[Transcriber's note: The printing errors of the original have beenretained in this etext. ]

ALBERT DÜRER

BY

T. STURGE MOORE

PREFACE

When the late Mr. Arthur Strong asked me to undertake the presentvolume, I pointed out to him that, to fulfil the advertised programme ofthe Series he was editing, was more than could be hoped from myattainments. He replied, that in the case of Dürer a book, fulfillingthat programme, was not called for, and that what he wished me toattempt, was an appreciation of this great artist in relation to generalideas. I had hoped to benefit very largely by my editor's advice andsupervision, but this his illness and death prevented. His great giftsand brilliant accomplishments, already darkened and distressed bydisease, were all too soon to be utterly quenched; and I can but hereexpress, not only my sense of personal loss in the hopes which hisfriendly welcome and generous intercourse had created and which havebeen so cruelly dashed by the event, but also that of the void which hisdisappearance has left in the too thin ranks of those who, filled withreverence and enthusiasm for the great traditions of the past, seemnevertheless eager and capable of grappling with the unwieldy present. Let and restricted had been the recognition of his maturing worth, andnow we must do without both him and the impetus of his so nearlyassured success. 

The present volume, then, is not the result of new research; nor is itan abstract resuming historical and critical discoveries on its subjectup to date. Of this latter there are several already before the Britishpublic; the former, as I said, it was not for me to attempt. Nor do Ifeel my book to be altogether even what it was intended to be; but amconscious that too much space has been given to the enumeration ofDürer's principal works and the events of his life without either beingmade exhaustive. Still, I hope that even these parts may be foundprofitable by those who are not already familiar with the subjects withwhich they deal. To those for whom these subjects are well known, Ishould like to point out that Parts I. And IV. And very much of PartIII. Embody my chief intention; that chapter 1 of Part I. Finds afurther illustration in division iii. Of chapter 4, Part II. ; and thatdivision vi. , chapter 1, Part II. , should be taken as prefatory tochapter 1, Part IV. 

Should exception be taken to the works chosen as illustrations, I wouldexplain that the means of reproduction, the degree of reductionnecessitated by the size of the page, and other outside considerations, have severely limited my choice. It is entirely owing to the extremekindness of the Dürer Society--more especially of its courteous andenthusiastic secretaries, Mr. Campbell Dodgson and Mr. Peartree--thatfour copper-plates have so greatly enhanced the adequacy of the volumein this respect. 

I have gratefully to acknowledge Sir Martin Conway's kindness inpermitting me to quote so liberally from his "Literary Remains ofAlbrecht Dürer, " by far the best book on this great artist known to me. Mr. Charles Eaton's translation of Thausing's "Life of Dürer, " the"Portfolios of the Dürer Society, " and Dr. Lippmanb "Drawings ofAlbrecht Dürer, " are the only other works on my subject to which I feelbound to acknowledge my indebtedness. Lastly, I must express deepgratitude to my learned friend, Mr. Campbell Dodgson, for having sogenerously consented, by reading the proofs, to mitigate my defect inscholarship. 

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART I

CONCERNING GENERAL IDEAS IMPORTANT TO THECOMPREHENSION OF DÜRER'S LIFE AND ART

 I. THE IDEA OF PROPORTION II THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON THE CREATIVE IMPULSE

PART II

DÜRER'S LIFE IN RELATION TO THE TIMESIN WHICH HE LIVED

 I. DÜRER'S ORIGIN, YOUTH, AND EDUCATION II. THE WORLD IN WHICH HE LIVED III. DÜRER AT VENICE IV. HIS PATRONS AND FRIENDS V. DÜRER, LUTHER, AND THE HUMANISTS VI. DÜRER'S JOURNEY TO THE NETHERLANDS VII. DÜRER'S LAST YEARS

PART III

DÜRER AS A CREATOR

 I. DÜRER'S PICTURES II. DÜRER'S PORTRAITS III. DÜRER'S DRAWINGS IV. DÜRER'S METAL ENGRAVINGS V. DÜRER'S WOODCUTS VI. DÜRER'S INFLUENCES AND VERSES

PART IV

DÜRER'S IDEAS

 I. THE IDEA OF A CANON OF PROPORTION FOR THE HUMAN FIGURE II. THE IMPORTANCE OF DOCILITY III. THE LAST TRADITION IV. BEAUTY V. NATURE VI. THE CHOICE OF AN ARTIST VII. TECHNICAL PRECEPTS VIII. IN CONCLUSION

ILLUSTRATIONS

Apollo and Diana, Metal EngravingWater-colour drawing of a HarePilate Washing his Hands. Metal EngravingAgnes Frey"Mein Angnes"Wilibald PirkheimerHans BurgkmairAdoration of the TrinitySt. ChristopherAssumption of the MagdalenDürer's MotherMaximilianFrederick the WiseSilver-point PortraitErasmusDrawing of a LionLucas van der LeydenPeter and John at the Beautiful Gate. Metal EngravingSt. George and St. EustacheMartyrdom of Ten Thousand SaintsRoad to CalvaryPortrait of DürerPortrait of DürerAlbert Dürer the ElderGswolt KrelPortrait at Hampton CourtPortrait of a LadyMichel WolgemuthHans Imhof"Jakob Muffel"Study of a HoundMemento MeiSilver-point PortraitPortrait in Black ChalkCherub for a CrucifixionApollo and DianaAn Old CastleMelancholiaDetail from "The Agony in the Garden"Angel with SudariumThe Small HorseThe Great Fortune, or NemesisSilver-point DrawingSt. Michael and the DragonDetail from "The Meeting at the Golden Gate"Detail from "The Nativity"Dürer's Armorial BearingsChrist haled before AnnasThe Last SupperSaint Antony, Metal Engraving"In the Eighteenth Year""Una Vilana Wendisch"Charcoal Drawing

PART I

CONCERNING GENERAL IDEAS IMPORTANT TO THE COMPREHENSION OF DÜRER'S LIFEAND ART

CHAPTER I

THE IDEA OF PROPORTION

I

Ich hab vernomen wie der siben weysen aus kriechenland ainer gelert habdas dymass in allen dingen sitlichen und naturlichen das pest sey. 

DÜRER, British Museum MS. , vol. Iv. , 82a. 

I have heard how one of the Seven Sages of Greece taught that measure isin all things, physical and moral, best. 

La souveraine habileté consiste à bien connaitre le prix des choses. LAROCHEFOUCAULD, III. 252. 

Sovereign skill consists in thoroughly understanding the value ofthings. 

The attempt that the last quarter century has witnessed, to introducethe methods of science into the criticism of works of art, has tended, it seems to me, to put the question of their value into the background. The easily scandalous inquiries, "Who?" "When?" "Where?" have assumed animpertinent predominance. When I hear people very decidedly assertingthat such a picture was painted by such an one, not generally supposedto be the author, at such a time, &c. &c. , I often feel uneasy in thesame way as one does on being addressed in a loud voice in a church or apicture gallery, where other persons are absorbed in an acknowledged andrespected contemplation or study. I feel inclined to blush and whisper, for fear of being supposed to know the speaker too well. It is anawkward moment with me, for I am in fact very good friends with manysuch persons. "Sovereign skill consists in thoroughly understanding thevalue of things"--not their commercial value only, though that issovereign skill on the Exchange, but their value for those whose chiefriches are within them. The value of works of art is an intimateexperience, and cannot be estimated by the methods of exact science asthe weight of a planet can. There are and have been forgeries that aremore beautiful, therefore more valuable, than genuine specimens of theclass of work which they figure as. I feel that the specialist, with hisspecial measure and point of view, often endangers the fair name andgood repute of the real estimate; and that nothing but the dominion anddiffusion of general ideas can defend us against the specialist and keepthe specialist from being carried away by bad habits resulting from hisdevotion to a single inquiry. 

There was one general idea, of the greatest importance in determiningthe true value of things, which preoccupied Dürer's mind and haunted hisimagination: the idea of proportion. I propose therefore to attempt tomake clear to myself and my readers what the idea of proportion reallyimplies, and of what service a sense for proportion really is; secondly, to determine the special use of the term in relation to the appreciationof works of art; thirdly, in relation to their internalstructure;--before proceeding to the special studies of Dürer as a manand an artist. 

II

I conceive the human reason to be the antagonist of all known forcesother than itself, and that therefore its most essential character isthe hope and desire to control and transform the universe; or, failingthat, to annihilate, if not the universe, at least itself and theconsciousness of a monster fact which it entirely condemns. In thisconception I believe myself to be at one with those by whom men havebeen most influenced, and who, with or without confidence in the supportof unknown powers, have set themselves deliberately against the face ofthings to die or conquer. This being so, and man individually weak, ithas been the avowed object of great characters--carrying with them theinstinctive consent of nations--to establish current values for allthings, according as their imagination could turn them to account aseffective aids of reason: that is, as they could be made to advance herapparent empire over other elemental forces, such as motion, physicallife, &c. This evaluation, in so far as it is constant, results in whatwe call civilisation, and is the only bond of society. With difficultyis the value of new acquisitions recognised even in the realm ofscience, until the imagination can place them in such a light as shallmake them appear to advance reason's ends, which accounts for thereluctance that has been shown to accept many scientific results. Reasondemands that the world she would create shall be a fact, and declaresthat the world she would transform is the real world, but until theimagination can find a function for it in reason's ideal realm, everypiece of knowledge remains useless, or even an obstacle in the way ofour intended advance. This applies to individuals just as truly as itdoes to mankind. And since man's reason is a natural phenomenon and doesapparently belong to the class of elemental forces, this warfare againstthe apparent fact, and the fortitude and hope which its whole-heartedprosecution begets, appear as a natural law to the intelligence and as acommand and promise to the reason. 

The alternative between the will to cease and the will to serve reason, with which I start out, may not seem necessary to all. "Forgive theirsin--and if not, blot me I pray thee out of thy book, " was Moses'prayer; and to me it seems that only by lethargy can any soul escapefrom facing this alternative. The human mind in so far as it is activealways postulates, "Let that which I desire come to pass, or let mecease!" Nor is there any diversity possible as to what really isdesirable: Man desires the full and harmonious development of hisfaculties. As to how this end may most probably be attained, there isdiversity enough to represent every possible blend of ignorance withknowledge, of lethargy with energy, of cowardice with courage. 

"So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men, whether considered intheir persons or their states, that they will grasp at all, and can formno scheme of perfect happiness with less. "[1] So writes the mostpowerful of English prose-writers. And this hope and desire, which isreason, once thrown down, the most powerful among poets has brought fromhuman lips this estimate of life--

 "It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. "

No one knows whether reason's object will or can be attained; but forthe present each man finds confidence and encouragement in so far as heis able to imagine all things working together for the good of those whodesire good--in short, for "reasonable beings. "[2] The more he knows, the greater labour it is for him to imagine this; but the more heconcentrates his faculties on doing good and creating good things, themore his imagination glows and shines and discovers to him newpossibilities of success: the better he is able to find--

 "Sermons in stones and good in everything;" "And make a moral of the devil himself. "

But how is it that reason can accept an imagination that makes what in acold light she considers her enemy, appear her friend? All thingsimpress the mind with two contradictory notions--their actual conditionand their perfection. Even the worst of its kind impresses on us an ideaof what the best would be, or we could not know it for the worst. Reason, then, seizes on this aspect of things which suggests theirperfection, and awards them her attention in proportion as such aspectmakes their perfection seem near, or as it may further her intransforming the most pressing of other evils. All life tends to affirmits own character; and the essential characteristic of man is reason, which labours to perfect all things that he judges to be good, and totransform all evil. Ultimate results are out of sight for all humanfaculties except the early-waking eyes of long-chastened hope; butreason loves this visionary mood, though she prefer that it be sung, andfind that less lyrical speech brings on it something of ridicule; forsuch a rendering betrays, as a rule, faint desire or small power toserve her in those who use it. 

The sense of proportion, then, is that fineness of susceptibility bywhich we appreciate in a given object, person, force, or mood, serviceableness in regard to reason's work; in other words, by which weestimate the capacity to transform the Universe in such a way that menmay ultimately be enabled to give their hearty consent to its existence, which at present no man rationally can. 

III

Now, art appeals to fine susceptibilities; for, as I have explainedelsewhere, [3] the value of works of art depends on their having come as"real and intimate experiences to a large number of gifted men"--men whohave some kinship to that "finely touched and gifted man, the [Greek_heuphnaes_] of the Greeks, " to use the phrase of our greatest moderncritic. And in so far as we are able to judge between works successfullymaking such an appeal, we must be governed by this sense of proportion, which measures how things stand in regard to reason; that is, not merelyintellect, not merely emotion, but the alliance of both by means of theimagination in aid of man's most central demand--the demand fornobler life. 

Perhaps I ought to point out before proceeding, that this position isnot that of the writers on art most in view at the present day. It isthe negation of the so-called scientific criticism, and also of thepersonal theory that reduces art to an expression of, and an appeal to, individual temperaments; it is the assertion of the sovereignty of theaesthetic conscience on exactly the same grounds as sovereignty isclaimed for the moral conscience. Æsthetics deals with the morality ofappeals addressed to the senses. That is, it estimates the success ofsuch appeals in regard to the promotion of fuller and more harmoniouslife. Flaubert wrote:

"Le génie n'est pas rare maintenant, mais ce que personne n'a plus et cequ'il faut tacher d'avoir, c'est la conscience. "

("Genius is not rare nowadays, but conscience is what nobody has andwhat one should strive after. ")

To-day I am thinking of a painter. Painting is an art addressedprimarily to the eye, and not to the intelligence, not to theimagination, save as these may be reached through the eye--that mostdelicate organ of infinite susceptibility, which teaches us the meaningof the word light--a word so often uttered with stress of ecstasy, oflonging, of despair, and of every other shade of emotion, that the soundof it must soon be almost as powerful with the young heart, almost asimmediate in its effect, as the break of day itself, gladdening the eyesand glorifying the earth. And how often is this joy received through theeye entrusted back to it for expression? For the eye can speak withvarieties, delicacies, and subtle shades of motion far beyond theattainment of any other organ. "This art of painting is made for theeyes, for sight is the noblest sense of man, "[4] says Dürer; and again:

"It is ordained that never shall any man be able, out of his ownthoughts, to make a beautiful figure, unless, by much study, he hathwell stored his mind. That then is no longer to be called his own; it isart acquired and learnt, which soweth, waxeth, and beareth fruit afterits kind. Thence the gathered secret treasure of the heart is manifestedopenly in the work, and the new creature which a man createth in hisheart, appeareth in the form of a thing. "[5]

Yes, indeed, the function of art is far from being confined to tellingus what we see, whatever some may pretend, or however naturally anysmall nature may desire to continue, teach, or regulate great ones. Allso-called scientific methods of creating or criticising works of art areinadequate, because the only truly scientific statements that can bemade about these inquiries are that nothing is certain--that no methodensures success, and that no really important quality can be defined;for what man can say why one cloud is more beautiful than another in thesame sky, any more than he can explain why, of two men equally absorbedin doing their duty, one impresses him as being more holy than theother? The degrees essential to both kinds of judgment escape alldefinition; only the imagination can at times bring them home to us, only the refined taste or chastened conscience, as the case may be, witnesses with our spirit that its judgment is just, and bids usrecognise a master in him who delivers it. As the expression on a facespeaks to a delicate sense, often communicating more, other, and betterthan can be seen, so the proportion, harmony, rhythm of a painting maybeget moods and joys that require the full resources of a well-storedmind and disciplined character in order that they may be fullyrelished--in brief, demand that maturity of reason which is the mark ofvictorious man. 

Such being my conception, it will easily be perceived how anxious I mustbe to truly discern and express the relation between such objects asworks of art by common consent so highly honoured, and at the same timeso active in their effect upon the most exquisitely endowed of mankind. Especially since to-day caprice, humour and temperament are, by themajority of writers on art, acclaimed for the radical characteristic ofthe human creative faculty, instead of its perversion and disease; andit is thought that to be whimsical, moody, or self-indulgent best fits aman both to create and appraise works of art, whereas to become soreally is the only way in which a man capable of such high tasks canwith certainty ruin and degrade his faculties. Precious, surpassinglyprecious indeed, must every manifestation of such faculty before itsfinal extinction remain, since the race produces comparatively fewendowed after this kind. 

Perhaps a sufficient illustration of this prevalent fallacy may be drawnfrom Mr. Whistler's "Ten O'Clock, " where he speaks of art:

"A whimsical goddess, and a capricious, her strong sense of joytolerates no dulness, and, live we never so spotlessly, still may sheturn her back upon us. "

"As from time immemorial, she has done upon the Swiss in theirmountains. "

Here is no proof of caprice, save on the witty writer's part; for menwho fast are not saved from bad temper, nor have the kindly necessarilydiscreet tongues. The Swiss may be brave and honest, and yet dull. Virtue is her own reward, and art her own. Virtue rewards the saint, artthe artist; but men are rewarded for attention to morality by somemeasure of joy in virtue, for attention to beauty by some measure of joyin works of art. Between the artist and the Philistine is no great gulffixed, in the sense that the witty "master of the butterfly" pretends toassume, but an infinite and gentle decline of persons representing everypossible blend of the virtues and faults of these two types. Again, anartist is miscalled "master of art. " "Where he is, there she appears, "is airy impudence. "Where she wills to be, there she chooses a man toserve her, " would not only have been more gallant but more reasonable;for that "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the soundthereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so isevery one that is born of the spirit, " and that "many are called, fewchosen, " are sayings as true of the influence which kindleth art as ofthat which quickeneth to holiness. Art is not dignified by being calledwhimsical--or capricious. What can a man explain? The intention, behindthe wind, behind the spirit, behind the creative instinct, is dark. Butman is true to his own most essential character when, if he cannotrefrain from prating of such mysteries, he qualifies them as hope wouldhave him, with the noblest of his virtues; not when he speaks of theunknown, in whose hands his destiny so largely rests, slightingly, as ofa woman whom he has seduced because he despised her--calling hercapricious because she answered to his caprice, whimsical, because shewas as flighty as his error. It is not art's function to reward virtue. But, caprices and whimseys being ascribed to a goddess, it will benatural to expect them in her worshipper; and Mr. Whistler revealed thelimitations of his genius by whimseys and caprice. Though it was intheir relations to the world that this goddess and her devotee claimedfreedoms so far from perfect, yet this, their avowed characteristicabroad, I think in some degree disturbed their domestic relations, Though others have underlined the absurdity of this theory by applyingthemselves to it with more faith and less sense, I have chosen to quotefrom the "Ten O'Clock, " because I admire it and accept most of the ideasabout art advanced therein. The artist who wrote it was able, in Dürer'sphrase, "to prove" what he wrote "with his hand. " Most of those who haveelaborated what was an occasional unsoundness of his doctrine intoridiculous religions are as unable to create as they are to think; thereis no need to record names which it is wisdom to forget. But it may bewell to point out that Mr. Whistler does not succeed in glorifying greatartists when he declares that beauty "to them was as much a matter ofcertainty and triumph as is to the astronomer the verification of theresult, foreseen with the light granted to him alone. " No, he only setsup a false analogy; for the true parallel to the artist is the saint, not the astronomer; both are convinced, neither understands. Art is nomore the reward of intelligence than of virtue. She permits no capricein her own realm. Loyalty is the only virtue she insists on, loyalty inregard to her servant's experience of beauty; he may be immoral in everyother way and she not desert him; but let him turn Balaam and declarebeauty absent where he feels its presence--though in doing this he hopesto advance virtue or knowledge, she needs no better than an ass torebuke him. Nothing effects more for anarchy than these notions that artderives from individual caprice, or defends virtue, or demonstratesknowledge; for they are all based on those flattering hopes of theunsuccessful, that chance, rules both in life and art, or that it ispossible to serve two masters. 

Doctrines often repeated gain easy credence; and, since art demandsleisure in order to be at all enjoyed, ideas about it, in so fatiguing alife as ours has become, take men off their guard, when their habitualcaution is laid to sleep, and, by an over-easiness, they are inclined tospoil both their sense of distinction and their children. Yes, theyconsent to theatres that degrade them, because they distract and amuse;and read journals that are smart and diverting at the expense of dignityand truth--in the same way as they smile at the child whom reason bidsthem reprove, and with the like tragic result; for they become incapableof enjoying works of art, as the child is incapacitated for the best ofsocial intercourse. To prophesy smooth things to people in thiscondition, and flatter their dulness, is to be no true friend; and sothe modern art-critic and journalist is often the insidious enemy of thecivilisation he contents. 

Nothing strikes the foreigner coming to England more than our lack ofgeneral ideas. Our art criticism is no exception; it, like ourliterature and politics, is happy-go-lucky and delights in the pot-shot. We often hear this attributed admiringly to "the sporting instinct. " "IfGod, in his own time, granteth me to write something further aboutmatters connected with painting, I will do so, in hope that this art maynot rest upon use and wont alone, but that in time it may be taught ontrue and orderly principles, and may be understood to the praise of Godand the use and pleasure of all lovers of art. "[6]

Our art is still worse off than our trade or our politics, for it doesnot even rest upon use and wont, but is wholly in the air. Yet thetypical modern aesthete has learnt where to take cover, for, thoughdestitute of defence, he has not entirely lost the instinct forself-preservation; and, when he finds the eye of reason upon him, heimmediately flies to the diversity of opinions. But Dürer follows himeven there with the perfect good faith of a man in earnest. 

"Men deliberate and hold numberless differing opinions about beauty, andthey seek after it in many different ways, although ugliness is therebyrather attained. Being then, as we are, in such a state of error, I knownot certainly what the ultimate measure of true beauty is, and cannotdescribe it aright. But glad should I be to render such help as I can, to the end that the gross deformities of our work might be and remainpruned away and avoided, unless indeed any one prefers to bestow greatlabour upon the production of deformities. We are brought back, therefore, to the aforesaid judgment of men, which considereth onefigure beautiful at one time and another at another.... 

"Because now we cannot altogether attain unto perfection, shall wetherefore wholly cease from learning? By no means. Let us not take untoourselves thoughts fit for cattle. For evil and good lie before men, wherefore it behoveth the rational man to choose the good. "[7]

A man may see, if he will but watch, who is more finely touched andgifted than himself. In all the various fields of human endeavour, onsuch men he should try to form himself; for only thus can he enlarge hisnature, correct his opinions. Something he can learn from this man, something from that, and it is rational to learn and be taught. Are weto be cattle or gods? "Is it not written in your law, I said, 'Ye aregods?'" Reason demands that each man form himself on the pattern of agod, and God is an empty name if reason be not the will of God. Then hewhom reason hath brought up may properly be called a son of God, a sonof man, a child of light. But it is easier to bob to such phrases thanto understand them. However, their mechanical repetition does notprevent their having meant something once, does not prevent theirmeaning being their true value. It is time we understood our art, justas it is time we understood our religion. Docility, as I have pointedout elsewhere, is one of the marks of genius. Dürer's spirit is thespirit of the great artist who will learn even from "dull men of littlejudgment. "

"Let none be ashamed to learn, for a good work requireth good counsel. Nevertheless, whosoever taketh counsel in the arts, let him take it fromone thoroughly versed in those matters, who can prove what he saith withhis hand. Howbeit any one may give thee counsel; and when thou hast donea work pleasing to thyself, it is good for thee to show it to dull menof little judgment that they may give their opinion of it. As a rulethey pick out the most faulty points, whilst they entirely pass over thegood. If thou findest something they say true, thou mayst thus betterthy work. "[8]

Those who are thoroughly versed in art are the great artists; we haveguides then, and we have a way--the path they have trodden--and we havecompany, the gifted and docile men of to-day whom we see to be improvingthemselves; and, in so far as we are reasonable, a sense of proportionis ours, which we may improve; and it will help us to catch up betterand yet better company until we enjoy the intimacy of the noblest, andknow as we are known. Then: "May we not consider it a sign of sanitywhen we regard the human spirit as ... A poet, and art as a half writtenpoem? Shall we not have a sorry disappointment if its conclusion ismerely novel, and not the fulfilment and vindication of those greatthings gone before?"[9] For my own part, those appear to me the grandestcharacters who, on finding that there is no other purchase for effortbut only hope, and that they can never cease from hope but by ceasing tolive, clear their minds of all idle acquiescence in what could never behoped, and concentrate their energies on conquering whatever in theirown nature, and in the world about them, militates against their mostessential character--reason, which seeks always to give a highervalue to life. 

IV

When we speak of the sense of proportion displayed in the design of abuilding, many will think that the word is used in quite a differentsense, and one totally unrelated to those which I have been discussing. But no; life and art are parallel and correspond throughout; ethics arethe Esthetics of life, religion the art of living. Taste and conscienceonly differ in their provinces, not in their procedure. Both are basedon instinctive preferences; the canon of either is merely so many ofthose preferences as, by their constant recurrence to individuals giftedwith the power of drawing others after them, are widely accepted. 

The preference of serenity to melancholy, of light to darkness, areamong the most firmly established in the canon, that is all. The senseof proportion within a design is employed to stimulate and delight theeye. Ordinary people may fear there is some abstruse science about this. Not at all; it is as simple as relishing milk and honey, and itsdevelopment an exact parallel to the training of the palate todistinguish the flavours of teas, coffees and wines. "Taste and see" isthe whole business. There are many people who have no hesitation inpicking out what to their eye is the wainscot panel with the richestgrain: they see it at once. So with etchings; if people would onlyforget that they are works of art, forget all the false orill-understood standards which they have been led to suppose applicable, and look at them as they might at agate stones; or choose out therichest in effect: the most suitable for a gay room, or a hall, or alibrary, as though they were patterned stuffs for curtains; they wouldcome a thousand times nearer a right appreciation of Dürer's successthan by making a pot-shot to lasso the masterpiece with the tangle ofliterary rubbish which is known as art criticism. 

The harmonies and contrasts of juxtaposed colours or textures areaffected by quantity, and a sense of proportion decides what quantitiesbest produce this effect and what that. The correctness or amount ofinformation to be conveyed in the delineation of some object, inrelation to the mood which the artist has chosen shall dominate hiswork, is determined by his sense of proportion. He may distort an objectto any extent or leave it as vague as the shadow on a wall in diffusedlight, or he may make it precise and particular as ever Jan Van Eyckdid; so only that its distortion or elaboration is so proportioned tothe other objects and intentions of his work as to promote its successin the eyes of the beholder. 

There are no fallacies greater than the prevalent ones conveyed by theexpressions "out of drawing" or "untrue to nature. " There is no suchthing as correct drawing or an outside standard of truth for worksof art. 

"The conception of every work of art carries within it its own rule andmethod, which must be found out before it can be achieved. " "Chaqueoeuvre à faire a sa poétique en soi, qu'il faut trouver, " said Flaubert. Truth in a work of art is sincerity. That a man says what he reallymeans--shows us what he really thinks to be beautiful--is all thatreason bids us ask for. No science or painstaking can make up for hisnot doing this. No lack of skill or observation can entirely frustratehis communicating his intention to kindred natures if he is utterlysincere. An infant communicates its joy. It is probable that theinexpressible is never felt. Stammering becomes more eloquent thanoratory, a child's impulsiveness wiser than circumlocutory experience. When a single intention absorbs the whole nature, communication isdirect and immediate, and makes impotence itself a means ofeffectiveness. So the naïveties of early art put to shame thepurposeless parade of prodigious skill. Wherever there is communicationthere is art; but there are evil communications and there is viciousart, though, perhaps, great sincerity is incompatible with either. Foran artist to be deterred by other people's demands means that he is notartist enough; it is what his reason teaches him to demand of himselfthat matters, though, doubtless, the good desire the approval ofkindred natures. 

