Albrecht Dürer

About Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a pivotal German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the Northern Renaissance. Ranked #126 in historical importance by MIT's Pantheon project, his influence stems from his mastery of engraving and woodcut techniques, which allowed his highly detailed, innovative imagery to circulate widely across Europe. He was instrumental in bringing the Italian Renaissance's theoretical principles, such as perspective, to the German-speaking world through his influential theoretical writings.

Dürer commands an attention level remarkably aligned with his historical stature. Garnering 386K annualized Wikipedia views in 2025, his attention gap is calculated at approximately 1x, suggesting the modern internet is paying attention to him in proportion to his historical significance. This contrasts sharply with some of his contemporaries or even successors, such as Caravaggio (#223 importance) who receives 920K views, or Gustav Klimt (#468 importance) at 733K views.

While his attention is proportional, the raw numbers show a slight decline: his 2025 views are down 1.2% year-over-year, with a steeper drop of 6% in momentum when comparing Q1 to Q3 traffic. Despite this minor trend, Dürer remains one of the highest-ranked artists of his era to maintain such balanced historical and modern digital visibility.