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Pirkheimer, Willibald
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Willibald Pirkheimer 1470-1530
Albrecht Durer's best friend, issue of one of the oldest and richest patrician families of Nuremberg. His grandfather Hans Pirckheimer attended a course of humanistic and legal studies in Perugia, Bologna and Padua (from 1488-1491) like a great number of other members of Nuremberg's leading families. Willibald Pirckheimer studied law and the humanities at universities of Padua and Pavia. He initiated Durer into the Greek and Roman classics and kept him informed of the developments in contemporary philosophy and archeology, he assisted him in his literary labors and suggested amusing or cryptic subjects for prints. He collected books and owned a copy of Pomponius Gauricus's De Sculptura (Florence, 1504), which reflected Leonardo da Vinci's unpublished studies on human proportions. This book as Leon Battista Alberti's De Statua was also known to Durer.
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