A work of art addresses the eye by means of chosen proportions; it maypresent any number of facts as exactly as may be, but if it offend theeye it is a mere misapplication of industry, or the illustration of ascientific treatise out of place; and those that choose ribbons well arebetter artists than the man that made it. Or again it may overflow withpoetical thought and suggestion, or have the stuff to make a first-ratestory in it; but, if it offend the eye, it is merely a misapplication ofimagination, invention or learning, and the girl who puts a charmingnosegay together is a better artist than he who painted it. On the otherhand, though it have no more significance than a glass of wine and aloaf of bread, if the eye is rejoiced by gazing on the paint thatexpresses them, it is a work of art and a fine achievement. Still, itmay be as fanciful as a fairy-tale, or as loaded with import as theCrucifixion; and, if it stimulates the eye to take delight in itssurfaces over and above mere curiosity, it is a work of art, and greatin proportion as the significance of what it conveys is brought home tous by the very quality of the stimulus that is created in return for ourgaze. For painting is the result of a power to speak beautifully withpaint, as poetry is of a power to express beautifully by means of wordseither simple things or those which demand the effort of a welltrainedmind in order to be received and comprehended. The mistake made byimpressionists, luminarists, and other modern artists, is that a truestatement of how things appear to them will suffice; it will not, unlessthings appear beautiful to them, and they render them beautifully. Itwill not, because science is not art, because knowledge is a differentthing from beauty. A true statement may be repulsive and degrading;whereas an affirmation of beauty, whether it be true or fancied, isalways moving, and if delivered with corresponding grace isinspiring--is a work of art and "a joy for ever. " For reason demandsthat all the eye sees shall be beautiful, and give such pleasure as bestconsists with the universe becoming what reason demands that it shallbecome. This demand of reason is perfectly arbitrary? Yes, but it isalso inevitable, necessitated by the nature of the human character. Itis equally arbitrary and equally inevitable that man must, where scienceis called for, in the long run prefer a true statement to a lie. Fromart reason demands beautiful objects, from science true statements: suchis human nature; for the possession of this reason that judges andcondemns the universe, and demands and attempts to create somethingbetter, is that which differentiates human life from all other knownforces--is that by which men may be more than conquerors, may make peacewith the universe; for

 "A peace is of the nature of a conquest; For then both parties nobly are subdued And neither party loser. "

Of such a nature is the only peace that the soul can make with thebody--that man can make with nature--that habit can make withinstinct--that art can make with impulse. In order to establish such apeace the imagination must train reason to see a friend in her enemy, the physical order. For, as Reynolds says of the complete artist:

"He will pick up from dunghills, what, by a nice chemistry, passingthrough his own mind, shall be converted into pure gold, and under therudeness of Gothic essays, he will find original, rational, and evensublime inventions. "[10]

It is not too much to say that the nature both of the artist and of thedunghills is "subdued" by such a process, and yet neither is a "loser. "Goethe profoundly remarked that the highest development of the soul wasreached through worship first of that which was above, then of thatwhich was beneath it. This great critic also said, "Only with difficultydo we spell out from that which nature presents to us, the _DESIRED_word, the congenial. Men find what the artist brings intelligible and totheir taste, stimulating and alluring, genial and friendly, spirituallynourishing, formative and elevating. Thus the artist, grateful to thenature that made him, weaves a second nature--but a conscious, a fuller, a more perfectly human nature. "

[Illustration: Water-colour drawing of a Hare]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Swift, "Contests and Dissensions in Athens and Rome. "]

[Footnote 2: It may be urged that diversities of opinion exist as towhat good is. The convenience of the words "good" and "evil" correspondsto a need created by a common experience in the same way as theconvenience of the words "light" and "darkness" does. A child mightconsider that a diamond generated light in the same way as a candledoes. He would be mistaken, but this would not affect the correctness ofhis application of the word "light" to his experience; if he confusedlight with darkness he must immediately become unintelligible. Good andlight are perceived and named--no one can say more of them; the effectsof both may be described with more or less accuracy. To say that lightis a mode of motion does not define it; we ask at once, What mode? Andthe only answer is, that which produces the effect of light. A man bornblind, though he knew what was meant by motion, could never deduce fromthis knowledge a conception of light. ]

[Footnote 3: The Monthly Review, October 1902, "Rodin. "]

[Footnote 4: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " p. 177. ]

[Footnote 5: Ibid. P. 247. ]

[Footnote 6: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " p. 252. ]

[Footnote 7: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " pp, 244 and 245. ]

[Footnote 8: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " p. 180. ]

[Footnote 9: The Monthly Review, April 1901, "In Defence of Reynolds. "]

[Footnote 10: Sixth Discourse. ]

CHAPTER II

THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON THE CREATIVE IMPULSE

I

There are some artists of whom one would naturally write in a lyricalstrain, with praise of the flesh, and those things which add to itsbeauty, freshness, and mystery--fair scenes of mountain, woodland, orsea-shore; blue sky, white cloud and sunlight, or the deep and starrynight; youth and health, strength and fertility, frankness and freedom. And, in such a strain, one would insist that the fondness andintoxication which these things quicken was natural, wise, and lovely. But, quite as naturally, when one has to speak of Dürer, the mindbecomes filled with the exhilaration and the staidness that the desireto know and the desire to act rightly beget; with the dignity ofconscious comprehension, the serenity of accomplished duty with all thestrenuousness and ardour of which the soul is capable; with scienceand religion. 

It is natural to refer often to the towering eminence of these virtuesin Michael Angelo; both he and Dürer were not only great artists, andactive and powerful minds, but men imbued with, and conservative of, piety. And it seems to me, if we are to appreciate and sympathise deeplywith such men, we must try to understand the religion they believed in;to estimate, not only what its value was supposed to be in those days, but what value it still has for us. Surely what they prized so highlymust have had real and lasting worth? Surely it can only be the relationof that value to common speech and common thought which has changed, notits relation to man's most essential nature? Therefore I will first tryto arrive at a general notion of the real worth of their ideas, --thatis, the worth that is equally great from their point of view and ours. 

The whole of that period, the period of the so belauded Renascence, hadwithin it (or so it seems to me) an incurable insufficiency, whichtroubles the affections of those who praise or condemn it; so that theyshow themselves more passionate than those who praise or condemn the artand life of ancient Greece. This insufficiency I believe to have beendue to the fact that Christian ideas were more firmly rooted in, thanthey were understood by, the society of those days. And to-day I thinkthe same cause continues to propagate a like insufficiency, a like lackof correspondence between effort and aim. Certain ideas found in thereported sayings of Jesus have so fastened upon the European intellectthat they seem well-nigh inseparable from it. We are told that theeffort of the Greek, of Aristotle, was to "submit to the empire offact. " The effort of the Jew was very similar; for the prophets, whathappened was the will of God, what will happen is what God intends. Nowit is noteworthy that Aristotle did not wish to submit to ignorance, though it and the causes which produce it and preserve it in human mindsare among the most horrible and tremendous of facts; and it is theimperishable glory of the prophets, that, whatever the priest the king, the Sadducee or Pharisee might do, _they_ could not rest in or abide theidea that God's will was ever evil; no inconsistency was too glaring tocheck their indignation at Eastern fatalism which quietly supposed thatas things went wrong it was their nature to do so;--vanity, vanity, allis vanity!--or that if men did wrong and prospered, it was God's doing, and showed that they had pleased Him with sacrifices and performances. 

II

'Wherever poetry, imagination, or art had been busy, there had appeared, both in Judea and Greece, some degree of rebellion against the empire offact.. When Jesus said: "The kingdom of heaven is within you, " herecognised that the human reason was the antagonist of all other knownforces, and he declared war on the god of this world and prophesied thedownfall of--the empire of the apparent fact;--not with fume and fret, not with rant and rage, as poets and seers had done, but mildlyaffirming that with the soul what is best is strongest, has in the longrun most influence; that there is one fact in the essential nature ofman which, antagonist to the influence of all other facts, wields aninfluence destined to conquer or absorb all other influences. He said:"My Father which is in heaven, the master influence within me, hasdeclared that I shall never find rest to my soul until I prefer Hiskingdom, the conception of my heart, to the kingdoms of earth and theglory of the earth. " 'We have seen that Dürer describes the miracle; thework of art, thus:

"The secret treasure which a man conceived in his heart shall appear asa thing" (see page 10). 

And we know that he prized this, the master thing, the conception of theheart, above everything else. 

Much learning is not evil to a man, though some be stiffly set againstit, saying that art puffeth up. Were that so, then were none prouderthan God who hath formed all arts, but that cannot be, for God isperfect in goodness. The more, therefore, a man learneth, so much thebetter doth he become, and so much the more love doth he win for thearts and for things exalted. 

The learning Dürer chiefly intends is not book-learning or criticallore, but knowledge how to make, by which man becomes a creator inimitation of God; for this is of necessity the most perfect knowledge, rivalling the sureness of intuition and instinct. 

III

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. "Every one knows how anxious great artists become for the preservation oftheir works, how highly they value permanence in the materials employed, and immunity from the more obvious chances of destruction in thepositions they are to occupy. Michael Angelo is said to have paintedcracks on the Sistina ceiling to force the architect to strengthen theroof. When Jesus made the assertion that his teaching would outlast theinfluence of the visible world of nature and the societies of men--thekingdoms of earth and the glory of the earth--he did no more than everyvictorious soul strives to effect, and to feel assured that it has insome large degree effected; the difference between him and them is oneof degree. It may be objected that different hearts harbour and cherishcontradictory conceptions. Doubtless; but does the desire to win theco-operation and approval of other men consist with the higherdevelopments of human faculties? Is it, perhaps, essential to them? Ifso, in so far as every man increases in vitality and the employment ofhis powers, he will be forced to reverence and desire the solidarity ofthe race, and consequently to relinquish or neglect whatever in his ownideal militates against such solidarity. And this will be the casewhether he judge such eccentric elements to be nobler or less noble thanthe qualities which are fostered in him by the co-operation of hisfellows. Jesus, at any rate, affirmed that the law of the kingdom withina man's soul was: "Love thy neighbour as thyself"; and that obedience toit would work in every man like leaven, which is lost sight of in thelump of dough, and seems to add nothing to it, yet transforms the wholein raising up the loaf; or as the corn of wheat which is buried in theglebe like a dead body, yet brings forth the blade, and nourishes anew life. 

So he that should follow Jesus by obeying the laws of the kingdom, byloving God (the begetter or fountainhead of a man's most essentialconception of what is right and good) and his neighbour, was assured byhis mild and gracious Master that he would inherit, by way of a returnfor the sacrifices which such obedience would entail, a new and betterlife. (Follow me, I laid down my life in order that I might take itagain. He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth hislife _for_ my _sake_--as I did, in imitation of me--shall find it. ) Forin order to make this very difficult obedience possible, it was to beturned into a labour of love done for the Master's sake. As Goethe said:

 "Against the superiority of another, there is no remedy but love. "

Is it not true that the superiority of another man humiliates, crushesand degrades us in our own eyes, if we envy it or hate it instead ofloving it? while by loving it we make it in a sense ours, and canrejoice in it. So Jesus affirmed that he had made the superiority of theideal his; so that he was in it, and it was in him, so that men whocould no longer fix their attention on it in their own souls might loveit in him. He was their master-conception, their true ideal, actingbefore them, captivating the attention of their senses and emotions. This is what a man of our times, possessed of rare receptivity and greatrange of comprehension, considered to be the pith of Jesus' teaching. Matthew Arnold gave much time and labour to trying to persuade men thatthis was what the religion they professed, or which was professed aroundthem, most essentially meant. And he reminded us that the adequacy ofsuch ideas for governing man's life depended not on the authority of abook or writings by eye-witnesses with or without intelligence, but onwhether they were true in experience. He quoted Goethe's test for everyidea about life, "But is it true, is it true for me, now?" "Taste andsee, " as the prophets put it; or as Jesus said, "Follow me. " For anideal must be followed, as a man woos a woman; the pursuit may have tobe dropped, in order to be more surely recovered; an ideal must behumoured, not seized at once as a man seizes command over a machine. This _secret of success was_ was only to be won by the development of atemper, a spirit of docility. To love it in an example was the best, perhaps the only way of gaining possession of it. 

IV

As we are placed, what hope can we have but to learn? and what is therefrom which we might not learn? An artist is taught by the materials heuses more essentially than by the objects he contemplates; for theseteach him "how, " and perfect him in creating, those only teach him"what, " and suggest forms to be created. But for men in general the"what" is more important than the "how"; and only very powerful art canexhilarate and refine them by means of subjects which they dislikeor avoid. 

Every seer of beauty is not a creator of beautiful things; and in artthe "how" is so much more essential than the "what, " that artists createunworthy or degrading objects beautifully, so that we admire their artas much as we loathe its employment; in nature, too, such objects aremet with, created by the god of this world. A good man, too, may createin a repulsive manner objects whose every association is ennobling orelevating. 

"The kingdom of heaven is within you, " but hell is also within. 

 "Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell And where hell is, must we for ever be: And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that are not heaven, "

as Marlowe makes his Mephistophilis say: and the best art is the mostperfect expression of that which is within, of heaven or of hell. Goethe said:

"In the Greeks, whose poetry and rhetoric was simple and positive, weencounter expressions of approval more often than of disapproval. Withthe Romans, on the other hand, the contrary holds good; and the morecorrupted poetry and rhetoric become, the more will censure grow andpraise diminish. "

I have sometimes thought that the difference between classic and more orless decadent art lies in the fact that by the one things areappreciated for what they most essentially are--a young man, a swifthorse, a chaste wife, &c. --by the other for some more or less peculiaror accidental relation that they hold to the creator. Such writerslament that the young are not old, the old not young, prostitutes notpure, that maidens are cold and modest or matrons portly. They complainof having suffered from things being cross, or they take maliciouspleasure in pointing that crossness out; whereas classical art alwaysrebounds from the perception that things are evil to the assertion ofwhat ought to be or shall be. It triumphs over the Prince of Darkness, and covers a multitude of sins, as dew or hoar frost cover and makebeautiful a dunghill. Dunghills exist; but he who makes of Macbeth's orClytemnestra's crimes an elevating or exhilarating spectacle triumphsover the god of this world, as Jesus did when he made the mostignominious death the symbol, of his victory and glory. Little wonderthat Albert Dürer, and Michael Angelo found such deep satisfaction inHim as the object of their worship--his method of docility wasnext-of-kin to that of their art. Respect and solicitude create thesoul, and these two pre-eminently docile passions preside over thesoul's creation, whether it be a society, a life, or a thing of beauty. 

V

 Here, when art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, Lived and laboured Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art. 

These jingling lines would scarcely merit consideration but that theyexpress a common notion which has its part of truth as well as of error. Let us examine the first assertion (that art has been religion. )Baudelaire, in his _Curiosités Esthétiques_ says: _La première affaired'un artiste est de substituer l'homme à la nature et de protestercontre elle_. ("The first thing for an artist is to substitute man fornature and to protest against her. ") The beginners and the smatterersare always "students of nature, " and suppose that to be so will suffice;but when the understanding and imagination gain width and elasticity, life is more and more understood as a long struggle to overcome orhumanise nature by that which most essentially distinguishes man fromother animals and inanimate nature. Religion should be the drill andexercise of the human faculties to fit them and maintain them inreadiness for this struggle; the work of art should be the assertion ofvictory. A life worthy of remembrance is a work of art, a life worthy ofuniversal remembrance is a masterpiece: only the materials employeddifferentiate it from any other work of art. The life of Jesus isconsidered as such a masterpiece. Thus we can say that if art has neverbeen religion, religion has always been and ever will be an art. 

Now let us examine the second assertion that Dürer was an evangelist. What kind of character do we mean to praise when we say a man is anevangelist? Two only of the four evangelists can be said to reveal anyascertainable personality, and only St. John is sufficiently outlined tostand as a type; but I do not think we mean to imply a resemblance toSt. John. The bringer of good news, the evangelist par excellence, wasJesus. He it was who made it evident that the sons of men have power toforgive sins. Victory over evil possible--this was the good news. Nodoubt every sincere Christian is supposed to be a more or lesssuccessful imitator of Jesus; and as such, Dürer may rightly be calledan evangelist. But more than this is I think, implied in the use of theword; an evangelist is, for us above all a bringer of good news insomething of the same manner as Jesus brought it, by living amongsinners for those sinners' sake, among paupers for those paupers' sake;to see a man sweet, radiant, and victorious under these circumstances, is to see an evangelist. Goethe's final claim is that, "after all, thereare honest people up and down the world who have got light from mybooks; and whoever reads them, and gives himself the trouble tounderstand me, will acknowledge that he has acquired thence a certaininward freedom"; and for this reason I have been tempted to call him theevangelist of the modern world. But it is best to use the word as Ibelieve it is most correctly employed, and not to yield to thetemptation (for tempting it is) to call men like Dürer and Goetheevangelists. They are teachers who charm as well as inform us, as Jesuswas; but they are not evangelists in the sense that he was, for they didnot deal directly with human life where it is forced most against itsdistinctive desire for increase in nobility, or is most obviouslydegraded by having betrayed it. '[11]

VI

I have often heard it objected that Jesus is too feminine an ideal, toomuch based on renunciation and the effort to make the best of failure. No doubt that as women are, by the necessity of their function, moreliable to the ship-wreck of their hopes, the bankruptcy of their powers, they have been drawn to cling to this hope of salvation in greaternumbers, and with more fervour; so that the most general idea of Jesusmay be a feminine one. It does not follow that this is the most corrector the best: every object, every person will appear differently todifferent natures. And it still remains true that there have been agreat many men of very various types who have drawn strength and beautyfrom the contemplation and reverence of Jesus. That this ideal is toomuch based on making the best of failure is an objection that makes verylittle impression on me, for I think I perceive that failure is one ofthe most constant and widespread conditions of the universe, and evenmore certainly of human life. 

VII

It remains now to see in what degree these ideas were felt or madethemselves felt through the Romanism and Lutheranism of the Renascenceperiod. Perhaps we English shall best recognise the presence of theseideas, the working of this leaven--this docility, the necessary midwifeof 'genius, who transforms the difficult tasks which the human reasonsets herself into labours of love--in an Englishman; so my first exampleshall be taken from Erasmus' portrait of Dean Colet. 

It was then that my acquaintance with him began, he being then thirty, Itwo or three months his junior. He had no theological degree, but thewhole University, doctors and all, went to hear him. Henry VII took noteof him, and made him Dean of St. Paul's. His first step was to restorediscipline in the Chapter, which had all gone to wreck. He preachedevery saint's day to great crowds. He cut down household expenses, andabolished suppers and evening parties. At dinner a boy reads a chapterfrom Scripture; Colet takes a passage from it and discourses to theuniversal delight. Conversation is his chief pleasure, and he will keepit up till midnight if he finds a companion. Me he has often taken withhim on his walks, and talks all the time of Christ. He hates coarselanguage, furniture, dress, food, books, all clean and tidy, butscrupulously plain; and he wears grey woollen when priests generally goin purple. With the large fortune which he inherited from his father, hefounded and endowed a school at St. Paul's entirely at his own cost--masters, houses, salaries, everything. 

He is a man of genuine piety. He was not born with it. He was naturallyhot, impetuous and resentful--indolent, fond of pleasure and of women'ssociety--disposed to make a joke of everything. He told me that he hadfought against his faults with study, fasting and prayer, and thus hiswhole life was in fact unpolluted with the world's defilements. Hismoney he gave all to pious uses, worked incessantly, talked always onserious subjects, to conquer his disposition to levity; not but what youcould see traces of the old Adam when wit was flying at feast orfestival. He avoided large parties for this reason. He dined on a singledish, with a draught or two of light ale. He liked good wine, butabstained on principle. I never knew a man of sunnier nature. No oneever more enjoyed cultivated society; but here, too, he denied himself, and was always thinking of the life to come. 

His opinions were peculiar, and he was reserved in expressing them forfear of exciting suspicion. He knew how unfairly men judge each other, how credulous they are of evil, how much easier it is for a lying tongueto stain a reputation than for a friend to clear it. But among hisfriends he spoke his mind freely. 

He admitted privately that many things were generally taught which hedid not believe, but he would not create a scandal by blurting out hisobjections. No book could be so heretical but he would read it, and readit carefully. He learnt more from such books than he learnt fromdogmatism and interested orthodoxy. [12]

Some may wonder what Colet could have found to say about Christ whichcould not only interest but delight the young and witty Erasmus; and mayjudge that at any rate to-day such a subject is sufficiently fly-blown. The proper reflection to make is, "A rose by any other name would smellas sweet. "

Whether we say Christ or Perfection does not matter, it is what we meanwhich is either enthralling or dull, fresh or fusty; "there's nothingin a name. "

"When Colet speaks I might be listening to Plato, " says Erasmus inanother place, at a time when he was still younger and had just comefrom what had been a gay and perhaps in some measure a dissolute life inParis: not that it is possible to imagine Erasmus as at any timecommitting great excesses, or deeply sinning against the sense ofproportion and measure. 

Success is the only criterion, as in art, so in religion: the man thatplucks out his eye and casts it from him, and remains the dull, greedy, distressful soul he was before, is a damned fool; but the man who doesthe same and becomes such that his younger friends report of him, "Inever knew a sunnier nature, " is an artist in life, a great artist inthe sense that Christ is supposed to have been a great master; one whodraws men to him, as bees are drawn to flowers. Colet drew the youngHenry the Eighth as well as Erasmus. "The King said: 'Let every manchoose his own doctor. Dean Colet shall be mine!'" Though no doubtcharlatans have often fascinated young scholars and monarchs, yet it ispeculiarly impossible to think of Colet as a charlatan. 

VIII

Next let us take a sonnet and a sentence from Michael Angelo:

 Yes! hope may with my strong desire keep pace, And I be undeluded, unbetrayed; For if of our affections none finds grace In sight of heaven, then, wherefore hath God made The world which we inhabit? Better plea Love cannot have than that in loving thee Glory to that eternal peace is paid, Who such divinity to thee imparts, As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts. His hope is treacherous only whose love dies With beauty, which is varying every hour; But in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower, That breathes on earth the air of paradise. [13]

It is very remarkable how strongly the conviction of permanence, and thepreference for the inward conception over external beauty are expressedin this fine sonnet; and also that the reason given for accepting thediscipline of love is that experience shows how it "hallows and makespure all gentle hearts. " In such a love poem--the object of which mightvery well have been Jesus--I seem to find more of the spirit of hisreligion, whereby he binds his disciples to the Father that ruled withinhim, till they too feel the bond of parentage as deeply as himself andbecome sons with him of his Father;--more of that binding power of Jesusis for me expressed in this fine sonnet than in Luther's Catechism. Thereligion that enables a great artist to write of love in this strain, isthe religion of docility, of the meek and lowly heart. For MichaelAngelo was not a man by nature of a meek and lowly heart, any more thanColet was a man naturally saintly or than Luther was a man naturallyrefined. But because Michael Angelo thus prefers the kingdom of heavento external beauty, one must not suppose that he, its arch high-priest, despised it. Nobody had a more profound respect for the thing of beauty, whether it was the creation of God or man. He said:

"Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavour tocreate something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives forperfection, strives for something that is God-like. "

Now we can perceive how the same spirit worked in a great artist, not atNuremberg or London, but at Rome, the centre of the world, where aBorgia could be Pope. 

IX

Erasmus, the typical humanist, the man who loved humanity so much thathe felt that his love for it might tempt him to fight against God, travelled from the one world to the other; passed from the society ofcardinals and princes to the seclusion of burgher homes in London, or tochat with Dürer at Antwerp. He belonged perhaps to neither world atheart; but how greatly his love and veneration of the one exceeded hisadmiration and sense of the practical utility of the other, a comparisonof his sketch of Colet with such a note as this from his New Testamentmakes abundantly plain:

"I saw with my own eyes Pope Julius II. At Bologna, and afterwards atRome, marching at the head of a triumphal procession as if he werePompey or Cæsar. St. Peter subdued the world with faith, not with armsor soldiers or military engines. St. Peter's successors would win asmany victories as St. Peter won if they had Peter's spirit. "

But we must not forget that the book in which these notes appeared waspublished with the approval of a Pope, and that he and others sought itsauthor for advice as to how to cope best with their more hot-headedenemy Martin Luther. We must also remember that we are told that Colet"was not very hard on priests and monks who only sinned with women. Hedid not make light of impurity, but thought it less criminal than spiteand malice and envy and vanity and ignorance. The loose sort were atleast made human and modest by their very faults, and he regardedavarice and arrogance as blacker sins in a priest than a hundredconcubines. " This spirit was not that of the Reformation which came tostop, yet it existed and was widespread at that time; it was I think thespirit which either formed or sustained most of the great artists. Atany rate it both formed and sustained Albert Dürer. Yet the true natureof these ideas, derived from Jesus, could not be understood even byColet, even by Erasmus. For them it was tradition which gave value andassured truth to Christ's ideas, not the truth of those ideas which gavevalue to the traditions and legends concerning him. The value of thoseideas was felt, sometimes nearer, sometimes further off; it was lovedand admired; their lives were apprehended by it, and spent inillustrating and studying it, as were also those of Albert Dürer andMichael Angelo. To understand the life and work of such men, we mustform some conception of the true nature and value of those ideas, as Ihave striven to do in this chapter. Otherwise we shall merely admire andlove them, as they admired and loved Jesus; and it has now become apoint of honour with educated men not only to love and admire, but tomake the effort to understand. Even they desired to do this. And I thinkwe may rejoice that the present time gives us some advantage over thosedays, at least in this respect. 

X

And lastly, in order to bring us back to our main subject, let us quotefrom a stray leaf of a lost MS. Book of Dürer's, which contains thedescription of his father's death. 

 ... Desired. So the old wife helped him up, and the night-cap on his head had suddenly become wet with drops of sweat. Then he asked to drink, so she gave him a little Reinfell wine. He took a very little of it, and then desired to get into bed again and thanked her. And when he had got into bed he fell at once into his last agony. The old wife quickly kindled the candle for him and repeated to him S. Bernard's verses, and ere she had said the third he was gone. God be merciful to him! And the young maid, when she saw the change, ran quickly to my chamber and woke me, but before I came down he was gone. I saw the dead with great sorrow, because I had not been worthy to be with him at his end. 

 And thus in the night before S. Matthew's eve my father passed away, in the year above mentioned (Sept. 20, 1502) --the merciful God help me also to a happy end--and he left my mother an afflicted widow behind him. He was ever wont to praise her highly to me, saying what a good wife she was, wherefore I intend never to forsake her. I pray you for God's sake, all ye my friends, when you read of the death of my father, to remember his soul with an "Our Father" and an "Ave Maria"; and also for your own sake, that we may so serve God as to attain a happy life and the blessing of a good end. For it is not possible for one who has lived well to depart ill from this world, for God is full of compassion. Through which may He grant us, after this pitiful life, the joy of everlasting salvation--in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, at the beginning and at the end, one Eternal Governor. Amen. 

