Dürer's grandfather came of a farmer race in the village of Eytas in
Hungary. The grandfather turned goldsmith, and his eldest son, Albrecht
Dürer the elder, came to Nuremberg in 1455 and settled in the
Burgstrasse (No. 27). He became one of the leading goldsmiths of the
town; married and had eighteen children, of whom only three, boys, grew
up. Albrecht, or as we call him Albert Dürer, was the eldest of these.
He was born May 21, 1471, in his father's house, and Anthoni Koberger,
the printer and bookseller, the Stein of those days, stood godfather to
him. The maintenance of so large a family involved the father, skilful
artist as he was, in unremitting toil.

His father, who was delighted with Albert's industry, took him from
school as soon as he had learned to read and write and apprenticed him
to a goldsmith. "But my taste drew me toward painting rather than toward
goldsmithry. I explained this to my father, but he was not satisfied,
for he regretted the time I had lost." Benvenuto Cellini has told us how
his father, in like fashion, was eager that he should practise the
"accurst art" of music. Dürer's father, however, soon gave in and in
1486 apprenticed the boy to Michael Wolgemut. That extraordinary
beautiful, and, for a boy of that age, marvelously executed portrait of
himself at the age of thirteen (now at Vienna) must have shown the
father something of the power that lay undeveloped in his son. So "it
was arranged that I should serve him for three years. During that time
God gave me great industry so that I learned many things; but I had to
suffer much at the hands of the other apprentices."

When in 1490 his apprenticeship was completed Dürer set out on his
Wanderjahre, to learn what he could of men and things, and, more
especially, of his own trade. Martin Schongauer was dead, but under that