Dürer's First Books in Nuremberg
Soon after Dürer returned to Nuremberg in 1493, he embarked on a two-year journey to Italy. Although he did not fully adopt the Classical ideals of Italian Renaissance art, his experiences in Italy did lend his compositions a more rational treatment of light, a greater solidity of form, and a new monumentality. These qualities were put to dramatic use in his first major illustrated book, the Apocalypse (1498), and in several publications for which he designed woodcuts during the first decade of the sixteenth century.