The last sentences of this may seem to share in the character of thevain repetitions of words with which professed believers are only tooapt to weary and disgust others. They are in any case commonplaces: theimage has taken the place of the object; the Father in heaven is notconsidered so much as the paternal governor of the inner life as theruler of a future life and of this world. The use of such phrases is asmuch idolatry as the worship of statue and picture, or as little, if thewords are repeated, as I think in this case they were, out of a feelingof awe and reverence for preceding mental impressions and experiences, and not because their repetition in itself was counted forrighteousness. Their use, if this was so, is no more to be found faultwith than the contemplation of pictures or statues of holy personages inorder to help the mind to attend to their ensample, or the reading of apoem, to fill the mind with ennobling emotions. Idolatry is natural andright in children and other simple souls among primitive peoples orelsewhere. It is a stage in mental development. Lovers pass through theidolatrous stage of their passion just as children cut their teeth. Itis a pity to see individuals or nations remain childish in this respectjust as much as in any other, or to see them return to it in theirdecrepitude. But a temper, a spirit, an influence cannot easily beapprehended apart from examples and images; and perhaps the clearestreason is only the exercise of an infinitely elastic idolatry, whichwith sprightly efficiency finds and worships good in everything, just asthe devout, in Dürer's youth, found sermons in stones, carved stonesrepresenting saint, bishop, or Virgin. And Dürer all his life longcontinued to produce pictures and engravings which were intended topreach such sermons. 

Goethe admirably remarks:

"_Superstition_ is the poetry of life; the poet therefore suffers noharm from being _superstitious_. " (Aberglaube. )

Superstition and idolatry are an expenditure of emotion of a kind anddegree which the true facts would not warrant; poetry when leastsuperstitious is a like exercise of the emotions in order to raise andenhance them; superstition when most poetical unconsciously effects thesame thing. 

This glimpse he gives of the way in which death visited his home, andhow the visitation impressed him, is coloured and glows with that temperof docility which made Colet school himself so severely, and was thesource of Michael Angelo's so fervent outpourings. And all through theaccounts which remain of his life, we may trace the same spirit everanew setting him to school, and renewing his resolution to learn bothfrom his feelings and from his senses. 

XI

As I took a sentence from Michael Angelo, I will now take a sentencefrom Dürer, one showing strongly that evangelical strain socharacteristic of him, born of his intuitive sense for human solidarity. After an argument, which will be found on page 306, he concludes: "It isright, therefore, for one man to teach another. He that doeth sojoyfully, upon him shall much be bestowed by God. "[14] These last words, like the last phrases of my former quotation from him, may stand perhapsin the way of some, as nowadays they may easily sound glib orirreverent. But are we less convinced that only tasks done joyfully, aslabours of love, deserve the reward of fuller and finer powers, andobtain it? When Dürer thought of God, he did not only think of amythological personage resembling an old king; he thought of a mind, anintention, "for God is perfect in goodness. " Words so easily come toobscure what they were meant to reveal; and if we think how the notionof perfect goodness rules and sways such a man's mind, we shall notwonder that he did not stumble at the omnipotency which revolts us, cowed as we are by the presence of evil. The old gentleman dressed likea king;--this was not the part of his ideas about God which occupiedDürer's mind. He accepted it, but did not think about it: it filled whatwould otherwise have been a blank in his mind and in the minds of thoseabout him. But he was constantly anxious about what he ought to do andstudy in order to fulfil the best in himself, and about what ought to bedone by his town, his nation, and the civilisation that then was, inorder to turn man's nature and the world to an account answerable to thebeauty of their fairer aspects. God was the will that commanded that"consummation devoutly to be wished. " Obedience to His law revealed inthe Bible was the means by which this command could be carried out; andto a man turning from the Church as it then existed to the newlytranslated Bible texts, the commands of God as declared in those textsseemed of necessity reason itself compared with the commands of thePopes; were, in fact, infinitely more reasonable, infinitely more akinto a good man's mind and will. Luther's revolt is for us nowcharacterised by those elements in it which proved inadequate--wereirrational; but then these were insignificant in comparison with thelight which his downright honesty shed on the monstrous and amazinglyirrational Church. This huge closed society of bigots and worldlingswhich arrogated to itself all powers human and divine, and used themaccording to the lusts and intemperance of an Alexander Borgia, a JuliusII. , and a Leo X. , was that farce perception of which made Rabelaisshake the world with laughter, and which roused such consumingindignation in Luther and Calvin that they created the gloomypuritanical asylums in which millions of Germans, English, and Americanswere shut up for two hundred years, as Matthew Arnold puts it. But Dürerwas not so immured: even Luther at heart neither was himself, nordesired that others should be, prevented from enjoying the free use oftheir intellectual powers. It was because he was less perspicacious thanErasmus that he did not see that this was what he was inevitably doingin his wrath and in his haste. 

XII

Erasmus was, perhaps, the man in Europe who at that time displayed mostdocility; the man whom neither sickness, the desire for wealth andhonour, the hope to conquer, the lust to engage in disputes, nor theadverse chances that held him half his life in debt and necessitousstraits, and kept him all his life long a vagrant, constantly upon theroad--the man in whom none of these things could weaken a marvellousassiduity to learn and help others to learn. He it was who had mostkinship with Dürer among the artists then alive; for Dürer is veryeminent among them for this temper of docility. It is interesting to seehow he once turned to Erasmus in a devout meditation, written in thejournal he kept during his journey to the Netherlands. His voice comesto us from an atmosphere charged with the electric influence of thegreatest Reformer, Martin Luther, who had just disappeared, no man knewwhy or whither; though all men suspected foul play. In his daily life, by sweetness of manner, by gentle dignity and modesty, Dürer showed hisreligion, the admiration and love that bound his life, in a way that atall times and in all places commands applause. The burning indignationof the following passage may in times of spiritual peace or somnolenceappear over-wrought and uncouth. We must remember that all that Dürerloved had been bound by his religion to the teaching and inspiration ofJesus, and had become inseparable from it. All that he loved--learning, clear and orderly thought, honesty, freedom to express the worship ofhis heart without its being turned to a mockery by cynical monk, priest, or prelate;--these things directly, and indirectly art itself, seemed tohim threatened by the corruption of the Papal power. We must rememberthis; for we shall naturally feel, as Erasmus did, that the path ofmartyrdom was really a short cut, which a wider view of the surroundingcountry would have shown him to be likely to prove the longest way inthe end. Indeed the world is not altogether yet arrived where he thoughtErasmus could bring it in less than two years. And Luther himselfreturned to the scene and was active, without any such result, a dozenyears and more. 

Oh all ye pious Christian men, help me deeply to bewail this man, inspired of God, and to pray Him yet again to send us an enlightenedman. Oh Erasmus of Rotterdam, where wilt thou stop? Behold how thewicked tyranny of worldly power, the might of darkness, prevails. Hear, thou knight of Christ! Ride on by the side of the Lord Jesus. Guard thetruth. Attain the martyr's crown. Already indeed art thou a little oldman, and myself have heard thee say that thou givest thyself but twoyears more wherein thou mayest still be fit to accomplish somewhat. Layout the same well for the good of the Gospel, and of the true Christianfaith, and make thyself heard. So, as Christ says, shall the Gates ofHell in no wise prevail against thee. And if here below thou wert to belike thy master Christ, and sufferest infamy at the hands of the liarsof this time, and didst die a little sooner, then wouldst thou thesooner pass from death unto life and be glorified in Christ. For if thoudrinkest of the cup which He drank of, _with Him shalt thou reign andjudge with justice those who_ HAVE _dealt unrighteously_. Oh! Erasmus!cleave to this, that God Himself may be thy praise, even as it iswritten of David. For thou mayest, yea, verily thou mayest overthrowGoliath. Because God stands by the Holy Christian Church, even as Healone upholds the Roman Church, according to His godly will. May He helpus to everlasting salvation, who is God the Father, the Son, and HolyGhost, one eternal God! Amen!!

"With Him shalt thou reign and judge with justice those that have dealtunrighteously. " This will seem to many a mere cry for revenge; and soperhaps it was. Still it may have been, as it seems to me to have been, uttered rather in the spirit of Moses' "Forgive their sin--and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book"; or the "Heaven and earth shallpass away, but my words shall not pass away" of Jesus. If the necessityfor victory was uppermost, the opportunity for revenge may scarcely havebeen present to Dürer's mind. 

It is now more generally recognised than in Luther's day that howeversweet vengeance may be, it is not admirable, either in God or man. 

The total impression produced by Dürer's life and work must help each todecide for himself which sense he considers most likely. The truth, asin most questions of history, remains for ever in the balance, andcannot be ascertained. 

XIII

I have called docility the necessary midwife of Genius, for so it is;and religion is a discipline that constrains us to learn. The religionof Jesus constrains us to learn the most difficult things, binds us tothe most arduous tasks that the mind of man sets itself, as a lover isbound by his affection to accomplish difficult feats for his mistress'sake. Such tasks as Michael Angelo and Dürer set themselves require thatthe lover's eagerness and zest shall not be exhausted; and to keep themfresh and abundant, in spite of cross circumstances, a discipline of themind and will is required. This is what they found in the worship ofJesus. The influence of this religious hopefulness and self-disciplineon the creative power prevents its being exhausted, perverted, orembittered; and in order that it may effect this perfectly, thatinfluence must be abundant not only within the artist, as it was inMichael Angelo and Dürer, but in the world about them. 

This, then, is the value of religious influence to creative art: andthough we to-day necessarily regard the personages, localities, andevents of the creed as coming under the category of "things that arenot, " we may still as fervently hope and expect that the things of thatcategory may "bring to nought the things that are, " including thesuperstitious reverence for the creed and its unprovable statements; forhas not the victory in human things often been with the things that werenot, but which were thus ardently desired and expected? To inquire whichof those things are best calculated to advance and nourish creativepower, and in what manner, should engage the artist's attention far morethan it has of late years. For what he loves, what he hopes, and what heexpects would seem, if we study past examples, to exercise as importantan influence on a man's creative power as his knowledge of, and respectfor, the materials and instruments which he controls do upon hisexecutive capacity. 

The universe in which man finds himself may be evil, but not everythingit contains is so: then it must for ever remain our only wisdom tolabour to transform those parts which we judge to be evil into likenessor conformity to those we judge to be good: and surely he who neglectsthe forces of hope and adoration in that effort, neglects the betterhalf of his practical strength? The central proposition of Christianity, that this end can only be attained by contemplation and imitation of anexample, is, we shall in another place (pp. [305-312]) find, maintainedas true in regard to art by Dürer, and by Reynolds, our greatest writeron aesthetics. These great artists, so dissimilar in the outward aspectsof their creations, agree in considering that the only way ofadvancement open to the aspirant is the attempt to form himself on theexample of others, by imitating them not slavishly or mechanically, butin the same spirit in which they imitated their forerunners: even as theChristian is bound to seek union with Christ in the same spirit or wayin which Jesus had achieved union with his Father--that is, by layingdown life to take it again, in meekness and lowliness of heart. Docilityis the sovran help to perfection for Dürer and Reynolds, and more orless explicitly for all other great artists who have treated of thesequestions. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: Of course all that may have been meant by the phrase "theEvangelist of Art" is that Dürer illustrated the narrative of thePassion; but by this he is not distinguished from many others, and thephrase is suggestive of far more. ]

[Footnote 12: Froude's "Life of Erasmus, " Lecture vi. ]

[Footnote 13: Wordsworth's Translation, ]

[Footnote 14: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " p. 176. ]

PART II

DÜRER'S LIFE IN RELATION TO THE TIMES IN WHICH HE LIVED

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

DÜRER'S ORIGIN, YOUTH AND EDUCATION

I

Who was Dürer? He has told us himself very simply, and more fully thanmen of his type generally do; for he was not, like Montaigne, one whosechief study was himself. Yet, though he has done this, it is not easyfor us to fully understand him. It is perhaps impossible to placeoneself in the centre of that horizon which was of necessity his andbelonged to his day, a vast circle from which men could no more escapethan we from ours; this cage of iron ignorance in which every human soulis trapped, and to widen and enlarge which every heroic soul lives anddies. This cage appeared to his eyes very different from what it does toours; yet it has always been a cage, and is only lost sight of at timeswhen the light from within seems to flow forth, and with its radiantsapphire heaven of buoyancy and desire to veil the eternal bars. It iswell to remind ourselves that ignorance was the most momentous, the mostcruel condition of his life, as of our own; and that the effort torelieve himself of its pressure, either by the pursuit of knowledge, orby giving spur and bridle to the imagination that it might course roundhim dragging the great woof of illusion, and tent him in the etherealdream of the soul's desire, was the constant effort and resource ofhis days. 

II

At the age of fifty-three he took the pen and commenced:

In the year 1524, I, Albrecht Dürer the younger, have put together frommy father's papers the facts as to whence he was, how he came hither, lived here, and drew to a happy end. God be gracious to him andus! Amen. 

Like his relatives, Albrecht Dürer the elder was born in the kingdom ofHungary, in a little village named Eytas, situated not far from a littletown called Gyula, eight miles below Grosswardein; and his kindred madetheir living from horses and cattle. My father's father was called AntonDürer; he came as a lad to a goldsmith in the said little town andlearnt the craft under him. He afterwards married a girl namedElizabeth, who bare him a daughter, Katharina, and three sons. The firstson he named Albrecht; he was my dear father. He too became a goldsmith, a pure and skilful man. The second son he called Ladislaus; he was asaddler. His son is my cousin Niklas Dürer, called Niklas the Hungarian, who is settled at Köln. He also is a goldsmith, and learnt the crafthere in Nürnberg with my father. The third son he called John. Him heset to study, and he afterwards became a parson at Grosswardein, andcontinued there thirty years. 

So Albrecht Dürer, my dear father, came to Germany. He had been a longtime with the great artists in the Netherlands. At last he came hitherto Nürnberg in the year, as reckoned from the birth of Christ, 1455, onS. Elogius' day (June 25). And on the same day Philip Pirkheimer had hismarriage feast at the Veste, and there was a great dance under the biglime tree. For a long time after that my dear father, Albrecht Dürer, served my grandfather, old Hieronymus Holper, till the year reckoned1467 after the birth of Christ. My grandfather then gave him hisdaughter, a pretty upright girl, fifteen years old, named Barbara; andhe was wedded to her eight days before S. Vitus (June 8). It may also bementioned that my grandmother, my mother's mother, was the daughter ofOellinger of Weissenburg, and her name was Kunigunde. 

And my dear father had by his marriage with my dear mother the followingchildren born--which I set down here word for word as he wrote it inhis book:

Here follow eighteen items, only one of which, the third, is ofinterest. 

3. Item, in the year 1471 after the birth of Christ, in the sixth hourof the day, on S. Prudentia's day, a Tuesday in Rogation Week (May 21), my wife bare me my second son. His godfather was Anton Koburger, and henamed him Albrecht after me, &c. &c. 

All these, my brothers and sisters, my dear father's children, are nowdead, some in their childhood, others as they were growing up; only wethree brothers still live, so long as God will, namely: I, Albrecht, andmy brother Andreas and my brother Hans, the third of the name, myfather's children. 

This Albrecht Dürer the elder passed his life in great toil and sternhard labour, having nothing for his support save what he earned with hishand for himself, his wife and his children, so that he had littleenough. He underwent moreover manifold afflictions, trials, andadversities. But he won just praise from all who knew him, for he livedan honourable, Christian life, was a man of patient spirit, mild andpeaceable to all, and very thankful towards God. For himself he hadlittle need of company and worldly pleasures; he was also of few words, and was a God-fearing man. 

III

We shall, I think, often do well, when considering the superbostentation of Dürer's workmanship, with its superabundance of curve andflourish, its delight in its own ease and grace, to think of those youngmen among his ancestors who made their living from horses on thewind-swept plains of Hungary. The perfect control which it is thedelight of lads brought up and developing under such conditions toobtain over the galloping steed, is similar to the control which itgratified Dürer to perfect over the dashing stroke of pen or brush, which, however swift and impulsive, is yet brought round and performs toa nicety a predetermined evolution. And the way he puts a littleportrait of himself, finely dressed, into his most important pictures, may also carry our thoughts away to the banks of the Danube where itwinds and straggles over the steppes, to picture some younghorse-breeder, whose costume and harness are his only wealth; who ridesout in the morning as the cock-bustard that, having preened himself, paces before the hen birds on the plains that he can scour when hiswings, which are slow in the air, join with his strong legs to makenothing of grassy leagues on leagues. And first, this life with its freesweeping horizon, and the swallow-like curves of its gallops for thesake of galloping, or those which the long lashes of its whips trace indeploying, and which remind us of the lithe tendrils in which terminateDürer's ornamental flourishes; this life in which the eye is trained towatch the lasso, as with well-calculated address it swirls out and dropsover the frighted head of an unbroken colt;--this life is first pent upin a little goldsmith's shop, in a country even to-day famous for thebeauty and originality of its peasant jewelry: and here it is trained tofollow and answer the desire of the bright dark eyes of girls inlove;--in love, where love and the beauty that inspires it are the giftsof nature most guarded and most honoured, from which are expected theutmost that is conceived of delicacy in delight by a virile and healthyrace. "A pure and skilful man. " Patient already has this life become, for a jeweller can scarcely be made of impatient stuff; patient evenbefore the admixture of German blood when Albert the elder married hisBarbara Holper. The two eldest sons were made jewellers; but the third, John, is set to study and becomes a parson, as if already learning andpiety stood next in the estimation of this life after thrift, skill andthe creation of ornament. And Germany boasts of this life beyond that ofany of her sons; but her blood was probably of small importance to theefficiency that it attained to in the great Albert Dürer. The Germanname of Dürer or Thürer, a door, is quite as likely to be thetranslation, correct or otherwise, of some Hungarian name, as it is anindication that the family had originally emigrated from Germany. In anycase, a large admixture by intermarriage of Slavonic blood wouldcorrespond to the unique distinction among Germans, attained in thedignity, sweetness and fineness which signalised Dürer. Of course, insuch matters no sane man looks for proof; but neither will he reject aprobable suggestion which may help us to understand the nature of anexceptional man. 

IV

Dürer continues to speak of his childhood:

And my father took special pleasure in me, because he saw that I wasdiligent to learn. So he sent me to school, and when I had learnt toread and write he took me away from it, and taught me the goldsmith'scraft. But when I could work neatly, my liking drew me rather topainting than to goldsmith's work, so I laid it before my father; but hewas not well pleased, regretting the time lost while I had been learningto be a goldsmith. Still he let it be as I wished, and in 1486 (reckonedfrom the birth of Christ) on S. Andrew's day (November 30) my fatherbound me apprentice to Michael Wolgemut, to serve him three years long. During that time God gave me diligence, so that I learnt well, but I hadmuch to suffer from his lads. 

When I had finished my learning my father sent me off, and I stayed awayfour years till he called me back again. As I had gone forth in the year1490 after Easter (Easter Sunday was April 11), so now I came back againin 1494 as it is reckoned after Whitsuntide (Whit Sunday was May 18). 

Erasmus tells us that German disorders were "partly due to the naturalfierceness of the race, partly to the division into so many separateStates, and partly to the tendency of the people to serve asmercenaries. " That there were many swaggerers and bullies about, welearn from Dürer's prints. In every crowd these gentlemen in leatherntights, with other ostentatious additions to their costume, besidesponiards and daggers to emphasise the brutal male, strut straddle-leggedand self-assured; and of course raw lads and loutish prentices yieldedthem the sincerest flattery. We can well understand that the model boy, to whom "God had given diligence, " with his long hair lovely as agirl's, and his consciousness of being nearly always in the right, hadmuch to suffer from his fellow prentices. Besides, very likely, healready consorted with Willibald Pirkheimer and his friends, who werethe aristocrats of the town. And though he may have been meek andgentle, there must have appeared in everything he did and was anassertion of superiority, all the more galling for its being difficultto define and as ready to blush as the innocent truth herself. 

V

It is much argued as to where Dürer went when his father "sent him off. "We have the direct statement of a contemporary, Christopher Scheurl, that he visited Colmar and Basle; and what is well nigh as good, for avisit to Venice. For Scheurl wrote in 1508: _Qui quum nuper in Italiamrediset, tum a Venetis, tum a Bononiensibus artificibus, me saepeinterprete cansalutatus est alter Apelles. _

"When he lately _returned_ to Italy, he was often greeted as a secondApelles, by the craftsmen both of Venice and Bologna (I acting as theirinterpreter). "

Before we accept any of these statements it is well to remember howeasily quite intimate friends make mistakes as to where one has been andwhen; even about journeys that in one's own mind either have been orshould have been turning-points in one's life. For they will attributeto the past experiences which were never ours, or forget those which weconsider most unforgettable. No one who has paid attention to thesefacts will consider that historians prove so much or so well as theyoften fancy themselves to do. In the present case what is reallyremarkable is, that none of these sojournings of the young artist inforeign art centres seem to have produced such a change in his art ascan now be traced with assurance. At Colmar he saw the masterpieces andthe brothers of the "admirable Martin, " as he always calls Schongauer. At Basle there is still preserved a cut wood-block representing St. Jerome, on the back of which is an authentic signature; there is besidesa series of uncut wood-blocks, the designs on which it is easy toimagine to have been produced by the travelling journeyman that Dürerthen seemed to the printers and painters of the towns he passed through. By those processes by which anything can be made of anything, much hasbeen done to give substantiality to the implied first visit to Venice. There are drawings which were probably made there, representing ladiesresembling those in pictures by Carpaccio as to their garments, thedressing of their hair, and the type of their faces. Of course it is notimpossible that such a lady or ladies may have visited Nuremberg, orbeen seen by the young wanderer at Basle or elsewhere. And theresemblance between a certain drawing in the Albertina and one of thecarved lions in red marble now on the Piazzetta de' Leoni does not countfor much, when we consider that there is nothing in the workmanship ofthese heads to suggest that they were done after sculpturedoriginals;--the manes, &c. , being represented by an easy penman'sconvention, as they might have been whether the models were living ormerely imagined. Nor is there any good reason for dating the drawings ofsites in the Tyrol, supposed to have been sketched on the road, ratherthis year than another. Lastly, the famous sentence in a letter writtenfrom Venice during Dürer's authenticated visit there, in 1506, may beconstrued in more than one sense. The passage is generally rathercurtailed when quoted. 

He (Giovanni Bellini) is very old, but is still the best painter of themall. The thing that pleased me so well eleven years ago, pleases me nowno more; if I had not seen it for myself, I should never have believedany one who told me. You must know, too, that there are many betterpainters here than Master Jacob (Jacopo de' Barbari) is abroad; yetAnton Kolb would swear an oath that no better painter than Jacob lives. 

If "the thing that pleased so well eleven years before" was a picture orpictures by Master Jacob or by Andrea Mantegna, as is usually supposed, the phrase, "If I had not seen it for myself I should never havebelieved any one who told me" is extremely strange. It is not usual toexpect to change one's opinion of a work of art by hearsay, or toimagine others, when they have not done so, predicting with assurancethat we shall change a decided opinion upon the merits of a work of art;yet one of these two suppositions seems certainly to be implied. I donot say that it is impossible to conceive of either, only that suchcursory reference to such conceptions is extremely strange. Again, ifwork by Jacopo de' Barbari is referred to, it might very well have beenseen elsewhere than at Venice eleven years ago; and indeed the lastsentence in the passage might be taken to imply as much. To me at leastthe truth appears to be that these hints, which we may well havemisunderstood, point to something which the imagination is only toodelighted to entertain. It is a charming dream--the young Dürer, just ofage, trudging from town to town, designing wood-blocks for a printerhere, questioning the brothers of the "admirable Martin" there, or againpainting a sign in yet another place, such as Holbein painted for theschoolmaster at Basle; and at last arriving in Venice--Venice untouchedas yet by the conflicting ideals that were even then being brought tobirth anew: Mediaeval Venice, such as we see her in the pictures ofGentile Bellini and Carpaccio. One painting of real importance in thework of Dürer remains to us from this period: the greatest of moderncritics has described it and its effect on him in a way which would makeany second attempt impertinent. 

I consider as invaluable Albrecht Dürer's portrait of himself painted in1493, when he was in his twenty-second year. It is a bust halflife-size, showing the two hands and the forearms. Crimson cap withshort narrow strings, the throat bare to below the collar bone, anembroidered shirt, the folds of the sleeves tied underneath withpeach-coloured ribbons, and a blue-grey, fur-edged cloak with yellowlaces, compose a dainty dress befitting a well-bred youth. In his handhe significantly carries a blue _eryngo_, called in German "Mannstreu. "He has a serious, youthful face, the mouth and chin covered with anincipient beard. The whole splendidly drawn, the composition simple, grand and harmonious; the execution perfect and in every way worthy ofDürer, though the colour is very thin, and has cracked in some places. 

Such is the figure which we may imagine making its way among the crowdin Gentile Bellini's Procession of the "True Cross" before St. Mark's, with eyes all wonder and lips often consciously imprisoning the Germantongue, which cannot make itself understood. How comes he so finelydressed, the son of the modest Nuremberg goldsmith? Has he won thefriendship of some rich burgher prince at Augsburg, or Strasburg, orBasle? Has he been enabled to travel in his suite as far as Venice? Orhas he earned a large sum for painting some lord's or lady's portrait, which, if it were not lost, would now stand as the worthy compeer ofthis splendid portrait of the "true man" far from home; true to thathome only, or true to Agnes Frey?--for some suppose the sprig of eryngoto signify that he was already betrothed to her. Or perhaps he hasjoined Willibald Pirkheimer at Basle or elsewhere, and they two, crossing the Alps together, have become friends for life? Will they parthere ere long, the young burgher prince to proceed to the Universitiesof Padua and Mantua, the future great painter to trudge back over theAlps, getting a lift now and again in waggon or carriage or on pillion?Let the man of pretentious science say it is bootless to ask suchquestions; those who ask them know that it is delightful; know that itis the true way to make the past live for them; guess that wouldhistorians more generally ask them, their books would be less oftendry as dust. 

VI

It may be that to this period belongs the meeting with Jacopo de'Barbari to which a passage in his MS. Books (now in the British Museum)refers: and that already he began to be exercised on the subject of acanon of proportions for the human figure. In the chapter which I devoteto his studies on this subject it will be seen how the determination towork the problem out by experiment, since Jacopo refused to reveal, andVitruvius only hinted at the secret, led to his discovering something offar more value than it is probable that either could have given him. Andyet the belief that there was a hidden secret probably hindered him fromfully realising the importance of his discovery, or reaping such benefitfrom it as he otherwise might have done. How often has not the beliefthat those of old time knew what is ignored to-day, prevented men fromtaking full advantage of the conquests over ignorance that they havemade themselves! Because what they know is not so much as they supposemight be or has been known, they fail to recognise the most that has yetbeen known--the best foundation for a new building that has yet beendiscovered--and search for what they possess, and fail to rival thosewhose superiority over themselves is a delusion of their own hearts. Soearly Dürer may have begun this life-long labour which, though notwholly vain, was never really crowned to the degree it merited: whileothers living in more fertile lands reaped what they had not sown, hecould only plough and scatter seed. As Raphael is supposed to have said, all that was lacking to him was knowledge of the antique. 

