Like them, too, they discarded gold backgrounds and tried to paint men and women as they really looked, instead of in the old conventional fashion of the Middle Ages.

Schools of painting grew up in several of the more important German towns, till towards the end of the fifteenth century two German artists were born, Albert Durer at Nuremberg in 1471, and Hans Holbein the younger at Augsburg in 1497, who deserve to rank with the greatest painters of the time in any country.
Durer is commonly regarded as the most typically German of artists, though his father was Hungarian, and as a matter of fact he stands very much alone.

His pictures and engravings are 'long, long thoughts.' Every inch of the surface is weighted with meaning.

His cast of mind, indeed, was more that of a philosopher than that of an artist.

In a drawing which Durer made of himself in the looking-glass at the age of thirteen, we see a thoughtful little face gazing out upon the world with questioning eyes.