). However, it was his prolific body of prints, which were portable, durable, and comparatively more accessible to the public, that gained him the most recognition throughout Europe. 

A second trip to Italy between 1505 and 1507 expanded Dürer’s appreciation for and execution of richly detailed works. The works from this period exhibit a better understanding of the human figure and of perspective as demonstrated by leading Italian artists. Dürer was commissioned to paint the Adoration of the Magi and Feast of the Rosary altarpieces, and his popularity in Italy grew to such an extent that his work became a subject of study and copy. However, it was his return to Nuremberg that signified the start of his most well recognized period. He began his work on his large woodcut series, the Great Passion and the Life of the Virgin, famed for their complex and elegant use of chiaroscuro. His interest in printmaking overshadowed painting and from 1513 to 1516 he produced no paintings, focusing instead on what would become his most famous prints: Knight, Death, and the Devil; Saint Jerome in His Study; and Melencolia I. 

From 1512 Dürer was approached by Roman Emperor Maximilian I to design The Triumphal Arch, one of three elaborate architectural woodcuts to be created in commemoration of his military conquests, with woodcuts being a popular way to disseminate propaganda. Ultimately measuring nearly twelve by nine feet, Dürer's composition required 195 separate woodcuts and was the only work of the original three to be completed and disseminated, as intended, in Maximilian I's lifetime. This commission led to many years of the emperor’s patronage, and the artist noted that, unlike the elite of Germany, he was treated with respect and deference by the ruler despite his non-noble birth. To an acquaintance who once showed disdain at Maximilian I's public support of Dürer, the emperor was noted as having said that he could make a noble out of a peasant, but he could not make an artist like Dürer out of a noble. The patronage would continue until Maximilian's death in 1519.

Dürer's final major trip took place between 1520 and 1521, when he and his wife went to Rhine-Westphalia to witness the coronation of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and secure a new patronage. He also visited Cologne, Ghent, and Zeeland, meeting leading Dutch and Belgian artists and seeing for the first time Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece and Michelangelo's The Madonna of Bruges. An illness cut his trip short and he and his wife returned home in July of 1521.

In the last seven years of his life, Dürer painted infrequently, focusing on other projects that didn't rely on detailed work or strain his faltering eyesight, such as the publication of books on mathematical art theory: Four Books on Measurement, Four Books on Human Proportion, and a book on the architectural fortification of castles and cities. This allowed him to focus on his other interests that had followed him throughout his career, such as cartography, geometry and mathematics, astronomy, and religious debate. Having had no formal academic or artistic training, Dürer attempted to keep up with the intellectuals and theorists of his time. He was also largely self-taught in all fields when he couldn't find the training on a subject that he desired. 

Dürer died in April of 1528. His creative output as a printmaker remained a source of awe and inspiration to artists throughout Germany and beyond; to some, he remains unrivaled.