German artist, a painter, engraver and designer, draftsman and theorist, one of foremost artists of the Renaissance. He combined a love of the ancient world with a deep Christian spirit; the favourite painter of Emperor Maximilian I.
Dürer was the third child and second son of his parents, who had at least fourteen and possibly as many as eighteen children. His father, Albrecht Dürer the Elder, was a successful goldsmith, originally Ajtósi, who in 1455 had moved to Nuremberg from Ajtós, near Gyula in Hungary. One of Albrecht’s brothers, Hans Dürer, was also a painter and trained under him. Another of Albrecht’s brothers, Endres Dürer, took over their father’s business and was a master goldsmith. The German name “Dürer” is a translation from the Hungarian, “Ajtósi”. Dürer’s godfather was Anton Koberger, who left goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher in the year of Dürer’s birth and quickly became the most successful publisher in Germany.
Albrecht Dürer married Agnes Frey in 1494, the daughter of a prosperous merchant who set him up in his own workshop. They did not have children. Dürer died on 6 April 1528, aged 56, in Nurnberg, Germany, leaving behind an oeuvre of nearly 100 paintings, about 250 woodcuts, 110 engravings, over 1000 drawings and three treatises on geometry and the theory of human proportion.
Link to Wikipedia biography