Perhaps many will blame me for writing, unlearned, as I am; in myopinion they are not wrong; they speak truly. For I myself had ratherhear and read a learned man and one famous in this art than write of itmyself, being unlearned. Howbeit I can find none such who hath writtenaught about how to form a canon of human proportions, save one man, Jacopo (de' Barbari) by name, born at Venice and a charming painter. Heshowed me the figures of a man and woman, which he had drawn accordingto a canon of proportions; and now I would rather be shown what he meant(_i. E. _, upon what principles the proportions were constructed) thanbehold a new kingdom. If I had it (his canon), I would put it into printin his honour, for the use of all men. Then, however, I was still youngand had not heard of such things before. Howbeit I was very fond of art, so I set myself to discover how such a canon might be wrought out. Forthis aforesaid Jacopo, as I clearly saw, would not explain to me theprinciples upon which he went. Accordingly I set to work on my own ideaand read Vitruvius, who writes somewhat about the human figure. Thus itwas from, or out of, these two men aforesaid that I took my start, andthence, from day to day, have I followed up my search according to myown notions. 

VII

When I returned home, Hans Prey treated with my father and gave me hisdaughter, Mistress Agnes by name, and with her he gave me two hundredflorins, and we were wedded; it was on Monday before Margaret's (July 7)in the year 1494. 

The general acceptance of the gouty and irascible Pirkheimer'sdefamation of Frau Dürer as a miser and a shrew called forth a displayof ingenuity on the part of Professor Thausing to prove the contrary. And I must confess that if he has not quite done that, he seems to me tohave very thoroughly discredited Pirkheimer's ungallant abuse. SirMartin Conway bids us notice that Dürer speaks of his "dear father" andhis "dear mother" and even of his "dear father-in-law, " but that henever couples that adjective with his wife's name. It is very dangerousto draw conclusions from such a fact, which may be merely an accident:or may, if it represents a habit of Dürer's, bear precisely the oppositesignificance. For some men are proud to drop such outward marks ofaffection, in cases where they know that every day proves to everywitness that they are not needed. He also considers that her portraitsshow her, when young, to have been "empty-headed, " when older, a "frigidshrew. " For my own part, if the portrait at Bremen (see opposite)represents "mein Angnes, " as its resemblance to the sketch at Vienna(see illus. ) convinces me it does, I cannot accept either of theseconclusions arrived at by the redoubtable science of physiognomy. TheBremen portrait shows us a refined, almost an eccentric type of beauty;one can easily believe it to have been possessed by a person ofdifficult character, but one certainly who must have had compensatinggood qualities. The "mein Angnes" on the sketch may well be set againstthe absent "dears" in the other mentions her husband made of her, especially when we consider that he couples this adjective with theEmperor's name, "my dear Prince Max. " Of her relations to him nothing isknown except what Pirkheimer wrote in his rage, when he was writingthings which are demonstrably false. We know, however, that she wascapable, pious, and thrifty; and on several occasions, in theNetherlands, shared in the honours done to her husband. It is natural tosuppose that as they were childless, there may have existed a moralequivalent to this infertility; but also, with a man such as we knowDürer to have been, and a woman in every case not bad, have we notreason to expect that this moral barrenness which may have afflictedtheir union was in some large measure conquered by mutual effort anddiscipline, and bore from time to time those rarer flowers whose beautyand sweetness repay the conscious culture of the soul? It seemsdifficult to imagine that a man who succeeded in charming so manydifferent acquaintances, and in remaining life-long friends with thetesty and inconsiderate Pirkheimer, should have altogether failed tocreate a relation kindly and even beautiful with his Agnes, whoseportrait we surely have at her best in the drawing at Bremen. Considerations as to the general position of married women in those daysneed not prevent us of our natural desire to think as well as possibleof Dürer and his circumstances. We know that for a great many men thewife was not simply counted among their goods and chattels, or regardedas a kind of superior servant. We are able to take a peep at many afireside of those days, where the relations that obtained, howeverdifferent in certain outward characters, might well shame the greaternumber of the respectable even in the present year of grace. We knowwhat Luther was in these respects; and have rather more than less reasonto expect from the refined and gracious Dürer the creation of a worthyand kindly home. Why should we expect him to have been less successfulthan his parents in these respects?

[Illustration: AGNES FREY. DÜRER'S WIFE (?)--Silver-point drawingheightened with white on a dun paper. Kunsthalle, Bremen]

[Illustration: "MEIN ANGNES"--Pen sketch of the artist's wife, in theAlbertina at Vienna]

VIII

Some time after the marriage it happened that my father was so ill withdysentery that no one could stop it. And when he saw death before hiseyes he gave himself willingly to it, with great patience, and hecommended my mother to me, and exhorted me to live in a manner pleasingto God. He received the Holy Sacraments and passed away Christianly (asI have described at length in another book) in the year 1502, aftermidnight, before S. Matthew's eve (September 20). God be gracious andmerciful to him. 

The only leaf of the "other book" referred to that has survived is thatwhich I have already quoted at length. 

CHAPTER II

THE WORLD IN WHICH HE LIVED

I

Now let us consider what the world was like in which this virile, accurate and persevering spirit had grown up. Over and over again, thestory of the New Birth has been told; how it began in France, and met anuntimely fate at the hands of English invaders, then took refuge inItaly, where it grew to be the wonder of the world; and how thecorruption of the ruling classes and of the Church, with the indignationand rebellion that this gave rise to, combined to frustrate the promiseof earlier days. 

When the Roman Empire gradually became an anarchy of hostile fragments, every large monastery, every small town, girded itself with walls andtended to become the germ of a new civilisation. Popes, kings, and greatlords, haunted by reminiscence of the vanished empire, made spasmodicattempts to subject such centres to their rule and tax them for theirmaintenance. In the first times, the Church--the See of Rome--made byfar the most successful attempt to get its supremacy acknowledged, andhad therefore fewer occasions to resort to violence. It was morerespected and more respectable than the other powers which claimed torule and tax these immured and isolated communities dotted over Europe;but as time went on, the Church became less and less beneficent, moreand more tyrannical. Meanwhile kings and emperors, having learned wisdomby experience, found themselves in a position to take advantage of thegrowing bad odour of the Church; and by favouring the civil communitiesand creating a stable hierarchy among the class of lords and barons fromwhich they had emerged, were at last able to face the Church, with its_protégés, _ the religious communities, on an equal footing. 

The religious communities, owing to the vow of celibacy, had become moreand more stagnant, while the civil communities increased in power toadapt themselves to the age. All that was virile and creative combinedin the towns; all that was inadequate, sterile, useless, coagulated inthe monasteries, which thus became cesspools, and ultimately took on thecharacter of festering sores by which the civil bodies which had atfirst been purged into them were endangered. Luther tells us how therewas a Bishop of Würzburg who used to say when he saw a rogue, "'To thecloister with you. Thou art useless to God or man. ' He meant that in thecloister were only hogs and gluttons, who did nothing but eat and drinkand sleep, and were of no more profit than as many rats. " And theloathing that another of these sties created in the young Erasmus, andthe difficulty he had to escape from the clutches of its inmates--neverfeeling safe till the Pope had intervened--show us that by their wealthand by the engine of their malice, the confessional (which they hadusurped from the regular clergy), they were as formidable as they wereuseless. It became necessary that this antiquated system of socialdrainage should be superseded. 

In England and Germany it was swept away. In centres like Nuremberg, thedesire for reformation and the horror of false doctrine were grounded inpractical experience of intolerable inconveniences, not in a clearunderstanding of the questions at issue. Intellectually, the leaders ofthe Reformation had no better foundation than those they opposed: forthem, as for their opponents, the question was not to be solved by anappeal to evident truths and experience, but to historical documents andtraditions, supposed, to be infallible. For a clear intelligence, thereis nothing to choose between the infallibility of oecumenical councilsor of Popes, and that of the Bible. Both have been in their time theexpression of very worthy and very human sentiments; both are incapableof rational demonstration. 

II

Scattered over Europe, wherever the free intelligence was waking and hadrubbed her eyes, were men who desired that nuisances should be removedand reforms operated without schism or violence. To these Erasmus spoke. His policy was tentative, and did not proceed, like that of otherparties, by declaring that a perfect solution was to hand. Luther'saction divided these honest, upright souls, and would-be children oflight, into three unequal camps. 

As a rule the downright, headstrong, and impatient became reformers. Therespectful, cautious and long-suffering, such as More, Warham, andAdrian IV. , clung to the Roman establishment, were martyred for it orbroke their hearts over it. Erasmus and a handful of others remainedtrue to a tentative policy, and, compared with their contemporaries, were meek and lowly in heart--became children of light. To them we nowlook back wistfully, and wish that they might have been, if not asnumerous as the Churchmen and Beformers, at least a sufficient body tohave made their influence an effective force, with the advantage of morelight and more patience that was really theirs. But, alas! they onlycounted as the first dissolvent which set free more corrosive anddetrimental acids. The exhilaration of action and battle was for others;for them the sad conviction that neither side deserved to be trustedwith a victory. Yet, beyond the world whose chief interest was theReformation, we may be sure that such men as Charles V. , Michael Angelo, Rabelais, Montaigne, and all those whom they may be taken to represent, were in essential agreement with Erasmus. Luther and Machiavelli alonerejected the Papacy as such: the latter's more stringent intellectualdevelopment led him also to discard every ideal motive or agent ofreform for violent means. He was ready even to regard the passions ofmen like Caesar Borgia, tyrants in the fullest sense of the word, as theengines by which civilisation, learning, art, and manners, might bemaintained. Whereas Luther appealed to the passions of common honestmen, the middle classes in fact. It is easy to let either Luther orMachiavelli steal away our entire sympathy. On the one hand, nocompromise, not even the slightest, seems possible with criminalruffians such as a Julius II. And an Alexander Borgia; on the otherhand, the power swollen by the tide of minor corruption, which such menruled by might, did come into the hands of a Leo X. , an Adrian IV. ; andthough that power was obviously tainted through and through, it mighthave been mastered and wielded in the cause of reform. Erasmus hoped forthis. Even Julius II. Protected him from the superiors of his convent. Even Julius II. Patronised Michael Angelo and Raphael and everythingthat had a definite character in the way of creative power orscholarship; and could appreciate at least the respect which what hepatronised commanded. He could appreciate the respect commanded by theausterity and virtue of those who rebelled against him and denounced hiscynical abuse of all his powers, whether natural or official. He likedto think he had enemies worth beating. Such a ruler is a sore temptationto a keen intellect. "Everything great is formative, " and this Pope wascolossal--a colossal bully and robber if you like--but the good he didby his patronage was real good, was practical. Michael Angelo andRaphael could work as splendidly as they desired. Erasmus was helped andencouraged. Timid honesty is often petty, does nothing, criticises andfinds fault with artists and with learning, runs after them like SanchoPanza after Don Quixote, is helpless and ridiculous and horribly in theway. Leo X. Was intelligent and well-meaning; wisdom herself might hopefrom such a man. Be the throne he is sitting on as monstrous and corrupta contrivance as it may, yet it is there, it does give him authority; heis on it and dominates the world. It is easy to say, "But the period ofthe Renascence closed, its glory died away. " Suppose Luther had been assubtle as he was whole-hearted, and had added to his force of charactera delicacy and charm like that of St. Francis; or suppose that Erasmusinstead of his schoolfellow Adrian IV. Had become Pope; what a differenttale there might have been to tell! Who will presume to point out thenecessity by which these things were thus and not otherwise? "Regretsfor what 'might have been' are proverbially idle, " cries the historianfrom whom I have chiefly quoted. I do not recollect the proverb, unlesshe refers to "It is no use crying over spilt milk;" but in any case suchregrets are far from being necessarily idle. "What might have been" iseven generally "what ought to have been;" and no study has been or islikely to be so pregnant for us as the study of the contrast between"what was" and "what ought to have been, " though such studies areinevitably mingled with regrets. We have every reason to regret that theReformation was so hasty and ill-considered, and that the Papacy was aspurblind as it was arrogant. The plant of the Roman Church machinery, which it had taken centuries to lay down, came into the hands of men whogrossly ignored its function and the conditions of its working. Theyused its power partly for the benefit of the human race, by patronisingart and scholarship; but chiefly in self-indulgence. If honestintelligence had been given control, a man so partially equipped for histask would not have been goaded into action; but only force, moral orphysical, can act at a disadvantage; light and reason must have theadvantage of dominant position to effect anything immediate. If they arenot on the throne, all they can do is to sow seed, and bewail thepresent while looking forward to a better future. Now, most educated menare for tolerance, and see as Erasmus saw. We see that Savonarola andLuther were not so right as they thought themselves to be; we see thatwhat they condemned as arrogancy and corruption is partly excusable--isin some measure a condition of efficiency in worldly spheres where onehas to employ men already bad. True, the great princes and cardinals ofthose days not only connived at corruption and ruled by it, but ofteneven professed it. Still in every epoch, under all circumstances, themajority of those who have governed men have more or less cynicallyemployed means that will not bear the light of day. While thesemagnificoes of the Renascence do stand alone, or almost alone, by theample generosity of their conception of the objects that power should beexerted in furtherance of; their outlook on life was more commensuratewith the variety and competence of human nature than perhaps that of anyruling class has been before or since. As Shakespeare is the amplest ofpoets, so were theirs the most fruitful of courts. From the greatMedicis to our own Elizabeth they all partake of a certain grandiosevitality and variety of intention. 

III

Greatness demands self-assertion; self-assertion is a great virtue evenin a Julius II. There is a vast deal of humbug in the use we make of theword humility. We talk about Christ's humility, but whose self-assertionhas ever been more unmitigated? "I am the Way, the Truth, and theLight. " "Learn of Me that I am meek and lowly, and ye shall find rest toyour souls. " No doubt it is the quality of the self asserted thatjustifies in our eyes the assertion; humility then is not opposed toself-assertion. When Michael Angelo shows that he thinks himself thegreatest artist in the world, he is not necessarily lacking in humility;nor is Luther, asserting the authority of his conscience against thePope and Emperor; nor Dürer, saying to us in those little finely-dressedportraits with which he signs his pictures, "I am that I am--namely, oneof the handsomest of men and the greatest artist north of the Alps. " Orwhen Erasmus lets us see that he thinks himself the most learned manliving, --if he is the most learned, so much the better that he shouldknow this also as well as the rest. The artist and the scholar werebound to feel gratitude for the corrupt but splendid Church and courts, which gave them so much both in the way of maintenance and opportunity. It may be asked, has all the honesty and the not always evident purityof Protestantism done so much for the world as those dissolute Popes andPrinces? And the artist, judging with a hasty bias perhaps, is likely toanswer no. 

IV

For us nowadays the pith of history seems no more to be the lives ofmonarchs, or the fighting of battles, or even the deliberations ofcouncils; these things we have more and more come to regard merely astools and engines for the creation of societies, homes, and friends. Andso, though religion and religious machinery dominated the life of thosedays, it is not in theological disputes, neither is it in oecumenicalcouncils and Popes, nor in sermons, reformers, and synods, that we findthe essence of the soul's life. Rather to us, the pictures, the statues, the books, the furniture, the wardrobes, the letters, and the scandalsthat have been left behind, speak to us of those days; for these wevalue them. And we are right, the value of the Renaissance lies in thesethings, I say "the scandals" of those days; for a part of what comesunder that head was perhaps the manifestation of a morality based on awider experience; though its association with obvious vices and itsopposition to the old and stale ideals gave it an illegitimatecharacter; while the re-establishment of the more part of those idealshas perpetuated its reproach. There can be no intellectual charity ifthe machinery and special sentences of current morality are supposed tobe final or truly adequate. Their tentative and inadequate character, which every free intelligence recognises, is what endorses the wisdom ofJesus', saying, "Judge not that ye be not judged. " Ordinary honest andgood citizens do not realise how much that is in every way superior tothe gifts of any single one of themselves is yearly sacrificed andtortured for their preservation as a class. On what agonies of creativeand original minds is the safety of their homes based? These respectableMolochs who devour both the poor and the exceptionally gifted, and areso little better for their meal, were during the Renascence for a timegainsaid and abashed; yet even then their engines, the traditionalsecular and ecclesiastic policies, were a foreign encumbrance with whichthe human spirit was loaded, and which helped to prevent it from reapingthe full result of its mighty upheaval. 

To see things as they are, and above all to value them for what is mostessential in them with regard to the development of our owncharacters;--that is, I take it, consciously or unconsciously, the maineffort of the modern spirit. On the world, the flesh, and the devil, wehave put new values; and it was the first assertion of these new valueswhich caused the Renascence. Fine manners, fine clothes, and variedsocial interchange make the world admirable in our eyes, not at all abogey to frighten us. Health, frankness, and abundant exercise make theflesh a pure delight in our eyes; lastly, this new-born spirit has made"a moral of the devil himself, " and so for us he has lost his terror. 

Rabelais was right when he laughed the old outworn values down, anddeclared that women were in the first place female, men in the firstplace male; that the written word should be a self-expression, asincerity, not a task or a catalogue or a penance, but, like laughterand speech, essentially human, making all men brothers, doing away withartificial barriers and distinctions, making the scholar shake in timewith the toper, and doubling the divine up with the losel; bidding eventhe lady hold her sides in company with the harlot. Eating and drinkingwere seen to be good in themselves; the eye and the nose and the palatewere not only to be respected but courted; free love was better thanmarried enmity. No rite, no church, no god, could annihilate these factsor restrain their influence any more than the sea could be tamed. Dürerwas touched with this spirit; we see it in his fine clothes, in hiscollector's rapacity, above all in his letters to his friendPirkheimer--a man more typical of that Rabelaisian age than Dürer andMichael Angelo, who were both of them not only modern men but menconservative of the best that had been--men in travail for the future, absorbed by the responsibility of those who create. 

Pirkheimer, one year Dürer's senior, was a gross fat man early in life, enjoying the clinking of goblets, the music of fork and knife, and theeffrontery of obscene jests. A vain man, a soldier and a scholar, pedantic, irritable, but in earnest; a complimenter of Emperors, aleader of the reform party, a partisan of Luther's, the friend andcorrespondent of Erasmus, the elective brother of Dürer. The man wastypical; his fellows were in all lands. Dürer was surprised to find howmany of them there were at Venice--men who would delight Pirkheimer anddelight in him. "My friend, there are so many Italians here who lookexactly like you I don't know how it happens! ... Men of sense andknowledge, good lute players and pipers, judges of painting, men of muchnoble sentiment and honest virtue; and they show me much honour andfriendship. " Something of all this was doubtless in Dürer too; but inhim it was refined and harmonised by the sense and serious concern, notonly for the things of to-day, but for those of to-morrow and yesterday;the sense of solidarity, the passion for permanent effect, eternalexcellence. These things, in men like Pirkheimer, still more in Erasmus, and even in Rabelais and Montaigne, are not absent; but they are lessstringent, less religious, than they are in a Dürer or a Michael Angelo. 

CHAPTER III

DÜRER AT VENICE

I

There are several reasons which may possibly have led Dürer to visitVenice in 1505. The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, or Exchange of the GermanMerchants at Venice, had been burned down the winter before, and theywere in haste to complete a new one. Dürer may have received assurancethat the commission to paint the altar-piece for the new chapel would behis did he desire it. At any rate he seems to have set to work on such apicture almost as soon as he arrived there. It is strange to think thatGiorgione and Titian probably began to paint the frescoes on the facadewhile he was still at work in the chapel, or soon after he left. Theplague broke out in Nuremberg before he came away; but this is notlikely to have been his principal motive for leaving home, as manyricher men, such as his friend Pirkheimer, from whom he borrowed moneyfor the journey, stayed where they were. Nor do Dürer's letters revealany alarm for his friend's, his mother's, his wife's, or his brother'ssafety. He took with him six small pictures, and probably a great numberof prints, for Venice was a first-rate market. 

II

The letters which follow are like a glimpse of a distant scene in a_camera obscura_, and, like life itself, they are full of repetitionsand over-insistence on what is insignificant or of temporary interest. To-day they call for our patience and forbearance, and it will dependupon our imaginative activity in what degree they repay them; even as itdepends upon our power of affectionate assimilation in what degree andkind every common day adds to our real possessions. 

I have made my citations as ample as possible, so as to give the readera just idea of their character while making them centre as far aspossible round points of special interest. 

_To the honourable, wise Master Wilibald Pirkheimer, Burgher of Nürberg, my kind Master_. VENICE, _January 6, 1506. _

I wish you and yours many good, happy New Years. My willing service, first of all, to you dear Master Pirkheimer! Know that I am in goodhealth; I pray God far better things than that for you. As to thosepearls and precious stones which you gave me commission to buy, you mustknow that I can find nothing good or even worth its price. Everything issnapped up by the Germans who hang about the Riva. They always want toget four times the value for anything, for they are the falsest knavesalive. No one need look for an honest service from any of them. Somegood fellows have warned me to beware of them, they cheat man and beast. You can buy better things at a lower price at Frankfurt than at Venice. 

[Illustration: Wilibald Pirkheimer--Charcoal Drawing, DumesnilCollection, Paris _Face p. _ 80]

About the books which I was to order for you, the Imhofs have alreadyseen after them; but if there is anything else you want, let me know andI will attend to it for you with all zeal. Would to God I could do you aright good service! gladly would I accomplish it, seeing, as I do, howmuch you do for me. And I pray you be patient with my debt, for indeed Ithink much oftener of it than you do. When God helps me home I willhonourably repay you with many thanks; for I have a panel to paint forthe Germans for which they are to pay me a hundred and ten Rhenishflorins--it will not cost me as much as five. I shall have scraped it andlaid on the ground and made it ready within eight days; then I shall atonce begin to paint and, if God will, it shall be in its place above thealtar a month after Easter. 

 * * * * *

VENICE, _February 17_, 1506. 

How I wish you were here at Venice! There are so many nice men among theItalians who seek my company more and more every day--which is verypleasing to one--men of sense and knowledge, good lute-players andpipers, judges of painting, men of much noble sentiment and 'honestvirtue, and they show me much honour and friendship. On the other handthere are also amongst them some of the most false, lying, thievishrascals; I should never have believed that such were living in theworld. If one did not know them, one would think them the nicest men theearth could show. For my own part I cannot help laughing at themwhenever they talk to me. They know that their knavery is no secret butthey don't mind. 

Amongst the Italians I have many good friends who warn me not to eat anddrink with their painters. Many of them are my enemies and they copy mywork in the churches and wherever they can find it; and then they revileit and say that the style is not _antique_ and so not good. But GiovanniBellini has highly praised me before many nobles. He wanted to havesomething of mine, and himself came to me and asked me to paint himsomething and he would pay well for it. And all men tell me what anupright man he is, so that I am really friendly with him. He is veryold, but is still the best painter of them all. And that which so wellpleased me eleven years ago pleases me no longer, if I had not seen itfor myself I should not have believed any one who told me. You must knowtoo that there are many better painters here than Master Jacob (Jacopode' Barbari) is abroad (_wider darvsen Meister J. _), yet Anton Kolbwould swear an oath that no better painter lives than Jacob. Otherssneer at him, saying if he were good he would stay here, and so forth. 

I have only to-day begun to sketch in my picture, for my hands were soscabby (_grindig_) that I could do no work with them, but I have gotthem cured. 

Now be lenient with me and don't get in a passion so easily, but begentle like me. I don't know why you will not learn from me. My friend!I should like to know if any one of your loves is dead--that one closeby the water for instance, or the one called [Illustration] or[Illustration] or a [Illustration] so that you might supply her place byanother. ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

VENICE, February 28, 1506. 

I wish you had occasion to come here, I know you would not find timehang on your hands, for there are so many nice men in this country, right good artists. I have such a throng of Italians about me that attimes I have to shut myself up. The nobles all wish me well, but few ofthe painters. 

 * * * * *

VENICE, _April_ 2, 1506. 

The painters here, let me tell you, are very unfriendly to me. They havesummoned me three times before the magistrates, and I have had to payfour florins to their school. You must also know that I might havegained a great deal of money if I had not undertaken to paint the Germanpicture. There is much work in it and I cannot get it quite finishedbefore Whitsuntide. Yet they only pay me eighty-five ducats for it. Nowyou know how much it costs to live, and then I have bought some thingsand sent some money away, so that I have not much before me now. Butdon't misunderstand me, I am firmly purposed not to go away hence tillGod enables me to repay you with thanks and to have a hundred florinsover besides. I should easily earn this if I had not got the Germanpicture to paint, for all men except the painters wish me well. 

Tell my mother to speak to Wolgemut about my brother, and to ask himwhether he can make use of him and give him work till I come, or whetherhe can put him with some one else. I should gladly have brought him withme to Venice, and that would have been useful both to me and him, and hewould have learnt the language, but my mother was afraid that the skywould fall on him. Pray keep an eye on him yourself, the women are nouse for that. Tell the lad, as you so well can, to be studious andhonest till I come, and not to be a trouble to his mother; if I cannotarrange everything I will at all events do all that I can. Alone Icertainly should not starve, but to support many is too hard for me, forno one throws his gold away. 

Now I commend myself to you. Tell my mother to be ready to sell at theCrown-fair (_Heiligthumsfest_). I am arranging for my wife to have comehome by then; I have written to her too about everything. I will nottake any steps about buying the diamond ornament till I get yournext letter. 

I don't think I shall be able to come home before next autumn, when whatI earned for the picture, which was to have been ready by Whitsuntide, will be quite used up in living expenses, purchases, and payments; what, however, I gain afterwards I hope to save. If you see fit don't speak ofthis further, and I will keep putting off my leaving from day to day andwriting as though I was just coming. I am indeed very uncertain what todo next. Write to me again soon. 

Given on Thursday before Palm Sunday in the year 1506. ALBRECHT DÜRER, Your Servant. 

VENICE, _August_ 18, 1506. 

_To the first, greatest man in the world. Your servant and slaveAlbrecht Dürer sends salutation to his Magnificent master Wilibald_Pirkheimer. _My truth! I hear gladly and with great satisfaction of yourhealth and great honours. I wonder how it is possible for a man like youto stand against_ so many _wisest princes, _ swaggerers _and soldiers; itmust be by some special grace of God. When I read your letter about thisterrible grimace, it gave me a great fright and I thought it was a mostimportant thing, _[15] but I warrant that you frightened even Schott'smen, [16] you with your fierce look and your holiday hopping step. But itis very improper for such folk to smear themselves with civet. You wantto become a real silk-tail and you think that, if only you manage toplease the girls, the thing is done. If you were only as taking a fellowas I am, it would not provoke me so. You have so many loves that merelyto pay each one a visit you would take a month or more before you gotthrough the list. 

For one thing I return you my thanks, namely, for explaining my positionin the best way to my wife; but I know that there is no lack of wisdomin you. If only you had my meekness you would have all virtues. Thankyou also for all the good you have done me, if only you would not botherme about the rings! If they don't please you, break their heads off andpitch them out on to the dunghill as Peter Weisweber says. What do youmean by setting me to such dirty work? _I_ have become a _gentleman_at Venice. 

I have also heard that you can make lovely rhymes; you would be a findfor our fiddlers here; they fiddle so beautifully that they can't helpweeping over it themselves. Would God our Rechenmeister girl could hearthem, she would cry too. At your bidding I will again lay aside my angerand bear myself even more bravely than usual. 

Now let me commend myself to you; give my willing service to our Priorfor me; tell him to pray God for me that I may be protected, andespecially from the French sickness; I know of nothing that I now dreadmore than that, for well nigh every one has got it. Many men are quiteeaten up and die of it. 

VENICE, _September_ 8, 1506. 

