Albrecht Dore was born in Nuremberg, Germany on May 21st, 1471.

Albrecht, or we could call him Albert, as the anglicized version of his name would have it.

And his last name was Dure, which in German 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 12 and 13 years old, his father recognized his artistic abilities.

And so Albert was sent during his teenage years as an apprentice to an artist there in

Nuremberg.

This artist specialized in paintings and also woodcuts.

Now for woodcuts they would carve an image right into a block of wood.

This of course would leave the raised surfaces.

And then you would blot ink on those surfaces and then you would blot ink on those surfaces and then you would press that upon

the paper. Eventually these wood cuts would give way to iron plates and then they

would give way to copper plate engraving.

Even in his own lifetime, Albert Durer transitioned from the wood blocks to the copper plates.

No doubt his experience in his father's goldsmith shop helped him and we couple that with his artistic abilities and talents and we're going to see how Albert uses this gift and uses these wood cuts to truly advance the message of the Reformation.

But we're not quite there yet after his teenage years he traveled to Italy and there 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 into his

paintings and his engravings. In the early 1510s he worked for Emperor Max

Meelyan of the Holy Roman Empire, and then in 1518 at Augsburg, he met Martin Luther.

Durer was immediately impressed and taken by Martin Luther. What impressed him was not simply the

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