Description
This page from Albrecht Dürer’s Four Books on Human Proportion arranges six carefully measured heads across printed text, their profiles crossed by lines that make proportion visible. The spare diagrams have a clarity quite different from a finished portrait, yet their subtle changes invite close comparison. This page from Dürer’s Four Books on Human Proportion turns the study of the body into an engaging pattern of shapes and relationships.
Published in Nuremberg in 1528, the woodcut illustration joins images with written explanation. The repeated forms allow the eye to follow differences in height, width and facial structure, showing measurement as an active way of looking. Its appeal lies in the meeting of artistic observation and orderly inquiry. A head becomes both a recognizable human form and a structure that can be examined, compared and understood through the precise placement of lines.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Dürer collection.
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