Most learned, approved, wise, knower of many languages, sharp to detectall encountered lies and quick to recognise plain truth! Honourablemuch-regarded Herr Wilibald Pirkheimer. Your humble servant AlbrechtDürer wishes you all hail, great and worthy honour _in the devil's name, _so much for the twaddle of which you are so fond. I wager that forthis[17] you would think me too an orator of a hundred parts. A chambermust have more than four corners which is to contain the gods of memory. I am not going to cram my head full of them; that I leave to you; for Ibelieve that however many chambers there might be in the head, you wouldhave something in each of them. The Margrave would not grant an audiencelong enough!--a hundred headings and to each heading, say, a hundredwords, that takes 9 days 7 hours 52 minutes, not counting the sighswhich I have not yet reckoned in. In fact you could not get through thewhole at one go; it would stretch itself out like the speech of some olddriveller. 

I have taken all manner of trouble about the carpets but cannot find anybroad ones; they are all narrow and long. However I still look aboutevery day for them and so does Anton Kolb. 

I have given Bernhard Hirschvogel your greeting and he sent you hisservice. He is full of sorrow for the death of his Son, the nicest ladI ever saw. 

I can get none of your foolish featherlets. Oh, if only you were here!how you would like these fine Italian soldiers! How often I think ofyou! Would to God that you and Kunz Kamerer could see them! They havegreat scythe-lances with 278 points, if they only touch a man with themhe dies, for they are all poisoned. Hey! I can do it well, I'll be anItalian soldier. The Venetians as well as the Pope and the King ofFrance are collecting many men; what will come of it I don't know, butpeople ridicule our King very much. 

Wish Stephan Paumgartner much happiness from me. I don't wonder at hishaving taken a wife. Give my greeting to Borsch, Herr Lorenz, and ourfair friends, as well as to your Rechenmeister girl, and thank thathead-chamber of yours alone for remembering her greeting; tell her she'sa nasty one. 

[Illustration]

I sent you olive-wood from Venice to Augsburg, where I directed it to beleft, a full ten hundredweight. She says she would not wait for it;_whence the stink_. 

My picture, you must know, says it would give a ducat for you to see it, it is well painted and beautifully coloured. I have earned much praisebut little profit by it. In the time it took to paint I could easilyhave earned 220 ducats, and now I have declined much work, in order thatI may come home. I have stopped the mouths of all the painters who usedto say that I was good at engraving but, as to painting. I did not knowhow to handle my colours. Now every one says that better colouring theyhave never seen. 

My French mantle greets you and my Italian coat also. It strikes me thatthere is an odour of gallantry about you; I can scent it out even atthis distance; and they tell me here that when you go a-courting youpretend not to be more than twenty-five years old--oh, yes! double thatand I'll believe it. My friend, there are so many Italians here who lookexactly like you; I don't know how it happens!

The Doge and the Patriarch have also seen my picture. Herewith let mecommend myself to you as your servant. I must really go to sleep as itis striking the seventh hour of the night, and I have already written tothe Prior of the Augustines, to my father-in-law, to Mistress Dietrich, and to my wife, and they are all downright whole sheets full. So I havehad to hurry over this letter, read it according to the sense. You woulddoubtless do better if you were writing to a lot of Princes. Many goodnights and days too. Given at Venice on our Lady's day in September. 

You need not lend my wife and mother anything; they have got moneyenough, ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

VENICE, _September 23_, 1506. 

Your letter telling me of the praise that you get to overflowing fromPrinces and nobles gave me great delight. You must be altogether alteredto have become so gentle; I shall hardly know you when I meet you again. 

You must know that my picture is finished as well as another_Quadro_[18] the like of which I have never painted before. And as youare so pleased with yourself, let me tell you that there is no betterMadonna picture in the land than mine; for all the painters praise it, as the nobles do you. They say that they have never seen a nobler, more charming painting, and so forth. 

 * * * * *

But in order to come home as soon as possible, I have, since my picturewas finished, refused work that would have yielded me more than 2000ducats. This all men know who live about me here. 

Bernhard Holzbeck has told me great things of you, though I think hedoes so because you have become his brother-in-law. But nothing makes memore angry than when any one says that you are good-looking; if thatwere so I should become really ugly. That could make me mad. I havefound a grey hair on myself, it is the result of so much excitement. AndI fear that while I play such pranks with myself there are still baddays before me, &c. 

My French mantle, my doublet, and my brown coat send you a heartygreeting, I should be glad to see what great thing your head-piece canproduce that you hold yourself so high. 

VENICE, _about October_ 13, 1506. 

Knowing that you are aware of my devotion to your service there is noneed for me to write to you about it; but so much the more necessary isit for me to tell you of the great pleasure it gives me to hear of thehigh honour and fame which your manly wisdom and learned skill havebrought you. This is the more to be wondered at, for seldom or never ina young body can the like be found. It comes to you, however, as to me, by a special grace of God. How pleased we both are when we fancyourselves worth somewhat--I with my painting, and you with your wisdom. When any one praises us, we hold up our heads and believe him. Yetperhaps he is only some false flatterer who is scorning us all the time. So don't credit any one who praises you, for you've no notion howutterly and entirely unmannerly you are. I can quite see you standingbefore the Margrave and speaking so pleasantly--behaving exactly as ifyou were flirting with Mistress Rosentaler, cringing as you do. It didnot escape me that, when you wrote your last letter, you were quite fullof amorous thoughts. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, an old fellowlike you pretending to be so good-looking. Flirting pleases you in thesame way that a shaggy old dog likes a game with a kitten. If you wereonly as fine and gentle a man as I, I could understand it. If I becomeburgomaster I will serve you with the Luginsland. [19] as you do to piousZamesser and me. I will have you for once shut up there with the ladiesRechenmeister, Rosentaler, Gärtner, Schutz, and Pör, and many otherswhom for shortness I will not name; they must deal with you. 

People enquire more after me than you, for you yourself write that bothgirls and honourable wives ask after me--that is a sign of my virtue. When, however, God helps me home I don't know how I shall any longerstand you with your great wisdom; but for your virtue and good temper Iam glad, and your dogs will be the better for it, for you will no longerstrike them lame. Now however that you are thought so much of at home, you won't dare to talk to a poor painter in the street any more; to beseen with the painter varlet would be a great disgrace for you. 

O, dear Herr Pirkheimer, just now while I was writing to you, the alarmof fire was raised and six houses over by Pietro Venier are burnt, and awoollen cloth of mine, for which only yesterday I paid eight ducats, isburnt, so I too am in trouble. There is much excitement here aboutthe fire. 

As to your summons to me to come home soon, I shall come as soon as everI can, but I must first gain money for my expenses. I have paid awayabout 100 ducats for colours and other things. I have ordered you twocarpets for which I shall pay to-morrow, but I could not get them cheap. I will pack them in with my linen. 

And as to your threat that, unless I come home soon, you will make loveto my wife, don't attempt it--a ponderous fellow like you would be thedeath of her. 

I must tell you that I set to work to learn dancing and went twice tothe school, for which I had to pay the master a ducat. No one could getme to go there again. To learn dancing I should have had to pay away allthat I have earned, and at the end I should have known nothing about it. 

[Illustration: HANS BURGKMAIR--Black chalk drawing on yellowish preparedground. The lights and background in watercolor may possibly have beenadded later At Oxford]

In reply to your question when I shall come home, I tell you, so that mylords may also make their arrangements, that I shall have finished herein ten days; after that I should like to ride to Bologna to learn thesecrets of the art of perspective, which a man is willing to teach me. Ishould stay there eight or ten days and then return to Venice. Afterthat I shall come with the next messenger. How I shall freeze after thissun! Here I am a gentleman, at home only a parasite. 

III

Sir Martin Conway writes:

He (Dürer) enjoyed Venice; he liked the Italians; he was oppressed withorders for work; the climate suited him, and the warm sun was a pleasantcontrast to the snows and frost of a Franconian winter. But Dürer'sGerman heart was true; its truth was the secret of his success.... Thesyren voice of Italy charmed to their destruction most Germans wholistened to it. Brought face to face with the Italian Ideal of Grace, they one after another abandoned for it the Ideal of Strength peculiarlytheir own. 

We do not resort to these arguments to approve Holbein or Van Dyck fortheir long residence in England. I am not sure how much false sentimentinspired Thausing when he first praised Dürer in this strain; but I mustconfess I suspect it was no little. I incline to think that the bestcountry for an artist is not always the one he was born in, but oftenthat one where his art finds the best conditions to foster it. We do nothonour Dürer by supposing that he would have been among that majority ofDutch and German artists who, weaker than Roger van der Weyden andBurgkmair, returned from Italy injured and enfeebled; even if he hadpassed the greater portion of his life with her syren voice in his ears. 

Dürer could not bring himself to undergo for art's sake what MichaelAngelo endured; years of exile from a beloved native city, and, stillworse, years of exile from the most congenial spiritual atmosphere. Nevertheless, we must remember that the difference of language wouldhave made life in Venice for Dürer a much more complete exile than lifein Verona was for Dante, or life in Rome for Michael Angelo. So he didnot share the patronage and generous recognition which gave Titian sucha splendid opportunity. He ceased for a time at least to be a gentlemanto become a hanger-on, a parasite once more. At Antwerp he once more wasmet by the same generosity and recognition only to refuse again toaccept it as a gift for life and return to his beloved Nuremberg, whereit is true his position continually improved, though it never equalledwhat had been offered at Venice and Antwerp. 

IV

The tone of some of the pleasantries in these letters may ratherastonish good people who, having accepted the fact that Dürer was areligious man, have at once given him the tone and address of a meetingof churchwardens, if they have not conjured up a vision of him in afrock coat. "Things are what they are, " said Bishop Butler, and so arewomen; boys will be boys. The distinctive functions of the two sexeswere in those days kept more in view if not more in mind than is thecase to-day. The fashions in dress and in deportment were particularlyfrank upon this point, especially for the young. One may allow as muchas is desired for the corruption of manners produced by the civil andreligious mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, and friars. There willalways remain a certain truth and propriety, a certain grace and charmin those costumes and that deportment, as also in the freedom of jestwhich characterises even the most modest of Shakespeare's heroines; andunder the influence of their spell we shall feel that all has not beengain in the change that has gradually been operated. No doubt virtue isa victory over nature, and chastity a refinement; but among conquerorssome are easy and good-natured, others tactless, awkward, insulting; andamong the chaste some are fearless and enjoy the freedom which courageand clear conscience give, others timid and suffer the oppression oftheir fears. Even among sinners some make the best of weaknesses andredeem them a great deal more than half, while others magnify smallerfaults by lack of self-possession till they are an insupportablenuisance. We may well admit that from the successes of those days, thosewho succeed to our delight to-day may glean additional attractions. 

V

We know that Dürer stopped on at Venice into the year 1507, by a notewhich he made in a copy of Euclid, now in the library at Wolfenbüttel. "This book have I bought at Venice for a ducat in the year 1507. Albrecht Dürer"; and by another stray note we learn the state of hisworldly affairs on his return. 

The following is my property, which I have with difficulty acquired bythe labour of my hand, for I have had no opportunity of great gain. Ihave moreover suffered much loss by lending what was not repaid me, andby apprentices who never paid their fees, and one died at Rome whereby Ilost my wares. 

In the thirteenth year of my wedlock (Le. , 1507-8) I have paid greatdebts with what I earned at Venice. I possess fairly good householdfurniture, good clothes, chests, some good pewter vessels, goodmaterials for my work, bedding and cupboards, and good colours worth 100florins Rhenish. 

The wares that Dürer lost in Rome were doubtless chiefly woodcuts andengravings which his prentice had taken to sell during his_wanderjahre_, as Dürer himself during his own had very likely soldprints for Wolgemut. One of the reasons which had taken him to Venicemay have been to summon Marc Antonio before the Signoria, for havingcopied not only his engravings, but the monogram with which he signedthem; in any case he obtained a decree defending him against suchartistic forgery. Dürer's most steady resource seems to have been thesale of prints; it is these that his wife had sold in his absence, andin the diary of his journey to the Netherlands there is constant mentionof such sales. Nuremberg was very much behind Antwerp or Venice in theprice paid for works of art; and the possibilities of such a market asRome had very likely tempted Dürer to trust his prentice with an unusualquantity of prints. His worldly affairs were neither brilliant norsecure; yet we shall find him tempted on receiving an importantcommission to spend so much in time and material as to make itimpossible for him to realise a profit. We are accustomed to think thatthese trials were spared to artists in the past by the munificence ofpatrons: but apart from the fact that patrons often paid only withpromises or by granting credit, at Nuremberg there were few magnificentpatrons, and its burghers were in no way so generous or so extravagantas those of Venice or Antwerp. In fact, Dürer's position was verysimilar to that of the modern artist, who finds little and insufficientpatronage, and can make more if he is lucky by the reproduction of hiscreations for the great public. But Dürer still had one advantage overhis fellow-sufferers of to-day--that of being his own publisher. Doubtless portraits were as popular then as nowadays; but if the publictaste had not been prostituted by a seductive commercialism to thedegree that at present obtains, on the other hand, at Nuremberg atleast, the fashion seems to have been very little developed; and most ofDürer's important portraits seem to have been the result of his sojournsaway from home. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: Thus far the original is in bad Italian. ]

[Footnote 16: The retainers of Konz Schott, a neighbouring baron, at onetime a conspicuous enemy of Nürnberg. ]

[Footnote 17: These words are in Italian in the original. ]

[Footnote 18: Prof. Thausing suggests that this "other _Quadro_" is the"Christ among the Doctors" in the Barberini Gallery at Rome--a picturecontaining seven life-size half-figures or heads, and dated 1506. Theinscription states it to have been _opus quinque dierum_. At Brunswickthere is an old copy of it. The original studies for the hands arelikewise in existence. In Lorenzo Lotto's Madonna of 1508 in theBorghese Gallery at Rome, the head of St. Onuphrius is taken from themodel who sat for the front Pharisee on the left in Dürer's picture. ]

[Footnote 19: A Nürnberg prison. ]

CHAPTER IV

DÜRER AND HIS PATRONS AND FRIENDS

I

Dürer had hitherto occasionally enjoyed the patronage of the wiseElector, Frederick of Saxony, for whom he painted the brilliant_Adoration of the Magi_ in the Uffizi. He was soon to obtain that ofMaximilian, but this genial and eccentric emperor proved a fussy patron, as quick to change his mind and to interfere with impossible demands andcriticisms, as he was slow to pay and deficient in means for being trulygenerous. There are a certain number of letters which give a glimpse ofDürer's relations with his clients; they show him appealing always tothe judgment of artists against the ignorant buyer, and giving more thanhe bargained to give, though thereby he eats up his legitimate profits;lastly, they show him vowing never again to enter upon work sounprofitable, but to give all his time to the creation of engravings andwoodcuts. The first is written to Michael Behaim, who died in 1511, andhad commissioned him to make a design for a woodcut of his coat of arms. 

DEAR MASTER MICHAEL BEHAIM, --I send you back the coat of arms again. Pray let it stay as it is. No one could improve it for you, for I madeit artistically and with care. Those who see it and understand suchmatters will tell you so. If the leafwork on the helm were tossed upbackward, it would hide the fillet. Your humble servant, ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

[Illustration: Photograph J. Lowy--THE ADORATION OF THE TRINITY, 1511--From the painting at Vienna]

The other letters concern the lost _Coronation of the Virgin_, thecentre panel of an altar-piece of which the wings are still atFrankfurt, of which town Jacob Heller, who commissioned it, was aburgher. They were to be studio work, and are supposed to be chiefly dueto Dürer's brother Hans. There is, however, one picture extant whichgives an idea of the execution of the missing centre panel, the _HolyTrinity and All Saints_ at Vienna; which, in spite of his vow never todo such work again, was commenced shortly after the _Coronation_, andfor a Nuremberg patron. How much he was paid for it is not known; but itcannot have been a really adequate sum, as towards the end of his lifehe writes to the Nuremberg Council, "I have not received from people inthis town work worth five hundred florins, truly a trifling andridiculous sum, and not the fifth part of that has been profit. " Thepreceding picture, referred to in the first letters, is the _Martyrdomof the Ten Thousand by Sapor II_. All three pictures were signed, likethe _Feast of the Rose Garlands_ by little finely-dressed portraits ofthe painter. 

NÜRNBERG, _August_ 28, 1507. 

I did not want to receive any money in advance on it till I began topaint it, which, if God will, shall be the next thing after the Prince'swork;[20] for I prefer not to begin too many things at once and then Ido not become wearied. The Prince too will not be kept waiting, as hewould be if I were to paint his and your pictures at the same time, as Ihad intended. At all events have confidence in me, for, so far as Godpermits, I will yet according to my power make something that not manymen can equal. 

Now many good nights to you. Given at Nürnberg on Augustine's day, 1507. 

ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

 * * * * *

NÜRNBERG, March 19, _1508_. 

Dear Herr Jacob Heller. In a fortnight I shall be ready with DukeFriedrich's work; after that I shall begin yours, and, as my custom is, I will not paint any other picture till it is finished. I will be surecarefully to paint the middle panel with my own hand; apart from that, the outer sides of the wings are already sketched in--they will be instone colour; I have also had the ground laid. So much for news. 

I wish you could see my gracious Lord's picture; I think it would pleaseyou. I have worked at it straight on for a year and gained very littleby it; for I only get 280 Rhenish gulden for it, and I have spent allthat in the time. 

 * * * * *

NÜRNBERG, _August 24, 1508_. 

Now I commend myself to you. I want you also to know that in all my daysI have never begun any work that pleased me better than this picture ofyours which I am painting. Till I finish it I will not do any otherwork; I am only sorry that the winter will so soon come upon me. Thedays grow so short that one cannot do much. 

I have still one thing to ask you; it is about the _MADONNA_[21] thatyou saw at my house; if you know of any one near you who wants a picturepray offer it to him. If a proper frame was put to it, it would be abeautiful picture, and you know that it is nicely done. I will let youhave it cheap. I would not take less than fifty florins to paint onelike it. As it stands finished in the house it might be damaged for me, so I would give you full power to sell it for me cheap for thirtyflorins--indeed, rather than that it should not be sold I would even letit go for twenty-five florins. I have certainly lost much food over it. 

 * * * * *

Nürnberg, _November_ 4, 1508. 

I am justly surprised at what you say in it about my last letter: seeingthat you can accuse me of not holding to my promises to you. From such aslander each and everyone exempts me, for I bear myself, I trust, so asto take my stand amongst other straightforward men. Besides I know wellwhat I have written and promised to you, and you know that in mycousin's house I refused to promise you to make a good thing, because Icannot. But to this I did pledge myself, that I would make something foryou that not many men can. Now I have given such exceeding pains to yourpicture, that I was led to send you the aforesaid letter. I know thatwhen the picture is finished all artists will be well pleased with it. It will not be valued at less than 300 florins. I would not paintanother like it for three times the price agreed, for I neglect myselffor it, suffer loss, and earn anything but thanks from you. 

You further reproach me with having promised you that I would paint yourpicture with the greatest possible care that ever I could. That Icertainly never said, or if I did I was out of my senses, for in mywhole lifetime I should scarcely finish it. With such extraordinary careI can hardly finish a face in half a year; now your picture containsfully 100 faces, not reckoning the drapery and landscape and otherthings in it. Besides, who ever heard of making such a work for analtar-piece? no one could see it. But I think it was thus that I wroteto you--that I would paint the picture with great or more than ordinarypains because of the time which you waited for me. 

You need not look about for a purchaser for my Madonna, for the Bishopof Breslau has given me seventy-two florins for it, so I have sold itwell. I commend myself to you. Given at Nürnberg in the year 1508, onthe Sunday after All Saints' Day. 

ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

 * * * * *

NÜRNBERG, _March_ 21, 1509. 

I only care for praise from those who are competent to judge; and ifMartin Hess praises it to you, that may give you the more confidence. You might also inquire from some of your friends who have seen it; theywill tell you how it is done. And if you do not like the picture whenyou see it, I will keep it myself, for I have been begged to sell it andmake you another. But be that far from me! I will right honourably holdwith you to that which I have promised, taking you, as I do, for anupright man. 

 * * * * *

NÜRNBERG, _July_ 10, 1509. 

As you go on to say that if you had not bargained with me for thepicture you would never do so now, and that I may keep it--I return youthis answer: to retain your friendship, if I had to suffer loss by thepicture, I would have done so, but now since you regret the wholebusiness and provoke me to keep the picture I will do so, and thatgladly, for I know how to get 100 florins more for it than you wouldhave given me. In future I would not take 400 florins to paint anothersuch as this. 

ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

NÜRNBERG, _July_ 24, 1509. DEAR HERR HELLER, I have read the letterwhich you addressed to me. You write that you did not mean to declinetaking the picture from me. To that I can only say that I don'tunderstand what you do mean. When you write that if you had not orderedthe picture you would not make the bargain again, and that I may keep itas long as I like and so on--I can only think that you have repented ofthe whole business, so I gave you my answer in my last letter. 

But, at Hans Imhof's persuasion, and having regard to the fact that youordered the picture of me, and also because I should prefer it to find aplace at Frankfurt rather than anywhere else, I have consented to sendit to you for 100 florins less than it might well have brought me. 

I am reckoning that I shall thus render you a pleasing service;otherwise I know well how I could draw far greater pecuniary advantagefrom it, but your friendship is dearer to me than any such trifling sumof money. I trust however that you would not wish me to suffer loss overit when you are better off than I. Make therefore your own arrangementsand commands. Given at Nürnberg on Wine-Tuesday before James'. ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

NÜRNBERG, _August 26_, 1509. First my willing service to you, dear HerrJacob Heller. In accordance with your last letter I am sending thepicture well packed and seen to in all needful points. I have handed itover to Hans Imhof and he has paid me another 100 florins. Yet believeme, on my honour, I am still out of pocket over it besides losing thetime which I have bestowed upon it. Here in Nürnberg they were ready togive 300 florins for it, which extra 100 florins would have done verynicely for me had I not preferred to please and serve you by sending youthe picture. For I value the keeping of your friendship at more than 100florins. I would also rather have this painting at Frankfurt thananywhere else in all Germany. 

If you think that I have behaved unfairly in not leaving the payment toyour own free-will, you must bear in mind that this would not havehappened if you had not written by Hans Imhof that I might keep thepicture as long as I liked. I should otherwise gladly have left it toyou even if thereby I had suffered a greater loss still. My impressionof you is that, supposing I had promised to make you something for aboutten florins and it cost me twenty, you yourself would not wish me tolose by it. So pray be content with the fact that I took 100 florinsless from you than I might have got for the picture--for I tell you thatthey wanted to take it from me, so to speak, by force. 

I have painted it with great care, as you will see, using none but thebest colours I could get. It is painted with good ultramarine under, andover, and over that again, some five or six times; and then after it wasfinished I painted it again twice over so that it may last a long time. If it is kept clean I know it will remain bright and fresh 500 years, for it is not done as men are wont to paint. So have it kept clean anddon't let it be touched or sprinkled with holy water. I feel sure itwill not be criticised, or only for the purpose of annoying me; and Ianswer for it it will please you well. No one shall ever compel me topaint a picture again with so much labour. Herr Georg Tausy himselfbesought me to paint him a Madonna in a landscape with the same care andof the same size as this picture, and he would give me 400 florins forit. That I flatly refused to do, for it would have made a beggar of me. Of ordinary pictures I will in a year paint a pile which no one wouldbelieve it possible for one man to do in the time. But very carefulnicety does not pay. So henceforth I shall stick to my engraving, andhad I done so before I should to-day have been a richer man by1000 florins. 

I may tell you also that, at my own expense, I have had for the middlepanel a new frame made which has cost me more than six florins. The oldone I have broken off, for the joiner had made it roughly; but I havenot had the other fastened on, for you wished it not to be. It would bea very good thing to have the rims screwed on so that the picture maynot be shaken. 

If anyone wants to see it, let it hang forward two or three fingerbreadths, for then the light is good to see it by. And when I come overto you, say in one, two, or three years' time, if the picture isproperly dry, it must be taken down and I will varnish it over anew withsome excellent varnish, which no one else can make; it will then last100 years longer than it would before. But don't let anybody elsevarnish it, for all other varnishes are yellow, and the picture would beruined for you. And if a thing, on which I have spent more than a year'swork, were ruined it would be grief to me. When you have it set up bepresent yourself to see that it gets no harm. Deal carefully with it, for you will hear from your own and from foreign painters how itis done. 

Give my greeting to your painter Martin Hess. My wife asks you for a_Trinkgeld_, but that is as you please, I screw you no higher, &c. Andnow I hold myself commended to you. Read by the sense, for I write inhaste. Given at Nürnberg on Sunday after Bartholomew's, 1509. ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

NÜRNBERG, _October 12_, 1509. 

DEAR HERR JACOB HELLER, I am glad to hear that my picture pleases you, so that my labour has not been bestowed in vain. I am also happy thatyou are content about the payment--and that rightly, for I could havegot 100 florins more for it than you have given me. But I preferred tolet you have it, hoping, as I do, thereby to retain you as my frienddown in your parts. 

My wife thanks you very much for the present you have made her; she willwear it in your honour. My young brother also thanks you for the twoflorins _Trinkgeld_ you sent him. And now I too thank you myself for allthe honour &c. In reply to your question how the picture should beadorned I send you a slight design of what I should do if it were mine, but you must do what you like. Now, many happy times to you. Given onFriday before Gall's, 1509. ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

Dürer must have commenced the All Saints picture almost immediatelyafter having finished Heller's _Coronation of the Virgin_. Perhaps hehad practically accepted the commission from Matthsus Landauer before hewrote to Heller that he would never again undertake a picture with somuch work and labour in it, for he afterwards was as good as his word. This new work was for the chapel of an almshouse founded by Landauer andErasmus Schiltkrot for twelve old men citizens of Nuremberg. Theoriginal frame designed by Dürer is now in the Germanic Museum, though acopy has replaced the picture. After the completion of the _Trinity andAll Saints_, Dürer apparently carried out his threat and gave uppainting for a dozen years, devoting his energies more especially to amagnificent series of engravings on copper. He also completed his seriesof wood engravings and published them with text, and produced a numberof single cuts, many of them among his very best, like the _Assumptionof the Magdalen_, and the _St. Christopher_, here reproduced. 

[Illustration: ST. CHRISTOPHER Woodcut, B. 103]

[Illustration: THE ASSUMPTION OF THE MAGDALEN Woodcut, B. 121]

II

In 1514 his mother died. He has recounted her death twice over, as hedid that of his father already cited; for the single surviving leaf ofthe "other book" happens to contain this also. In the brieferchronicle he says:

Two years after my Father's death (i. E. , 1504) I took my Mother into myhouse, for she had nothing more to live upon. So she dwelt with me tillthe year 1513, as they reckon it; when, early one Tuesday morning, shewas taken suddenly and deadly ill, and thus she lay a whole year long. And a whole year after the day she was first taken ill, she received theholy sacraments and christianly passed away two hours beforenightfall--it was on a Tuesday, the 17th day of May in the year 1514. Isaid the prayers for her myself. God Almighty be gracious to her. 

The account in the "other book" is more circumstantial:

Now you must know that, in the year 1513, on a Tuesday before Rogationweek, my poor afflicted Mother, whom two years after my Father's death, as she was quite poor, I took into my house, and after she had livednine years with me, was one morning suddenly taken so deadly ill that webroke into her chamber; otherwise, as she could not open, we had notbeen able to come to her. So we carried her into a room downstairs andshe received both sacraments, for every one thought she would die, because ever since my Father's death she had never been in good health. 

