commissioned the painting. The altarpiece was intended for a chapel in
a Nuremberg home for elderly and poor men called the Twelve Brothers’
House, a name referring to the apostles. Other ¿ gures in the lower tier
include two popes, two emperors, and the elderly Matthäeus Landauer at the
left. A landscape with a central lake and shores is below. In the right corner,
Dürer holds a tablet with his signature and the date. This painting combines
northern and Italian aspects. It is a devotional altarpiece with detail and
portraits in the style of northern Realism, and it appears above a German
landscape, but it is Italian High Renaissance in its composition.
Dürer was a Christian Humanist, like his great Italian contemporaries, but
he was also a German affected by the Protestant Reformation. A steadfast
follower of Martin Luther, he nonetheless had absorbed the Catholicism of
his birth and the Italian Renaissance language in which some of its greatest
art had been expressed. Thus, the paintings of the Four Apostles owe their
physical power and palpable intelligence to Italy. The Four Apostles (c.
1526) depicts St. John, with a red robe, and St. Paul announcing their lineage.
Paul belongs to a long line of Italian Renaissance ¿ gures, from Giotto to
Masaccio to Piero to Michelangelo, whether or not he is directly indebted
to any of them. The title is not accurate because one of the four, St. Mark,
was not an apostle but an evangelist. The paintings were known as the Four
Apostles beginning shortly after Dürer’s death.
The ¿ gures, painted on two panels, are larger than life-size. Each panel
contains two ¿ gures, but in each, one of the pair greatly dominates the
other. On the left panel, St. John the Evangelist mostly ¿ lls the composition,
reading the opening words from his own Gospel. St. Peter stands behind
him, holding the key, his attribute. This attitude seems out of character for
the short-tempered Peter and may be intended to emphasize the role denoted
by his name, the rock of the Church. On the right panel, St. Paul, identi¿ ed
by his sword, dominates the scene. He alone among the apostles looks at the
viewer. Behind him is St. Mark, identi¿ ed by a scroll in his hand.
This is Dürer’s last great achievement in painting. He considered the paintings
to be his artistic testament, and he gave them to Nuremberg, which had
become a Reformation city in 1525. Dürer presented them in remembrance
of himself. They should not be considered Reformation paintings or anti-