Dürer's One-Man Empire

Albrecht Dürer was the first artist to build an international brand through prints. His best-known sheets — the engravings Melencolia I and Knight, Death and the Devil, plus the woodcuts of his Apocalypse series — circulated across Europe and made him famous far beyond Nuremberg. He was essentially the first art celebrity of the print age.

Dürer also fought one of the first copyright battles in art history. When the Italian engraver Marcantonio Raimondi copied his prints — monogram and all — Dürer pressed the case in Venice. By most accounts the ruling let Raimondi keep copying the images but barred him from using Dürer's famous monogram, the linked AD. The fine details remain debated, but the principle stuck: a maker's mark was worth protecting.