Her most frequent habit was to go much to the church. She alwaysupbraided me well if I did not do right, and she was ever in greatanxiety about my sins and those of my brother. And if I went out or inher saying was always, "Go in the name of Christ. " She constantly gaveus holy admonitions with deep earnestness and she always had greatthought for our souls' health. I cannot enough praise her good works andthe compassion she showed to all, as well as her high character. 

This my pious Mother bare and brought up eighteen children; she oftenhad the plague and many other severe and strange illnesses, and shesuffered great poverty, scorn, contempt, mocking words, terrors, andgreat adversities. Yet she bore no malice. 

In 1514 (as they reckon it), on a Tuesday--it was the 17th day ofMay--two hours before nightfall and more than a year after theabove-mentioned day in which she was taken ill, my Mother, BarbaraDürer, christianly passed away, with all the sacraments, absolved bypapal power from pain and sin. But she first--gave me her blessing andwished me the peace of God, exhorting me very beautifully to keep myselffrom sin. She asked also to drink S. John's blessing, which shethen did. 

She feared Death much, but she said that to come before God she fearednot. Also she died hard, and I marked that she saw something dreadful, for she asked for the holy-water, although, for a long time, she had notspoken. Immediately afterwards her eyes closed over. I saw also howDeath smote her two great strokes to the heart, and how she closed mouthand eyes and departed with pain. I repeated to her the prayers. I feltso grieved for her that I cannot express it. God be merciful to her. 

To speak of God was ever her greatest delight, and gladly she beheld thehonour of God. She was in her sixty-third year when she died and I haveburied her honourably according to my means. 

[Illustration: "1514, on Oculi Sunday (March 19). This is AlbrechtDürer's mother; she was 63 years of age. " After her death he added inink, "And departed this life in the year 1514 on Tuesday Holy Cross Day(May 16) at two o'clock in the night" Charcoal-drawing. Royal PrintRoom, Berlin]

God, the Lord, grant me that I too may attain a happy end, and that Godwith his heavenly host, my Father, Mother, relations, and friends maycome to my death. And may God Almighty give unto us eternal life. Amen. 

And in her death she looked much sweeter than when she was still alive. 

III

Such was the home life of this great artist; and from homes presentingvariations on this type proceeded probably all the giants of theRenaissance, whose work we think so surpasses in effort, in scope, andin efficiency, all that has been achieved since. This Christianity wasunreformed; it existed side by side with dissolute monasteries andworldly cynical prelates, surrounded by sordid hucksters and brutalsoldiery. Turn to Erasmus' portrait of Dean Colet, and we see that itexisted in London, among the burghers, even in the household of a LordMayor. We are almost forced on the reflection that nothing that hassucceeded to it has produced men equal to those who sprang immediatelyout of it. 

However much and however justly the assurance of Christian assertion inthe realm of theory may be condemned, the success of the Christian life, wherever it has approached a conscientious realisation, stands out amongthe multitudinous forms of its corruption; and those who catch sight ofit are almost bound to exclaim in the spirit of Shakespeare's:

 "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. "

I have heard a Royal Academician remark how even the poorest copies andreproductions of the masterpieces of Greek sculpture retain something ofthe charm and dignity of the original: whereas the quality of modernwork is quickly lost in a reduction or even in a cast. I believe thismay be best explained by the fact that the chief research of the Greekartist was to establish a beautiful proportion between the parts and thewhole; and that fidelity to nature, dexterity of execution, thesymbolism of the given subject, and even the finish of the surfaces, were always when necessary sacrificed to this. Whereas in modern work, even when the proportions of the whole are considered, which is rarelythe case, they are almost without exception treated as secondary to oneor more of these other qualities. Is it not possible that Jesus in hislife laid down a proportion, similar to that of Greek masterpieces forthe body, between the efforts and intentions which create the soul andpour forth its influence?--a proportion which, when it has been oncethoroughly apprehended, may be subtly varied to suit new circumstances, and produce a similar harmony in spheres of activity with which Jesushimself had not even a distant connection? We often find that the rudestcopies from copies of his actual life are like the biscuit china Venusof Milo sold by the Italian pedlar, which still dimly reflects the mainbeauties of the marble in the Louvre. 

IV

In 1512 Kaiser Maximilian came to Nuremberg, and soon afterward Dürerbegan working for him. The employment he found for the greatest artistnorth of the Alps was sufficiently ludicrous; and perhaps Dürer showedthat he felt this, by treating the major portion as studio work; though, no doubt, the impatience of his imperial patron in a measurenecessitated the employment of many aids. 

It is difficult to do justice to the fine qualities of Maximilian. Perhaps he was not really so eccentric as he seems. The oddity of hisdoings and sayings may be perhaps more properly attributed to his havingbeen a thorough German. The genial men of that nation, even to-day andsince it has come more into line in point of culture with France andEngland, are apt to have a something ludicrous or fantastic clinging tothem; even Goethe did not wholly escape. Maximilian was strong in bodyand in mind, and brimming over with life and interest. We are told thatwhen a young man he climbed the tower of Ulm Cathedral by the help ofthe iron rings that served to hold the torches by which it wasilluminated on high days and holidays. Again we read: "A secretary hadembezzled 3000 gulden. Maximilian sent for him and asked what should bedone to a confidential servant who had robbed his master. The secretaryrecommended the gallows. 'Nay, nay, ' the Emperor said, and tapped him onthe shoulder, 'I cannot spare you yet'"; an anecdote which reveals moregood sense and a larger humanity than either monarchs or others are aptto have at hand on such vexing occasions. Thausing says admirably, "Ahappy imagination and a great idea of his exalted position made up tohim for any want of success in his many wars and politicalnegotiations, " and elsewhere calls him the last of the "nomadicemperors, " who spent their lives travelling from palace to palace andfrom city to city, beseeching, cajoling, or threatening their subjectsinto obedience. He himself said, "I am a king of kings. If I give anorder to the princes of the empire, they obey if they please, if they donot please they disobey. " He was even then called "the last of theknights, " because he had an amateurish passion for a chivalry that wasalready gone, and was constantly attempting to revive its costumes andordinances. Then, like certain of the Pharaohs of Egypt, he was pleasedto read of, and see illustrated by brush and graver, victories he hadnever won, and events in which he had not shone. He himself dictated orplanned out those wonderful lives or allegories of a life which mighthave been his. It was on such a work of futile self-glorification thathe now wished to employ Dürer. 

The novelty of the art of printing, and the convenience to a nomadicemperor of a monument that could be rolled up, suggested the form ofthis last absurdity--a monster woodcut in 92 blocks which, when joinedtogether, produced a picture 9 feet by 10, representing what had atfirst been intended as an imitation of a Roman triumphal arch; but somuch information about so many more or less dubious ancestors, &c. , hadto be conveyed by quaint and conceited inventions, that in the end itwas rather comparable to the confusion of a Juggernaut car, whichnever-the-less imposes by a barbarous wealth and magnificence offantastic detail. And to this was to be joined another monster, representing on several yards of paper a triumphal procession of theemperor, escorted by his family, and the virtues of himself andancestors, &c. Such is fortune's malice that Dürer, who alone or almostalone had conceived of the simplicity of true dignity and the beauty ofchoice proportions and propriety, should have been called upon by hisonly royal patron to superintend a production wherein the rank andflaccid taste of the time ran riot. The absurdity, barbarism, andgrotesque quaintness of this monument to vanity cannot be laidexclusively at Maximilian's door; for the architecture, particularly ofthe fountains, in Altdorfer's or Manuel's designs, and in those of manyothers, reveals a like wantonness in delighted elaboration of theimpossible and unstructural. The scholars and pedantic posturers whosurrounded the emperor no doubt improved and abetted. Probably it wasthis Juggernaut element, inherited from the Gothic gargoyle, whichGoethe censured when he said that "Dürer was retarded by a gloomyfantasy devoid of form or foundation. " Perhaps this was written at aperiod when the great critic was touched with that resentment againstthe Middle Ages begotten by the feeling that his own art was stillencumbered by its irrational and confused fantasy. We who certainly areable to take a more ample view of Dürer's situation in the art of histimes, see that he is rather characterised by an effort which lay inexactly the same direction as that of Goethe's own; and whilesympathising with the irritation expressed, can also admire the greatengraver for having freed himself in so large a degree from theinfluence of fantasy "devoid of form and foundation, " even as thejustest Shakespearean criticism admires the degree in which the authorof Othello freed himself from Elizabethan conceits. It is difficult toappreciate the difference for a great artist in having the general tastewith rather than against the purer tendencies of his art. Probably theGreeks and certain Italians owe their freedom from eccentricity, in avery large measure, to this cause. But I intend to treat these questionsmore at length in dealing with Dürer's character as an artist andcreator. It was necessary to touch on the subject here, becauseMaximilian embodies the peculiar and fantastic aftergrowth, whichsprouted up in some northern minds from the old stumps remaining fromthe great mediaeval forest of thoughts and sentiments which hadgradually fallen into decay. All around, even in the same minds, wavedthe saplings of the New Birth when these old stumps put forth their sofantastic second youth, seeming for a time to share in the new vigour, though they were never to attain expansion and maturity. 

V

Thausing shrewdly remarks, "This love of fame and naïve delight in theglorification of his own person are further proofs that the Emperor Maxwas the true child of his age. No one was so akin to him in this respectas the painter of his choice, Albert Dürer. " This last is a reference tothose strutting, finely-dressed portraits of the artist which standbeside the entablatures bearing his name, that of his birthplace, thedate, &c. , in four out of the five most elaborate pictures which Dürerpainted. But I would like to suggest that probably this apparentresemblance to his royal patron is not thus altogether well accountedfor. May there not have been something of Homer's invocation of hisMuse, or of that sincerity which makes Dante play such a large part inthe "Divine Comedy"?--something resembling the ninth verse of theApocalypse: "I John, who also am your brother and companion intribulation ... Was in the isle that is called Patmos ... And heardbehind me a great voice as of a trumpet, saying.... " Those littlestrutting portraits of himself sprung, perhaps, out of this relation tothose about him of the man by native gift very superior, who is not madecontemptuous or inclined to emphasise his isolation, but who is everready to say, "It is I, be not afraid. " The man who painted andconceived this is the man you know, whom you have admired because hecarried his fine clothes so well in your streets. Here I am even in themidst of this massacre of saints, I have conceived it all and taken awhole year to elaborate it; and since you see me looking so cool andwell-dressed in the midst of it, you need not be offended oroverwhelmed. Such is ever the naïvety of great souls among those whoseculture is primitive. It is like the boasted bravery of the eldest amonglittle children, wholly an act of kindness and consideration, not aselfish vaunt. That they should be admired and trusted is for them aforegone conclusion; and when they call on that admiration and trust, they do it merely for the sake of those whom they would encourage andconsole, for whose sakes they will even hide whatever in them is reallyunworthy of such admiration and such trust. 

We do not easily realise the corporate character of life in those days. Very much that seems to us quaint and absurd drew proper significancefrom the practical solidarity that then obtained; what appears to us astrange vanity or parade may have appeared to them respect for theguild, the town, the country to which they belonged. Dürer signed"Noricus, "--of Nuremberg;--and preferred its little lucrativecitizenship to those more remunerative offered by Venice and Antwerp. "Let all the world behold how fine the artist of Nuremberg is. " Just ashe says, "God gave me diligence, " so it seems natural to him toattribute a large half of his fame and glory to his native town. In manyrespects the great man of those days felt less individual than anordinary man does now; for classes did not so merge one into the other, and their character was more distinct and authoritative. The littleportrait of himself added to those wonderful _tours-de-force_ made themsomething that belonged to Nuremberg and to Germans. Even so it would bewith some treasure cup, all gold and jewels, belonging to a villageschoolmaster, which none of his neighbours dared look at save in hispresence; for he was the son of a great baron whom his elder brothersrobbed of everything except this, and his presence among them alone madethem able to feel that it really belonged to their village, was theirsin a fashion. These suggestions will not, I think, appear fantastic tothose who ponder on the apparently vainglorious address of much ofDürer's work, and keep in mind such a passage from his writings as this:

"I would gladly give everything I know to the light, for the good ofcunning students who prize such art more highly than silver and gold. Ifurther admonish all who have any knowledge in these matters that theywrite it down. Do it truly and plainly, not toilsomely and at greatlength, for the sake of those who seek and are glad to learn, to thegreat honour of God and your own praise. If I then set somethingburning, and ye all add to it skilful furthering, a blaze may in timearise therefrom which shall shine throughout the whole world. "[22]

But still, even if such considerations may bring many to accept myexplanation of this contrast, I do not want to over-insist on it. Ithink that wherever men have been superior in character, as well as ingift or rank, to those about them, something of this spirit of the goodeldest child in a family is bound to be manifested. But just as such achild may be veritably boastful and vain at other times, --however purelynow and then, in crises of apparent difficulty or danger, its vaunt andstrut may spring from real kindness and a considerate wish to inspirecourage in the younger and weaker;--so doubtless there was ahaughtiness, sometimes a fault, in Dürer as in Milton. 

VI

But we have been led a long way from Kaiser Max and his portablemonument. The reader will re-picture how the court arrived at Nuremberglike a troop of actors, whose performance was really their life, and wastaken quite seriously and admired heartily by the good and solidburghers. This old comedy, often farce, entitled "The Importance ofAuthority, " is no longer played with such a telling make-up, or withsuch showy properties as formerly, but is still as popular as ever; aswe Londoners know, since the last few years have given us perhaps anover-dose of processions, illuminations, &c. &c. In this case the chiefactors in the show piece were men of mark of an exceptionallyentertaining character; with many of them Dürer and Pirkheimer were soonon the best of terms. 

Foremost, Johann Stabius, the companion of the Emperor for sixteen yearswithout intermission in war and in peace, who was associated with Dürerto provide the written accompaniment for the monument; a literaryjack-of-all-trades of ready wit and lively presence. A contemporaryrecords: "The emperor took constant pleasure in the strange things whichStabius devised, and esteemed him so highly that he instituted a newchair of Astronomy and Mathematics for him at Vienna, " in the CollegiumPoetarum et Mathematicorum founded in the year 1501, under thepresidency of Conrad Celtes. 

In all probability there would have been besides the learned protonotaryof the supreme court, Ulrich Varenbuler, often mentioned as a friend inthe letters of Erasmus and Pirkheimer, and the subject of the largest ofDürer's portrait woodcuts, which shows him to us some ten years later, still a handsome trenchant personality, with a liking for fine clothes, and the self-reliant expression of a man who is conscious that thethought he takes for the morrow is not likely to be in vain. 

It may be that Dürer then met for the first time too the Imperialarchitect, Johannes Tscherte, for whom he afterwards drew two armillaryspheres, to take the place of those on which he had cast ridicule; forPirkheimer wrote to Tscherte: "I wish you could have heard how AlbertDürer spoke to me about your plate, in which there is not one goodstroke, and laughed at me. What honour it will do us when it makes itsappearance in Italy, and the clever painters there see it!" To whichTscherte replied: "Albert Dürer knows me well, he is also well awarethat I love art, though I am no expert at it; let him if he likesdespise my plate, I never pretended it was a work of art. " And in alater letter he speaks "of the armillary spheres drawn by our commonfriend Albert Dürer. " He was one of those who helped Dürer in hismathematical and geometrical studies; and he, like Pirkheimer, dedicatedbooks to him. Although the mathematics of those times are hardlyconsidered seriously nowadays, they then ranked with verse-making as apolite accomplishment, and had all the charm of novelty. Dürer, nodoubt, had some gift that way, as he seems to have made a hobby of themduring many years. Besides those who came in the Imperial troop, Dürerhad many opportunities of meeting men of this kind, for such wereconstantly passing through Nuremberg. Dürer has left us what areevidently portraits of some whose names are lost: of others we have bothname and likeness, among them the English ambassador, Lord Morley. 

In 1515 "Rafahel de' Urbin, who is held in such high esteem by the Pope, he made these naked figures and sent them to Albrecht Dürer at Nurembergto show him his hand. " This shows us that travellers through Nurembergsometimes brought with them something of the breath of the greatRenaissance in Italy. The drawing, which bears the above inscription inDürer's own handwriting on the back, is a fine one in red sanguine, representing the same male model in two different poses, in theAlbertina. Raphael had, we are told by Lodovico Dolce, drawings, engravings, and woodcuts of Dürer's hanging in his studio; and Vasaritells us he said: "If Dürer had been acquainted with the antique hewould have surpassed us all. " The Nuremberg master, in return for thedrawing, sent a portrait of himself to Raphael, which has unfortunatelybeen lost. There appears to have been quite a rage for Dürer's work inItaly, and above all at Rome: we know that it provoked Michael Angelo toremonstrate; probably on many lips it was merely a vaunt of superiorknowledge or taste, as rapture over the conjectural friends or aids of agreat quatrocentist is to-day. The tokens of esteem which he won fromdistinguished travellers, and this drawing which reached him testifyingto the interest and friendship felt for him by the Italian whose famewas most widespread, must have been full of encouragement, and havecompensated in some measure for the feeling he had that he was only ahanger-on at Nuremberg, though he might still have been "a gentleman" inVenice. Yet Nuremberg itself furnished many desirable or notableacquaintances. There was Dürer's neighbour, the jurist, LazarusSpengler; later the most prominent reformer in Nuremberg, who in 1520dedicated to him his "Exhortation and Instruction towards the leading ofa virtuous life, " addressing him as "his particular and confidentialfriend and brother, " whom he considers, "without any flattery, to be aman of understanding, inclined to honesty and every virtue, who hasoften in our daily familiar intercourse been to me in no common degree apattern and an example to a more circumspect way of life;" whom, finally, he asks to improve his little book to the best of his ability. Dürer had before this rendered him service in designing his coat of armsfor a woodcut and furnishing a frontispiece to his translation ofEusebius' "Life of St. Jerome. " He was, moreover, a poet, author of "anoften-translated song"; he wrote verses to discourage Dürer fromspending his time in producing the doggerel rhymes which at one time hewas moved to attempt, --framing poems of didactic import, and publishingone or two on separate sheets with a woodcut at the top, in spite of theinappreciative reception given to them by Spengler and Pirkheimer. Besides Spengler, there were "Christopher Kress, a soldier, a traveller, and a town councillor;" and Caspar Nützel, of one of the oldestfamilies, and Captain-general of the town bands. Both of these went withDürer to the Diet at Augsburg in 1518. The martial Paumgartners were twobrothers for whom Dürer painted the early triptych at Munich (see page204). One of them is supposed to figure as St. George in the All Saintspicture. Lastly, there were the Imhoffs, the merchant princes ofNuremberg, as the Fuggers were at Augsburg. A son of the family marriedFelicitas, Pirkheimer's favourite daughter, in 1515, and Dürer stoodgodfather to their little Hieronymus in 1518. It is easy to imagine thatthere was many a supper and dinner, when a thousand strange subjectswere even more strangely discussed; when Pirkheimer now made them roarwith a hazardous joke, or again dumbfounded them with Greek quotationspompously done into German, or made their flesh creep and thesuperstitions of their race stir in them by mysteriously enlarging onhis astrological lore, --for to his many weaknesses he added this, whichwas then scarcely recognised as one. 

VII

In spite of all his wealthy and influential friends, Dürer found itdifficult to get the emperor to indemnify him for his labours, thoughthe Town Council had received a royal mandate as early as 1512 fromLandau. The following is an extract:

Whereas our and the Empire's trusty Albrecht Dürer has devoted much zealto the drawings he has made for us at our command, and has promisedhenceforth ever to do the like, whereat we have received particularpleasure; and whereas we are informed on all hands that the said Düreris famous in the art of painting before all other Masters: we havetherefore felt ourself moved, to further him with our especial grace, and we accordingly desire you with earnest solicitude, for the affectionyou bear us, to make the said Dürer free of all town imposts, havingregard to our grace and to his famous art, which should fairly turn tohis profit with you, &c. 

The town councillors sent some of their principal members to treat withDürer, and he resigned his claim "in order to honour the saidcouncillors and to maintain their privileges, usages, and rights. " In1515 the drawings for the "Gate of Honour" were finished, and Dürerbegan to press again for pay. Stabius had promised to speak for him, butnothing had come of it. Albrecht thought Christoph Kress could be ofmore avail; so he wrote to him:

(No date, but certainly 1515). DEAR HERR KRESS, The first thing I haveto ask you is to find out from Herr Stabius whether he has done anythingin my business with his Imperial Majesty, and how it stands. Let me knowthis in the next letter you write to my Lords. Should it happen thatHerr Stabius has made no move in the matter, ... Point out in particularto his Imperial Majesty that I have served his Majesty for three years, spending my own money in so doing, and if I had not been diligent theornamental work would have been nowise so successfully finished. Itherefore pray his Imperial Majesty to recompense me with the 100florins--all which you know well how to do. You must know also that Imade many other drawings for his Majesty besides the "Triumph. "

Not long after this, Maximilian, by a _Privilegium_ (dated Innsbruck, September 6, 1515), settled an annual pension of 100 florins onthe artist. 

We Maximilian, by God's grace, &c. , make openly known by this letter forourself and our successors in the Empire, and to each and every one towit, that we have regarded and considered the art, skill, andintelligence for which our and the Empire's trusty and well-belovedAlbrecht Dürer has been praised before us, and likewise the pleasing, honest and useful services which he has often and willingly done for usand the Holy Empire and also for our own person in many ways, and whichhe still daily does and henceforward may and shall do: and that wetherefore, of set purpose, after mature deliberation, and with the fullknowledge of ourself and the Princes and Estates of the Empire, havegraciously promised and granted to this same Dürer what we herewith andby virtue of this letter make known:

_That is to say_, that one hundred florins Rhenish shall be yielded, given, and paid by the honourable, our and the Empire's trusty andwell-beloved Burgomaster and Council of the town of Nürnberg and theirsuccessors unto the said Albrecht Dürer, against his quittance, all hislife long and no longer, yearly and in every year, on our behalf, out ofthe customary town contributions which the said Burgomaster and Councilof the town of Nürnberg are bound to yield and pay, yearly and in everyyear, into our Treasury. And whatever the said Burgomaster and Councilof the town of Nürnberg and their successors shall yield, give, and payto the said Albrecht Dürer, as stands written above, against hisquittance, the same sum shall be accepted and reckoned to them as paidand yielded for the customary town contributions which they, as standswritten above, are bound to pay into our Treasury, as if they had paidthe same into our own hands and received our quittance therefor, and noharm or detriment shall in anywise be done therefor unto them or theirsuccessors by us or our successors in the Empire. Whereof this letter, sealed with our affixed seal, is witness. 

Given, &c. 

Thus Dürer became Court painter: in return for his salary he had towork. As soon as the "Gate of Honour" was finished, there was the "Carof Triumph" to be taken in hand, the first sketch for it (now in theAlbertina) having already been made about 1514-15. In December 1514Schönsperger, the Augsburg printer, printed a splendid "Book of Hours"for Maximilian. The type was specially made for the book, and only a fewcopies were printed, some on fine vellum with large margins. One copywhich Maximilian intended for his own use was sent to Dürer that hemight decorate the margins with pen-drawings in various coloured inks. Of this work there exist forty-three pages by Dürer himself and eight byCranach at Munich, and at Besançon thirty-five pages by Burgkmair, Altdorfer, Baldung Grien, and Hans Dürer. Marvellously deft andlight-handed as are Dürer's freehand arabesques, embellished by racysketches of which these borders consist, they are nevertheless touchedwith a like unsatisfactory character with the other works undertaken forMaximilian, and are almost as far removed from the spirit andperformance of the best period for this kind of work, as is the_Triumphal Arch_ from that of Titus. 

Dürer was also employed on another woodcut representing a long row ofsaintly ancestors of this eccentric sovereign. He accompanied CasparNützel and Lazarus Spengler, the representatives of Nuremberg, to theDiet of Augsburg, and there made some drawings of his royal patron, onone of which is written, "This is my dear Prince Max, whom I, AlbrechtDürer, drew at Augsburg in his little room upstairs in the palace, inthe year 1518, on the Monday after St. John the Baptist's day. " (_Seeopposite_. ) And Melanchthon narrates that "once Max himself took thecharcoal in hand to make his mind clear to his trusty Albert, and wasvexed to find that the charcoal kept breaking short in his hand whenDürer said; 'Most gracious emperor, I would not that your Majesty shoulddraw so well as I do!' by which he meant, 'I am practised in this, andit is my province; thou, Emperor, hast harder tasks and anothercalling. '"

[Illustration: _By permission of Messrs. Braun, Clément & Co. Dornach. _--"This is the Emperor Maximilian, whose likeness I, AlbrechtDürer, have taken, at Augsburg, high up in the palace in his littlechamber, in the year of Grace 1518, on Monday after St. John theBaptist's Day" Charcoal-Drawing. Albertina, Vienna]

VIII

A charming letter from Charitas Pirkheimer gives us a little sunlitglimpse of the tone of Dürer's lighter hours. 

The prudent and wise Masters Caspar Nützel, Lazarus Spengler, andAlbrecht Dürer, for the time being at Augsburg, our gracious Masters andgood friends. 

Jesus. 

As a friendly greeting, prudent, wise, gracious Masters and especiallygood friends, cousins, and wellwishers, I desire every good thing foryou, from the Highest Good. I received with great pleasure your friendlyletter and its news of a kind suited to my order, or rather my trade;and I read it with such great devotion that more than once tears randown my eyes over it--truly rather tears of laughter than of sorrow. Iconsider it a subject for great thankfulness that, with such importantbusiness and so much gaiety on hand, your Wisdoms do not forget me, butfind time to instruct me, poor little nun, about the monastic lifewhereof you now have a clear reflection before your eyes. I concludefrom this that doubtless some good spirit drove you, my gracious anddear Masters, to Augsburg, so that you might learn from the example ofthe free Swabian spirits how to instruct and govern the poor imprisonedsand-bares. [23]

For since our trusty Master Warden (Caspar Nützel), as a lover of theChurch, likes to help in a thorough reformation, he should first beholda pattern of holy observance in the Swabian League. Let Master LazarusSpengler, too, inform himself well about the apostolic mode of commonlife, so that at the annual audit he may be able to give us and otherscounsel and guidance, how we may run through everything, that noughtremain over. And Master Albrecht Dürer, also, who is such a genius andmaster at drawing, he may very carefully inspect the stately buildings, and then if some day we want to alter our choir he will know how to giveus advice and help in making ample slide-windows (? blinds), so that oureyes may not be quite blinded. 

I shall not further trouble you, however, to bring us music to learn tosing by notes, for our beer is now so very sour that I fear the dregsmight stick fast among the four reeds or voices, and produce suchstrange sounds that the dogs would fly out of the church. But I musthumbly pray you not quite to wear out your eyes over the black and whitemagpies, so as no longer to know the little grey wolves at Nürnberg. Ihave heard much of the sharp-witted Swabians all my life, but it wouldbe well if we learnt more from them, now that they are so wiselylabouring with his Imperial Majesty to save the Apostolic life frombeing done away with. It is easy to see what very different lovers ofthe Church they are from our Masters here. 

Pardon me, my dear and gracious Masters, this my playful letter. It isall done _in caritate--summa summarum_; and the end of it is that Ishould rejoice at your speedy return in health and happiness with theglad accomplishment of the business committed to you. For this I and mysisters heartily pray God day and night; still we cannot carry itthrough alone, so I counsel you to entreat the pious and pure hearts (ofAugsburg) to sing in high quavers that thereby things may speed well. And now many happy times to you!

Given at Nürnberg on September 3, 1518. 

SISTER CHARITAS, unprofitable Abbess of S. Clara's at Nürnberg. 

Dürer returned with a letter to the Town Council of Nürnberg, from whichthe following extract is taken:

Honourable, trusty, and well-beloved, Whereas you are bound to pay us onnext St. Martin's day year a remainder, to wit 200 florins Rhenish, outof the accustomed town contribution which you are wont to render intoour and the Empire's treasury.... We earnestly charge you to deliver andpay the said 200 florins, accepting our quittance therefor, unto our andthe Empire's trusty and well-beloved Albrecht Dürer, our painter, onaccount of his honest services, willingly rendered to us at our commandfor our "Car of Triumph" and in other ways; and, at the said time, these200 florins shall be deducted for you from the accustomed towncontribution. Thus you will perform our earnest desire. 

Given, &c. 

Dürer procured a receipt for the 200 florins, signed by the emperorhimself. But before "next St. Martin's day year, " Maximilian was dead, and the 200 florins no longer his to dispose of, being due to the newEmperor Charles V. The municipal authorities of Nürnberg refused to payuntil his Privilegium had been confirmed by Maximilian's successor. 

Dürer wrote the following letter to the Council:

NÜRNBERG, April 27, 1519. 

Prudent, honourable and wise, gracious, dear Lords. Your Honours areaware that, at the Diet lately holden by his Imperial Roman Majesty, ourmost gracious lord of very praiseworthy memory, I obtained a graciousassignment from his Imperial Majesty of 200 florins from the yearlypayable town contributions of Nürnberg. This assignment was granted tome, after many applications and much trouble, in return for the zealouswork and labour, which, for a long time previously, I had devoted to hisMajesty. And he sent you order and command to that effect, signed withhis accustomed signature, and quittance in all form, which quittance, duly sealed, is in my hands. 

Now I rest humbly confident that your Honours will graciously rememberme as your obedient burgher, who has employed much time in the serviceand work of his Imperial Majesty, our most rightful Lord, with but smallrecompense, and has thereby lost both profit and advantage in otherways. And therefore I trust that you will now deliver me these 200florins to his Imperial Majesty's order and quittance, that so I mayreceive a fitting reward and satisfaction for my care, pains, andwork--as, no doubt, was his Imperial Majesty's intention. 

But seeing that some Emperor or King might in the future claim these 200florins from your Honours, or might not be willing to spare them, butmight some day demand them back again from me, I am, therefore, willingto relieve your Honours and the town of this chance, by appointing andmortgaging, as security and pledge therefor, my tenement situated at thecorner under the Veste, and which belonged to my late father, that soyour Honours may suffer neither prejudice nor loss thereby. Thus am Iready to serve your Honours, my gracious rulers and Lords. 

Your Wisdoms' willing burgher, ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

[Illustration: FREDERICK THE WISE. Silver-point drawing, BritishMuseum. ]

Dürer next wrote "to the honourable, most learned Master Georg Spalatin, Chaplain to my most gracious lord, Duke Friedrich, the Elector"of Saxony. 

The letter is undated, but clearly belongs to the early part of the year1520. 

Most worthy and dear Master, I have already sent you my thanks in theshort letter, for then I had only read your brief note. It was not tillafterwards, when the bag in which the little book was wrapped was turnedinside out, that I for the first time found the real letter in it, andlearnt that it was my most gracious Lord himself who sent me Luther'slittle book. So I pray your worthiness to convey most emphatically myhumble thanks to his Electoral Grace, and in all humility to beseech hisElectoral Grace to take the praiseworthy Dr. Martin Luther under hisprotection for the sake of Christian truth. For that is of moreimportance to us than all the power and riches of this world; becauseall things pass away with time, Truth alone endures for ever. 

God helping me, if ever I meet Dr. Martin Luther, I intend to draw acareful portrait of him from the life and to engrave it on copper, for alasting remembrance of a Christian man who helped me out of greatdistress. And I beg your worthiness to send me for my money anything newthat Dr. Martin may write. 

As to Spengler's "Apology for Luther, " about which you write, I musttell you that no more copies are in stock; but it is being reprinted atAugsburg, and I will send you some copies as soon as they are ready. Butyou must know that, though the book was printed here, it is condemned inthe pulpit as heretical and meet to be burnt, and the man who publishedit anonymously is abused and defamed. It is reported that Dr. Eck wantedto burn it in public at Ingolstadt, as was done to Dr. Reuchlin's book. 

With this letter I send for my most gracious lord three impressions of acopper-plate of my most gracious lord of Mainz, which I engraved at hisrequest. I sent the copper-plate with 200 impressions as a present tohis Electoral Grace, and he graciously sent me in return 200 florins ingold and 20 ells of damask for a coat. I joyfully and thankfullyaccepted them, especially as I was in want of them at that time. 

His Imperial Majesty also, of praiseworthy memory, who died too soon forme, had graciously made provision for me, because of the great andlong-continued labour, pains, and care, which I spent in his service. But now the Council will no longer pay me the 100 florins, which I wasto have received every year of my life from the town taxes, and whichwas yearly paid to me during his Majesty's lifetime. So I am to bedeprived of it in my old age and to see the long time, trouble, andlabour all lost which I spent for his Imperial Majesty. As I am losingmy sight and freedom of hand my affairs do not look well. I don't careto withhold this from you, kind and trusted Sir. 

If my gracious lord remembers his debt to me of the staghorns, may I askyour Worship to keep him in mind of them, so that I may get a fine pair. I shall make two candlesticks of them. 

I send you here two little prints of the Cross from a plate engraved ingold. One is for your Worship. Give my service to Hirschfeld andAlbrecht Waldner. Now, your Worship, commend me faithfully to my mostgracious lord, the Elector. 

Your willing ALBRECHT DÜRER at Nürnberg. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: _The Massacre of the Ten Thousand Saints. _]

[Footnote 21: Supposed to be the _Madonna with the Iris_. ]

[Footnote 22: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " p. 178. ]

[Footnote 23: The soil about Nürnberg is sandy. ]

CHAPTER V

DÜRER, LUTHER AND THE HUMANISTS

I

But while Dürer was thus busily at work or dunning his great debtors, Luther had appeared. In 1517 he nailed his ninety-five theses to thedoor of Wittenberg church, and Cardinal Caietan by the unlucky Leo X. Was poured like oil upon the fire which they had lighted. Luther hadbeen summoned to meet the Cardinal at the Diet of Augsburg, where Dürerwent to see Maximilian, though he only arrived there after our friendsfrom Nuremberg had departed. However, Luther passed through Nuremberg onfoot, and borrowed a coat of a friend there in order to figure withdecency before the Diet. Yet Dürer probably did not meet him, althoughthe words in the letter to George Spalatin, quoted above, "If ever Imeet Dr. Martin Luther, I intend to draw a careful portrait of him andengrave it on copper, " do not forbid the possibility of this earlymeeting before the Reformer had become so famous. Next the Pope tried tosoothe by sending Miltitz with flatteries and promises--a man that couldsmile and weep to order, but who succeeded neither with the ElectorFrederic, nor with Luther, nor with Germany. At Nuremberg the preacherWenzel Link soon formed a little reformed congregation, to which Dürer, Pirkheimer, Spengler, Nützel, Scheurl, Ebner, Holzschurher, and othersbelonged. We have already seen how, soon after this, Dürer was anxiousfor Luther's safety, by the letter to the wise Elector, quoted above;and in 1518 he sent Luther a number of his prints, and soon after joinedwith others of Link's hearers to send a greeting of encouragement. Andbefore long we find him jotting down a list of sixteen of Luther'stracts, either because he intended to get and read them, or because theywere already his; and on the back of a drawing we find the followingoutline of the faith such as he then apprehended it, in which we seeclearly that Christ has become the voice of conscience--the power in aman by which he recognises and creates good. 

Seeing that through disobedience of sin we have fallen into everlastingDeath, no help could have reached us save through the incarnation of theSon of God, whereby He through His innocent suffering might abundantlypay the Father all our guilt, so that the Justice of God might besatisfied. For He has repented, of and made atonement for the sins ofthe whole world, and has obtained of the Father Everlasting Life. Therefore Christ Jesus is the Son of God, the highest power, who can doall things, and He is the Eternal life. Into whomsoever Christ comes helives, and himself lives in Christ. Therefore all things are in Christgood things. There is nothing good in us except it becomes good inChrist. Whosoever, therefore, will altogether justify himself is unjust. _If we will what is good, Christ wills it in us_. No human repentance isenough to equalise deadly sin and be fruitful. 

In this the old mythological language is retained, but it has received anew interpretation or significance, and this quite without the writer'sperceiving what he is doing. Christ is affirmed to have repented of thesins of the whole world. Among the early heresiarchs there were, Ibelieve, some who went so far as to hold that he had committed the sinsbefore he repented of them, and triumphed over their effects by hissufferings and death. In any case, a similar feeling is expressed by ourodd mystic Blake in his "Everlasting Gospel":

 "If He (Jesus) intended to take on sin, His mother should an harlot have bin. "

The actual records of Christ are too meagre the moment he is regarded asan allegory of human life; and such additions to the creed springnaturally out of the ardent seeker's desire to realise the universalityimplied in the dogma of his Godhead, which is accepted even by Blake asa historical fact beyond question. It was not the character of so muchas can be perceived of the universe which daunted Luther and Dürer, asit daunts the serious man to-day. They accepted what appears to us acheap and easy subterfuge, because they believed it to have beenprescribed by God; the ambiguous inferences which such a prescriptionmust logically cast on the Divine character did not arrest theirattention. What they gained was a free conscience, a conscience in whichChrist was, to use their language, and which was in Christ; and forpractical piety this was sufficient. They themselves had not made uptheir minds on theoretical points; it was only in the face of theiropponents that they thought of arming themselves with like weapons, andsought a mechanical agreement upon questions about which no one ever hasknown, or probably ever can know, anything at all. This was whereLuther's pugnacity betrayed him; so that little by little he seems tolose spiritual beauty, as the monk, all fire and intensity, istransformed into the "plump doctor, " and again into the bird of ill omenwho croaked. 

"The arts are growing as if there was to be a new start and the worldwas to become young again. I hope God will finish with it. We have comealready to the White Horse. Another hundred years and all will be over. "

Compare this with Dürer's:

"Sure am I that many notable men will arise, all of whom will write bothwell and better about this art than I. "

"Would to God that it were possible for me to see the work and art ofthe mighty masters to come, who are yet unborn, for I know that I mightbe improved. "

I do not want to judge Luther harshly; he had done splendidly, and it isdifficult to meddle with worldly things without soiling one's fingersand depressing one's heart; but I ask which of these two quotationsexpresses man's most central character best--the desire for noblerlife--which reveals the more admirable temper? (Dürer had been touchedby the spirit of the Renaissance as well as by that of the Reformation;we can distinguish easily when he is speaking under the one influence, when under the other, and the contrast often impresses one as thecontrast between the above quotations. And it gives us great reason todeplore that the two spirits could not work side by side as they did inDürer and a few rare souls, but that in the world there was war betweenthem. ) It seems inevitable that the things men fight about should alwaysbe spoiled. The best part of written thought is something that cannot beanalysed, cannot therefore be defended or used for offence; it is aspirit, an emanation, something that influences us more subtly than weknow how to describe. 

We see by the passage quoted that Dürer was not only influenced byLuther's heroism, but by his doctrinal theorising. Unfortunately we donot know whether he outgrew this second and less admirable influence. Did he feel like his friend Pirkheimer in the end, that "the newevangelical knaves made the old popish knaves seem pious by contrast?"Milton under similar circumstances came to think that "New Presbyter isbut old Priest writ large. " Probably not; for just as we know he did notabandon what seemed to him beautiful and helpful in old Catholicceremonies, usages, and conceptions, so probably he would not confusewhat had been real gain in the Reformation with the excesses ofAnabaptists or Socialists, or even of Luther himself or his followers. There is no reason to suppose he would have judged so hastily as thegouty irascible Pirkheimer, however much he may have deplored the courseof events. It must have been evident to thoughtful men, then, that itwas impossible for so large an area to be furnished with properlytrained pastors in so short a time, and that therefore more or lessdeplorable material was bound to be mingled in the official _personnel_of the new sect. It is impossible, when we consider how he solved theprecisely parallel difficulty in aesthetics, not to feel that if he hadhad time given him, he would have arrived in point of doctrine at amoderation similar to that of Erasmus. 

Men deliberate and hold numberless differing opinions about beauty.... Being then, as we are, in such a state of error, I know not certainlywhat the ultimate measure of true beauty is.... Because now we cannotaltogether attain unto perfection shall we, therefore, wholly cease fromlearning? By no means ... For it behoveth the rational man to choose thegood. (See the passage complete on page 15. )

Luther imagined that the faith that saved was entire confidence in thefact that a bargain had been struck between the Persons of the Trinity, according to which Christ's sacrifice should be accepted as satisfyingthe justice of his Father, outraged by Adam's fault. To-day this appearsto the majority of educated men a fantastic conception. For them thefaith that saves is love of goodness, as love of beauty saves the artistfrom mistakes into which his intelligence would often plunge him. Jesushas no claim upon us superior to his goodness and his beauty; nor can weconceive of the possibility of such a claim. But we recognise with Dürerthat we do not know what the true measure of goodness and beauty is, andall that we can do is to choose always the good and the beautifulaccording to the measure of our reason--to the fulness of the light atpresent granted to us. 

II

The curiosity of the modern man of science no doubt is descended fromthat of men like Leonardo and the early Humanists, but it differs fromalmost more than it resembles it. The motive power behind both is nodoubt the confidence of the healthy mind that the human intelligencewill ultimately prove adequate to comprehend the spectacle of theuniverse. But for the Humanists, for Dürer and his friends, theconsciousness of the irreconcilableness of that spectacle with thenecessary ideals of human nature had not produced, as in ourcontemporaries and our immediate forerunners it has produced, either theatrophy of expectation which afflicts some, or the extravagance ofingenuity that cannot rest till it has rationalised hope, which tormentsothers. They were saddled with neither the indifference nor therestlessness of the modern intellect. They escaped like boys on aholiday. They felt conscious of doing what their schoolmaster meant themto do, though they were actually doing just what they liked. It was allfor the glory of God in Dürer's mind; but how or why God should bepleased with what he did, did not trouble him. He engraved and soldimpressions of a plate representing a sow with eight legs; he made adrawing, which is at Oxford, of an infant girl with two heads and fourarms, and calmly wrote beneath it:--

Item, in the year reckoned 1512, after the birth of Christ, such acreature (_Frucht_) as is represented above, was born in Bavaria, on theLord of Werdenberg's land, in a village named Ertingen over againstRiedlingen. It was on the 20th of the hay month (July), and they werebaptized, the one head Elspett, the other Margrett. 

Just so, Luther is no more than St. Paul abashed to say that God hadneed of some men intended for dishonour, as a potter makes some vesselsfor honourable, some for dishonourable uses. The modern mind at oncereflects: "If that is the case, so much the worse for God; by so much isit impossible that I should ever worship Him;" and it will prefer anyprolongation of "that most wholesome frame of mind, a suspendedjudgment, " to accepting a solution so cheap as that offered by theApostle and Reformer, which has come to seem simply injurious. 

The spirit of the enlarged schoolboy was, I think, really the attitudeof the best minds then and onwards to Descartes and Spinoza. They gavethemselves up to the study of nature without ceasing to belong to theirschool, yet freed, as on a holiday, from the constraint of beingactually in it. Yet, in regard to their personal and social life, atleast north of the Alps, the majority of such men were very consciouslyand dutifully under "their great taskmaster's eye"; and in that alsothey differ in a measure from the more part of modern scientists. 

Dürer made up a rhinoceros from a sketch and description sent to himfrom Portugal, whither the uncouth creature had been brought in a shipfrom Goa. Dürer's drawing was engraved and became the parent ofinnumerable rhinoceroses in lesson-books, doing service right down wellinto the late century, as Thausing assures us. The unfortunate originalwas sent as a present to Leo X. , who wanted to see him fight with anelephant which had made him laugh by squirting water and kneeling downto be blessed as sensibly as a Christian. So the poor beast was shippedagain, only to be shipwrecked near Porto Venere, where he was last seenswimming valiantly, but hopelessly impeded by his chain, and baffled bythe rocky shore. In the Netherlands, Dürer's curiosity to see a whalenearly resulted in his own shipwreck, and indirectly produced the maladywhich finally killed him. But Dürer's curiosity was really mostscientific where it was most artistic; in his portraits, in his studiesof plants and birds and the noses of stags, or the slumber of lions. 

Doubtless it was not a very dissimilar motive which gained him entranceinto the women's bath at Nuremberg, for we see he must have been thereby the beautiful pen drawing at Bremen and the slighter one of the samesubject at Chatsworth. These drawings may also illustrate what in hisbook on the Proportion he calls the words of difference--stout, lean, short, tall, &c. (see p. 285), as he would seem to have chosen types asvarious as possible, ranging from the human sow to the slim anddignified beauty. In the same spirit he studied perspective and the artof measuring; he felt the importance to art of inquiry in thesedirections; nevertheless, to seize the beautiful elements in nature wasever the object of his efforts, however, roundabout they may sometimesappear to us. "The sight of a fine human figure is above all things themost pleasing to us, wherefore I will first construct the rightproportions of a man. " (See p. 321. ) His aesthetic curiosity had nothingin common with that which considers all objects and appearances asequally interesting. What he meant by Nature, when he bid the artisthave continual recourse to her, was far from being the momentary andaccidental appearance of any thing or things anywhere, --which the modern"student of Nature" admires because he has neither sufficient force ofcharacter to prefer, nor sufficient right feeling to defer to thepreferences of those who have more. 

Leonardo's natural history is delightful reading, because it combinessuch fantastic and inventive fables as surpass even the happiest effortsof our nonsense writers with a beautiful openness of mind which we seeoftener in children than in sages, --which is, in fact, the seriousnessof those who are truly learning, and are not too conscious of what hasalready been learnt. 

As a boy adds to the pleasure he has in adventuring further and furtherinto a cave the delight of awesome supposition--for what may not thenext turn reveal?--and is pleased to feel all his young machinery readyinstantly to enact a panic if his torch should blow out, and laughs ateach furtive rehearsal of his own terror in which he indulges;--so theHumanists turned from astronomy to astrology, and used their skill inmathematics to play with horoscopes which they more than half believedmight bite. There was just enough doubt as to whether any given wonderwas a miracle to make it interesting; and at any moment the pall ofsuperstition might stifle the flickering light of inquiry, as we feelwas the case when Dürer writes:

The most wonderful thing I ever saw occurred in the year 1503, whencrosses fell upon many persons, and especially on children rather thanon elder people. Amongst others, I saw one of the form which I haverepresented below. It had fallen into Eyrer's maid's shift, as she wassitting in the house at the back of Pirkheimer's (i. E. , in the housewhere Dürer was born). She was so troubled about it that she wept andcried aloud, for she feared that she must die because of it. 

I have also seen a comet in the sky. 

And again, the terror caused by a very bad and strange dream passes thebounds of play; and one feels that the belief that a vision of the nightmight produce or prefigure dreadful change was for him something a greatdeal more serious than for the dilettante spiritualist andwonder-tickler of to-day. He writes:

In the night between Wednesday and Thursday after Whit Sunday (May30-31, 1525), I saw this appearance in my sleep--how many great watersfell from heaven. The first struck the earth about four miles away fromme with terrific force and tremendous noise, and it broke up and drownedthe whole land. I was so sore afraid that I awoke from it. Then theother waters fell, and as they fell they were very powerful, and therewere many of them, some further away, some nearer. And they came downfrom so great a height that they all seemed to fall with an equalslowness. But when the first water that touched the earth had verynearly reached it, it fell with such swiftness, with wind and roaring, and I was so sore afraid that when I awoke my whole body trembled, andfor a long while I could not recover myself. So when I arose in themorning, I painted it above here as I saw it God turn all these thingsto the best. ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

The instinct for recording which dictates such a note as this ischaracteristic of Dürer, and called into being many of his drawings. Many such naïve and explicit records as that on the drawing whichRaphael sent him are to be found in the flyleaves of books and on themargins of prints and drawings, his possessions. In such notes we maysee not only an effect of the curiosity, and desire to arrange andco-ordinate information, which resulted in modern science; but somethingthat is akin to that worship and respect for the deeds and productionsof those long dead or in distant countries, in which the human spiritrelieved itself from the oppressive expectation of judgment andvengeance which had paralysed it, as the beauty of the supernaturalworld was lost sight of behind its terrors, and witches and wizardsengrossed the popular mind, in which for a time saints and angels hadheld the ascendancy. The future now became the return of a golden age;not a garish and horrible novelty called heaven and hell, but a humansociety beautiful as that of the Greeks, grand as that of republicanRome, sweet and hospitable as the household of Jesus and Mary. TheReformation is in part a return of the old fears; but Dürer has recordedonly one bad dream, whereas he tells that he was often visited by dreamsworthy of the glorious Renascence. "Would to God it were possible for meto see the work and art of the mighty masters to come, who are yetunborn, for I know that I might be improved. Ah! _how often in my_ sleepdo I behold great works of art and beautiful things, the like whereofnever appear to me awake, but so soon as I awake even the remembrance ofthem leaveth me!" Why was he not sent to Rome to see the ceiling of theSistina and Raphael's Stanze? Perchance it was these that he saw inhis dreams?

CHAPTER VI

DÜRER'S JOURNEY TO THE NETHERLANDS

I

It is even more the case with Dürer's journal written in the Netherlandsthan with the letters from Venice that, like life itself, it is full ofrepetitions and over-insistence on what is insignificant. I quote themost interesting passages, and as there is never a good reason for doingagain what has already been well done; I am happy to quote Sir MartinConway's excellent notes, having found occasion to add only one. Dürerset out on July 12, 1520, with his wife and her maid Susanna. It wasprobably this Susanna who three years later married Georg Penz, one of"the three godless painters. " Dürer took a great many prints andwoodcuts, books both to sell and to give as presents; and besides hetook a sketch book in which he made silver-point sketches and portraits. A good number of its pages have come down to us, and a great many of theportraits he mentions having taken were done in it, and then cut out togive to the sitter. All these drawings are on the same sized paper. Wereproduce one of them here (see page 156). Besides this sketch-book heevidently had a memorandum-book in which he recorded what he did, whathe spent, whom he saw, and occasionally what he felt or what he wished. The original is lost, but an old copy of it is in the Bamberg Library. 

_July_ 12. --On Thursday after Kilian's, I, Albrecht Dürer, at my owncharges and costs, took myself and my wife (and maid Susanna) away tothe Netherlands. And the same day, after passing through Erlangen, weput up for the night at Baiersdorf and spent there 3 pounds less6 pfennigs. 

July 13. --Next day, Friday, we came to Forchheim, and there I paid 22pf. For the convoy. 

Thence I journeyed to Bamberg, where I presented the Bishop (Georg III. Schenk von Limburg[24]) with a Madonna painting, a Life of our Lady, anApocalypse, and a Horin's worth of engravings. He invited me as hisguest, gave me a Toll-pass[25] and three letters of introduction, andpaid my bill at the inn, where I had spent about a florin. 

I paid six florins in gold to the boatman who took me from Bamberg toFrankfurt. 

Master Lukas Benedict and Hans, [26] the painter, sent me wine. 

 * * * * *

ANTWERP, _August_ 2-26, 1520. 

At Antwerp I went to Jobst Plankfelt's[27] inn, and the same evening atFuggers' Factor, [28] Bernhard Stecher invite and gave us a costly meal. My wife, however, dined at the inn. I paid the driver three gold florinsfor bringing us three, and one st. I paid for carrying the goods. 

_August_ 4. --On Saturday after the feast of St. Peter in Chains my hosttook me to see the Burgomaster's (Arnold van Liere) house at Antwerp. Itis newly built and beyond measure large, and very well ordered, withspacious and exceedingly beautiful chambers, a tower splendidlyornamented, a very large garden--altogether a noble house, the like ofwhich I have nowhere seen in all Germany. The house also is reached fromboth sides by a very long street, which has been quite newly builtaccording to the Burgomaster's liking and at his charges. 

I paid three st. To the messenger, two pf. For bread, two pf. For ink. 

August 5. --On Sunday, it was St. Oswald's Day, the painters invited meto the hall of their guild, with my wife and maid. All their service wasof silver, and they had other splendid ornaments and very costly meats. All their wives also were there. And as I was being led to the table thecompany stood on both sides as if they were leading some great lord. Andthere were amongst them men of very high position, who all behaved mostrespectfully towards me with deep courtesy, and promised to doeverything in their power agreeable to me that they knew of. And as Iwas sitting there in such honour the Syndic (Adrian Horebouts) ofAntwerp came, with two servants, and presented me with four cans of winein the name of the Town Councillors of Antwerp, and they had bidden himsay that they wished thereby to show their respect for me and to assureme of their good will. Wherefore I returned them my humble thanks andoffered my humble service. After that came Master Peeter (Frans), thetown-carpenter, and presented me with two cans of wine, with the offerof his willing services. So when we had spent a long and merry timetogether till late in the night, they accompanied us home with lanternsin great honour. And they begged me to be ever assured and confident oftheir good will, and promised that in whatever I did they would beall-helpful to me. So I thanked them and laid me down to sleep. 

The Treasurer (Lorenz Sterk) also gave me a child's head (painted) onlinen, and a wooden weapon from Calicut, and one of the light woodreeds. Tomasin, too, has given me a plaited hat of alder bark. I dinedonce with the Portuguese, and have given a brother of Tomasin's threefl. Worth of engravings. 

Herr Erasmus[29] has given me a small Spanish _mantilla_ and three men'sportraits. 

I took the portrait of Herr Niklas Kratzer, [30] an astronomer. He liveswith the King of England, and has been very helpful and useful to me inmany matters. He is a German, a native of Munich. I also made theportrait of Tomasin's daughter, Mistress Zutta by name. HansPfaffroth[31] gave me one Philips fl. For taking his portrait incharcoal. I have dined once more with Tomasin. My host's brother-in-lawentertained me and my wife once. I changed two light florins fortwenty-four st. For living expenses, and I gave one st. _t&k&d_ to a manwho let me see an altar-piece. 

[Illustration: Silver-point drawing on a white ground, in the BerlinPrint Room]

_August_ 19. --On the Sunday after our dear Lady's Assumption I saw thegreat Procession from the Church of our Lady at Antwerp, when the wholetown of every craft and rank was assembled, each dressed in his bestaccording to his rank. And all ranks and guilds had their signs, bywhich they might be known. In the intervals great costly pole-candleswere borne, and their long old Frankish trumpets of silver. There werealso in the German fashion many pipers and drummers. All the instrumentswere loudly and noisily blown and beaten. 

I saw the procession pass along the street, the people being arranged inrows, each man some distance from his neighbour, but the rows close onebehind another. There were the Goldsmiths, the Painters, the Masons, theBroderers, the Sculptors, the Joiners, the Carpenters, the Sailors, theFishermen, the Butchers, the Leatherers, the Clothmakers, the Bakers, the Tailors, the Cordwainers--indeed, workmen of all kinds, and manycraftsmen and dealers who work for their livelihood. Likewise theshopkeepers and merchants and their assistants of all kinds were there. After these came the shooters with guns, bows, and cross-bows, and thehorsemen and foot-soldiers also. Then followed the watch of the LordsMagistrates. Then came a fine troop all in red, nobly and splendidlyclad. Before them, however, went all the religious Orders and themembers of some Foundations very devoutly, all in their different robes. 

A very large company of widows also took part in this procession. Theysupport themselves with their own hands and observe a special rule. Theywere all dressed from head to foot in white linen garments, madeexpressly for the occasion, very sorrowful to see. Among them I saw somevery stately persons. Last of all came the Chapter of our Lady's Church, with all their clergy, scholars, and treasurers. Twenty persons bore theimage of the Virgin Mary with the Lord Jesus, adorned in the costliestmanner, to the honour of the Lord God. 

In this procession very many delightful things were shown, mostsplendidly got up. Waggons were drawn along with masques upon ships andother structures. Behind them came the company of the Prophets in theirorder, and scenes from the New Testament, such as the Annunciation, theThree Holy Kings riding on great camels and on other rare beasts, verywell arranged; also how our Lady fled to Egypt--very devout--and manyother things, which for shortness I omit. At the end came a great Dragonwhich St. Margaret and her maidens led by a girdle; she was especiallybeautiful. Behind her came St. George with his squire, a very goodlyknight in armour. In this host also rode boys and maidens most finelyand splendidly dressed in the costumes of many lands, representingvarious Saints. From beginning to end the procession lasted more thantwo hours before it was gone past our house. And so many things werethere that I could never write them all in a book, so I let itwell alone. 

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BRUSSELS _August_ 26-_September_ 3, 1520. 

In the golden chamber in the Townhall at Brussels I saw the fourpaintings which the great Master Roger van der Weyden[32] made. And Isaw out behind the King's house at Brussels the fountains, labyrinth, and Beast-garden[33]; anything more beautiful and pleasing to me andmore like a Paradise I have never seen. Erasmus is the name of thelittle man who wrote out my supplication at Herr Jacob de Bannisis'house. At Brussels is a very splendid Townhall, large, and covered withbeautiful carved stonework, and it has a noble open tower. I took aportrait at night by candlelight of Master Konrad of Brussels, who wasmy host; I drew at the same time Doctor Lamparter's son in charcoal, also the hostess. 

I saw the things which have been brought to the King from the new landof gold (Mexico), a sun all of gold a whole fathom broad, and a moon allof silver of the same size, also two rooms full of the armour of thepeople there, and all manner of wondrous weapons of theirs, harness anddarts, very strange clothing, beds, and all kinds of wonderful objectsof human use, much better worth seeing than prodigies. These things wereall so precious that they are valued at 100, 000 florins. All the days ofmy life I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as thesethings, for I saw amongst them wonderful works of art, and I marvelledat the subtle _Ingenia_ of men in foreign lands. Indeed, I cannotexpress all that I thought there. 

At Brussels I saw many other beautiful things besides, and especially Isaw a fish bone there, as vast as if it had been built up of squaredstones. It was a fathom long and very thick, it weighs up to 15 cwt. , and its form resembles that drawn here. It stood up behind on the fish'shead. I was also in the Count of Nassau's house, [34] which is verysplendidly built and as beautifully adorned. I have again dined with myLords (of Nürnberg). 

When I was in the Nassau house in the chapel there, I saw the goodpicture[35] that Master Hugo van der Goes painted, and I saw the twofine large halls and the treasures everywhere in the house, also thegreat bed wherein fifty men can lie. And I _saw_ the great stone whichthe storm cast down in the field near the Lord of Nassau. The housestands high, and from it there is a most beautiful view, at which onecannot but wonder: and I do not believe that in all the German lands thelike of it exists. 

Master Bernard van Orley, the painter, invited me and prepared so costlya meal that I do not think ten fl. Will pay for it. Lady Margaret'sTreasurer (Jan de Marnix), whom I drew, and the King's Steward, Jehan deMetenye by name, and the Town-Treasurer named Van Busleyden invitedthemselves to it, to get me good company. I gave Master Bernard a_Passion_ engraved in copper, and he gave me in return a black Spanishbag worth three fl. I have also given Erasmus of Rotterdam a _Passion_engraved in copper. 

I have once more taken Erasmus of Rotterdam's portrait[36] I gave LorenzSterk a sitting _Jerome_ and the _Melancholy_, and took a portrait of myhostess' godmother. Six people whose portraits I drew at Brussels havegiven me nothing. I paid three st. For two buffalo horns, and one st. For two Eulenspiegels. [37]

ANTWERP, _September 6-October 4_, 1520. 

I have paid one st for the printed "Entry into Antwerp, " telling how theKing was received with a splendid triumph--the gates very costlyadorned--and with plays, great joy, and graceful maidens whose like Ihave seldom seen. [38] I changed one fl. For expenses. I saw at Antwerpthe bones of the giant. His leg above the knee is 5-1/2 ft. Long andbeyond measure heavy and very thick; so with his shoulder blades--asingle one is broader than a strong man's back--and his other limbs. Theman was 18 ft. High, had ruled at Antwerp and done wondrous great feats, as is more fully written about him in an old book, [39] which the Lordsof the Town possess. 

[Illustration: ERASMUS From a reproduction of the drawing in the "LéonBonnat" collection, Bayonne _Face p. _ 148]

The studio (school) of Raphael of Urbino has quite broken up since hisdeath, [40] but one of his scholars, Tommaso Vincidor of Bologna[41] byname, a good painter, desired to see me. So he came to me and has givenme an antique gold ring with a very well cut stone. It is worth fivefl. , but already I have been offered the double for it. I gave him sixfl. Worth of my best prints for it. I bought a piece of calico for threest. ; I paid the messenger one st. ; three st. I spent in company. 

I have presented a whole set of all my works to Lady Margaret, theEmperor's daughter, and have drawn her two pictures on parchment withthe greatest pains and care. All this I set at as much as thirty fl. AndI have had to draw the design of a house for her physician the doctor, according to which he intends to build one; and for drawing that I wouldnot care to take less than ten fl. I have given the servant one st. , andpaid one st. For brick-colour. 

 * * * * *

October 1. --On Monday after Michaelmas, 1520, I gave Thomas of Bologna awhole set of prints to send for me to Rome to another painter who shouldsend me Raphael's work[42] in return. I dined once with my wife. I paidthree st. For the little tracts. The Bolognese has made my portrait;[43]he means to take it with him to Rome. 

 * * * * *

AACHEN, _October 7-26, 1520_. 

_October_ 7. --At Aachen I saw the well-proportioned pillars, [44] withtheir good capitals of green and red porphyry (_Gassenstein_) whichCharles the Great had brought from Rome thither and there set up. Theyare correctly made according to Vitruvius' writings. 

_October_ 23. --On October 23 King Karl was crowned at Aachen. There Isaw all manner of lordly splendour, more magnificent than anything thatthose who live in our parts have seen--all, as it has been described. 

 * * * * *

KÖLN, _October 26--November 14, 1520_. 

I bought a tract of Luther's for five white pf. , and the "Condemnationof Luther, " the pious man, for one white pf. ; also a rosary for onewhite pf. And a girdle for two white pf. , a pound of candles forone white pf. 

_November_ 12. --I have made the nun's portrait. I gave the nun sevenwhite pf. And three half-sheet engravings. My confirmation[45] from theEmperor came to my Lords of Nürnberg for me on Monday after Martin's, inthe year 1520, after great trouble and labour. 

ANTWERP, _November_ %--_December_ 3, 1520. 

At Zierikzee, in Zeeland, a whale has been stranded by a high tide and agale of wind. It is much more than 100 fathoms long, and no man livingin Zeeland has seen one even a third as long as this is. The fish cannotget off the land; the people would gladly see it gone, as they fear thegreat stink, for it is so large that they say it could not be cut inpieces and the blubber boiled down in half a year. 

ZEELAND, _December_ 3-14, 1520. 

_December_ 8. --I went to Middelburg. There, in the Abbey, is a greatpicture painted by Jan de Mabuse--not so good in the modelling(_Hauptstreichen_) as in the colouring. I went next to the Veere, wherelie ships from all lands; it is a very fine little town. 

At Arnemuiden, where I landed before, a great misfortune befel me. As wewere pushing ashore and getting out our rope, a great ship bumped hardagainst us, as we were in the act of landing, and in the crush I had letevery one get out before me, so that only I, Georg Kotzler, [46] two oldwives, and the skipper with a small boy were left in the ship. When nowthe other ship bumped against us, and I with those named was still inthe ship and could not get out, the strong rope broke; and thereupon, inthe same moment, a storm of wind arose, which drove our ship back withforce. Then we all cried for help, but no one would risk himself for us. And the wind carried us away out to sea. Thereupon the skipper tore hishair and cried aloud, for all his men had landed and the ship wasunmanned. Then were we in fear and danger, for the wind was strong andonly six persons in the ship. So I spoke to the skipper that he shouldtake courage (_er sollt ein Herz fahen_) and have hope in God, and thathe should consider what was to be done. So he said that if he could haulup the small sail he would try if we could come again to land. So wetoiled all together and got it feebly about half-way up, and went onagain towards the land. And when the people on shore, who had alreadygiven us up, saw how we helped ourselves, they came to our aid and wegot to land. 

Middelburg is a good town; it has a very beautiful Townhall with a finetower. There is much art shown in all things here. In the Abbey thestalls are very costly and beautiful, and there is a splendid gallery ofstone; and there is a fine Parish Church. The town was besides excellentfor sketching (_köstlich au konterfeyen_). Zeeland is fine and wonderfulto see because of the water, for it stands higher than the land. I madea portrait of my host at Arnemuiden. Master Hugo and Alexander Imhof andFriedrich the Hirschvogels' servant gave me, each of them, an Indiancocoa-nut which they had won at play, and the host gave me asprouting bulb. 

_December_ 9--Early on Monday we started again by ship and went by theVeere and Zierikzee and tried to get sight of the great fish, [47] butthe tide had carried him off again. 

ANTWERP, _December_ 14--_April_ 6, 1521

I have eaten alone thus often. 

I took portraits of Gerhard Bombelli and the daughter of Sebastian theProcurator. 

_February_ 10. --On Carnival Sunday the goldsmiths invited me to dinnerearly with my wife. Amongst their assembled guests were many notablemen. They had prepared a most splendid meal, and did me exceeding greathonour. And in the evening the old Bailiff of the town[48] invited meand gave a splendid meal, and did me great honour. Many strange masquerscame there. I have drawn the portrait in charcoal of Florent Nepotis, Lady Margaret's organist. On Monday night Herr Lopez invited me to thegreat banquet on Shrove-Tuesday, which lasted till two o'clock, and wasvery costly. Herr Lorenz Sterk gave me a Spanish fur. To theabove-mentioned feast very many came in costly masks, and especiallyTomasin and Brandan. I won two fl. At play. 

I dined once with the Frenchman, twice with the Hirschvogels' Fritz, andonce with Master Peter Aegidius[49] the Secretary, when Erasmus ofRotterdam also dined with us. 

I have twice more drawn with the metal-point the portrait of thebeautiful maiden for Gerhard. 

I made Tomasin a design, drawn and tinted in half colours, after whichhe intends to have his house painted. 

I bought the five silk girdles, which I mean to give away, for three fl. Sixteen st. ; also a border (_Borte_) for twenty st. These six borders Isent to the wives of Caspar Nützel, Hans Imhof, Sträub, the twoSpenglers, and Löffelholz, [50] and to each a good pair of gloves. ToPirkheimer I sent a large cap, a costly inkstand of buffalo horn, asilver Emperor, one pound of pistachios, and three sugar canes. ToCaspar Nützel I sent a great elk's foot, ten large fir cones, and conesof the stone-pine. To Jacob Muffel I sent a scarlet breastcloth of oneell; to Hans Imhof's child an embroidered scarlet cap and stone-pinenuts; to Kramer's wife four ells of silk worth four fl. ; to Lochinger'swife one ell of silk worth one fl. ; to the two Spenglers a bag and threefine horns each; to Herr Hieronymus Holzschuher a very large horn. 

BRUGES AND GHENT, _April_ 6-11, 1521. 

I saw the chapel[51] there which Roger painted, and some pictures by agreat old master. I gave one st. To the man who showed us them. Then Ibought three ivory combs for thirty st. They took me next to St. Jacob'sand showed me the precious pictures by Roger and Hugo, [52]who were both great masters. Then I saw in our Lady's Church thealabaster[53] Madonna, sculptured by Michael Angelo of Rome. After thatthey took me to many more churches and showed me all the good pictures, of which there is an abundance there; and when I had seen the Jan vanEyck[54] and all the other works, we came at last to the painters'chapel, in which there are good things. Then they prepared a banquet forme, and I went with them from it to their guild-hall, where manyhonourable men were gathered together, both goldsmiths, painters andmerchants, and they made me sup with them. They gave me presents, soughtto make my acquaintance, and did me great honour. The two brothers, Jacob and Peter Mostaert, the councillors, gave me twelve cans of wine;and the whole assembly, more than sixty persons, accompanied me homewith many torches. I also saw at their shooting court the great fish-tubon which they eat; it is 19 feet long, 7 feet high, and 7 feet wide. Soearly on Tuesday we went away, but before that I drew with themetal-point the portrait of Jan Prost, and gave his wife ten st. At parting. 

 * * * * *

On my arrival at Ghent the Dean of the Painters came to me and broughtwith him the first masters in painting; they showed me great honour, received me most courteously, offered me their goodwill and service, andsupped with me. On Wednesday they took me early to the Belfry of St. John, whence I looked over the great wonderful town, yet in which even Ihad just been taken for something great. Then I saw Jan van Eyckspicture;[55] it is a most precious painting, full of thought (_einüberköstlich hochverständig Gemühl_), and the Eve, Mary, and God theFather are specially good. Next I saw the lions and drew one with themetal-point. [56] And I saw at the place where men are beheaded on thebridge, the two statues erected (in 1371) as a sign that there a sonbeheaded his father. [57] Ghent is a fine and remarkable town; four greatwaters flow through it. I gave the sacristan (at St. Bavon's) and thelions' keepers three st. _trinkgeld_. I saw many wonderful things inGhent besides, and the painters with their Dean did not leave me alone, but they ate with me morning and evening and paid for everything, andwere very friendly to me. I gave away five st. At the inn at leaving. 

ANTWERP, _April_ 11-_May_ 17, 1521. 

In the third week after Easter (April 21-27) a violent fever seized me, with great weakness, nausea, and headache. And before, when I was inZeeland, a wondrous sickness overcame me, such as I never heard of fromany man, and this sickness remains with me. I paid six st. For cases. The monk has bound two books for me in return for the art-wares which Igave him. I bought a piece of arras to make two mantles for mymother-in-law and my wife, for ten fl. Eight st. I paid the doctor eightst. , and three st. To the apothecary. I also changed one fl. Forexpenses, and spent three st. In company. Paid the doctor ten st. Iagain paid the doctor six st. During my illness Rodrigo has sent me manysweetmeats. I gave the lad four st. _trinkgeld_. 

[Illustration: Drawing in silver-point on prepared ground, from theNetherlands sketch-book, in the Imperial Library, Vienna]

On Friday (May 17) before Whit Sunday in the year 1521, came tidings tome at Antwerp, that Martin Luther had been so treacherously takenprisoner; for he trusted the Emperor Karl, who had granted him hisherald and imperial safe conduct. But as soon as the herald had conveyedhim to an unfriendly place near Eisenach he rode away, saying that he nolonger needed him. Straightway there appeared ten knights, and theytreacherously carried off the pious man, betrayed into their hands, aman enlightened by the Holy Ghost, a follower of the true Christianfaith. And whether he yet lives I know not, or whether they have put himto death; if so, he has suffered for the truth of Christ and because herebuked the unchristian Papacy, which strives with its heavy load ofhuman laws against the redemption of Christ. And if he has suffered itis that we may again be robbed and stripped of the truth of our bloodand sweat, that the same may be shamefully and scandalously squanderedby idle-going folk, while the poor and the sick therefore die of hunger. But this is above all most grievous to me, that, may be, God will sufferus to remain still longer under their false, blind doctrine, inventedand drawn up by the men alone whom they call Fathers, by whom also theprecious Word of God is in many places wrongly expounded orutterly ignored. 

Oh God of heaven, pity us! Oh Lord Jesus Christ, pray for Thy people!Deliver us at the fit time. Call together Thy far-scattered sheep by Thyvoice in the Scripture, called Thy godly Word. Help us to know this Thyvoice and to follow no other deceiving cry of human error, so that we, Lord Jesus Christ, may not fall away from Thee. Call together again thesheep of Thy pasture, who are still in part found in the Roman Church, and with them also the Indians, Muscovites, Russians, and Greeks, whohave been scattered by the oppression and avarice of the Pope and byfalse appearance of holiness. Oh God, redeem Thy poor people constrainedby heavy ban and edict, which it nowise willingly obeys, continually tosin against its conscience if it disobeys them. Never, oh God, hast Thouso horribly burdened a people with human laws as us poor folk under theRoman Chair, who daily long to be free Christians, ransomed by Thyblood. Oh highest, heavenly Father, pour into our hearts, through ThySon, Jesus Christ, such a light, that by it we may know what messengerwe are bound to obey, so that with good conscience we may lay aside theburdens of others and serve Thee, eternal, heavenly Father, with happyand joyful hearts. 

And if we have lost this man, who has written more clearly than any thathas lived for 140 years, and to whom Thou hast given such a spirit ofthe Gospel, we pray Thee, oh heavenly Father, that Thou wouldst againgive Thy Holy Spirit to one, that he may gather anew everywhere togetherThy Holy Christian Church, that we may again live free and in Christianmanner, and so, by our good works, all unbelievers, as Turks, Heathen, and Calicuts, may of themselves turn to us and embrace the Christianfaith. But, ere Thou judgest, oh Lord, Thou wiliest that, as Thy Son, Jesus Christ, was fain to die by the hands of the priests, and to risefrom the dead and after to ascend up to heaven, so too in like manner itshould be with Thy follower Martin Luther, whose life the Popecompasseth with his money, treacherously towards God. Him wilt thouquicken again. And as Thou, oh my Lord, ordainedst thereafter thatJerusalem should for that sin be destroyed, so wilt thou also destroythis self-assumed authority of the Roman Chair. Oh Lord, give us thenthe new beautified Jerusalem, which descendeth out of heaven, whereofthe Apocalypse writes, the holy, pure Gospel, which is not obscured byhuman doctrine. 

Every man who reads Martin Luther's books may see how clear andtransparent is his doctrine, because he sets forth the holy Gospel. Wherefore his books are to be held in great honour, and not to be burnt;unless indeed his adversaries, who ever strive against the truth andwould make gods out of men, were also cast into the fire, they and alltheir opinions with them, and afterwards a new edition of Luther's workswere prepared. Oh God, if Luther be dead, who will henceforth expound tous the holy Gospel with such clearness? What, oh God, might he not stillhave written for us in ten or twenty years!

Oh all ye pious Christian men, help me deeply to bewail this man, inspired of God, and to pray Him yet again to send us an enlightenedman. Oh Erasmus of Rotterdam, where wilt thou stop? Behold how thewicked tyranny of worldly power, the might of darkness, prevails. Hear, thou knight of Christ! Ride on by the side of the Lord Jesus. Guard thetruth. Attain the martyr's crown. Already indeed art thou an aged littleman (_ein altes Männiken_), and myself have heard thee say that thougivest thyself but two years more wherein thou mayest still be fit toaccomplish somewhat. Lay out the same well for the good of the Gospeland of the true Christian faith, and make thyself heard. So, as Christsays, shall the Gates of Hell (the Roman Chair) in no wise prevailagainst thee. And if here below thou wert to be like thy master Christand sufferedst infamy at the hands of the liars of this time, and didstdie a little the sooner, then wouldst thou the sooner pass from deathunto life and be glorified in Christ. For if thou drinkest of the cupwhich He drank of, with Him shalt thou reign and judge with justicethose who have dealt unrighteously. Oh Erasmus, cleave to this that GodHimself may be thy praise, even as it is written of David. For thoumayest, yea verily thou mayest overthrow Goliath. Because God stands bythe Holy Christian Church, even as He only upholds the Roman Church, according to His godly will. May He help us to everlasting salvation, who is God, the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost, one eternal God. Amen. 

Oh ye Christian men, pray God for help, for His judgment draweth nighand His justice shall appear. Then shall we behold the innocent bloodwhich the Pope, Priests, Bishops, and Monks have shed, judged andcondemned (_Apocal. _). These are the slain who lie beneath the Altar ofGod and cry for vengeance, to whom the voice of God answereth: Await thefull number of the innocent slain, then will I judge. 

 * * * * *

ANTWERP, _May_ 17--_June_ 7, 1521. 

Master Gerhard, [58] the illuminator, has a daughter about eighteen yearsold named Susanna. She has illuminated a _Salvator_ on a little sheet, for which I gave her one fl. It is very wonderful that a woman can do somuch. I lost six st. At play. I saw the great Procession at Antwerp onHoly Trinity day. Master Konrad gave me a fine pair of knives, so I gavehis little old man a _Life of our Lady_ in return. I have made aportrait in charcoal of Master Jan, [59] goldsmith of Brussels, also oneof his wife. I have been paid two fl. For prints. Master Jan, theBrussels goldsmith, paid me three Philips fl. For what I did for him, the drawing for the seal and the two portraits. I gave the Veronica, which I painted in oils, and the _Adam and Eve_ which Franz did, to Jan, the goldsmith, in exchange for a jacinth and an agate, on which aLucretia is engraved. Each of us valued his portion at fourteen fl. Further, I gave him a whole set of engravings for a ring and six stones. Each valued his portion at seven fl. I bought two pairs of shoes forfourteen st. , and two small boxes for two st. I changed two Philips fl. For expenses. I drew three _Leadings-forth_[60] and two Mounts ofOlives on five half-sheets. I took three portraits in black and white ongrey paper. I also sketched in black and white on grey paper twoNetherland costumes. I painted for the Englishman his coat of arms, andhe gave me one fl. I have also at one time and another done manydrawings and other things to serve different people, and for the morepart of my work have received nothing. Andreas of Krakau paid me onePhilips fl. For a shield and a child's head. Changed one il. Forexpenses. I paid two fl. For sweeping-brushes. I saw the greatprocession at Antwerp on Corpus Christi day; it was very splendid. Igave four st. As trinkgeld. I paid the doctor six st. And one st. For abox. I have dined five times with Tomasin. I paid ten st. At theapothecary's, and gave his wife fourteen st. For the clyster andhimself.... To the monk who confessed my wife I gave eight st. 

 * * * * *

MECHLIN, _June 7 and 8, 1521_. 

 * * * * *

At Mechlin I lodged with Master Heinrich, the painter, at the sign ofthe Golden Head. [61] And the painters and sculptors bade me as guest atmy inn and did me great honour in their gathering. I went also toPoppenreuter[62] the gunmaker's house, and found wonderful things there. And I went to Lady Margaret's and showed her my _Emperor, _[63] and wouldhave presented it to her, but she so disliked it that I took itaway with me. 

And on Friday Lady Margaret showed me all her beautiful things. Amongstthem I saw about forty small oil pictures, the like of which forprecision and excellence I have never beheld. There also I saw more goodworks by Jan (de Mabuse), and Jacob Walch. [64] I asked my Lady forJacob's little book, but she said she had already promised it to herpainter. [65] Then I saw many other costly things and a preciouslibrary. [66]

ANTWERP, _June_ 8--_July_ 3, 1521. 

Master Lukas, who engraves in copper, asked me as his guest. He is alittle man, born at Leyden in Holland; he was at Antwerp. 

I have drawn with the metal-point the portrait of Master Lukas vanLeyden. [67]

The man with the three rings has overreached me by half. I did notunderstand the matter. I bought a red cap for my god-child[68]foreighteen st. Lost twelve st. At play. Drank two st. 

Cornelius Grapheus, the Secretary, gave me Luther's "BabylonianCaptivity, "[69] in return for which I gave him my three Large Books. 

[Illustration: LUCAS VAN DER LEYDEN Drawing in charcoal formerly in thecollection at Warwick Castle. ]

I reckoned up with Jobst and found myself thirty-one fl. In his debt, which I paid him; therein were charged and deducted the two portraitheads which I painted in oils, for which he gave five pounds of boraxNetherlands weight. In all my doings, spendings, sales, and otherdealings, in all my connections with high and low, I have suffered lossin the Netherlands; and Lady Margaret in particular gave me nothing forwhat I made and presented to her. And this settlement with Jobst wasmade on St. Peter and Paul's day. 

On our Lady's Visitation, as I was just about to leave Antwerp, the Kingof Denmark sent to me to come to him at once, and take his portrait, which I did in charcoal. I also did that of his servant Anton, and I wasmade to dine with the King, and he behaved graciously towards me. I haveentrusted my bale to Leonhard Tucher and given over my white cloth tohim. The carrier with whom I bargained did not take me; I fell out withhim. Gerhard gave me some Italian seeds. I gave the new carrier(_Vicarius_) the great turtle shell, the fish-shield, the long pipe, thelong weapon, the fish-fins, and the two little casks of lemons andcapers to take home for me, on the day of our Lady's Visitation, 1521. 

BRUSSELS, _July_ 3-12, 1521. 

I noticed how the people of Antwerp marvelled greatly when they saw theKing of Denmark, to find him such a manly, handsome man and come hitherthrough his enemy's land with only two attendants. I saw, too, how theEmperor rode forth from Brussels to meet him, and received himhonourably with great pomp. Then I saw the noble, costly banquet, whichthe Emperor and Lady Margaret held next day in his honour. 

Thomas Bologna has given me an Italian work of art; I have also bought awork for one st. 

A few days later when the Dürers arrived at Cologne the journal breaksoff abruptly, as the last few leaves are missing: but there is everyreason to suppose that they got back safely to Nuremberg two or threeweeks later. 

II

This journal shows us how the influence of a greater centre ofcivilisation strengthened the spirit of the Renascence in Dürer: it ismarked by his having again taken up the paint brushes to do the bestsort of work, by a new out-break of the collector's acquisitiveness, lastly by the tone of such a passage as that wherein the procession onthe Sunday after our Lady's Assumption (p. 145) is spoken of withadmiration. "Twenty persons bore the image of the Virgin Mary with theLord Jesus, adorned in the costliest manner, to the honour of the LordGod. " Such a spectacle has a very different significance to his mindfrom that of another procession in honour of the Virgin, depicted in awoodcut by Michael Ostendorfer, which presents a large space in front ofa temporary church; in the midst is a gaudy statue of the Virgin setupon a pillar, around whose base seven or eight persons of both sexes, whom one might suppose from their attitudes to be drunk, are seenwrithing, while a procession headed by huge cierges and a cardinal's haton a pole encircles the whole building; those in the procession carryingofferings or else candles, two men being naked save for scanty hairshirts. On the margin of the copy now at Coburg Dürer has written:"1523, this Spectre, contrary to Holy Scripture, has set itself up atRegensburg and has been dressed out by the Bishop. God help us that weshould not so dishonour His precious mother but (honour her?) in ChristJesus. Amen. " Indeed, it would be difficult to distinguish between thekind of honour done the Virgin in many of Dürer's pictures and etchingsand that done her in the Antwerp procession; but both are infinitelyremoved from the degradation of emotion produced by an orgy ofsuperstition such as that depicted in Ostendorfer's print, which istruly nearer akin to the scenes that occasionally occur in SalvationArmy or Methodist revivals, and is even more repugnant to the spirit ofthe Renascence than to that of the Reformation as Luther and Dürerconceived of it. It is well to remind ourselves, by reading such apassage and by gazing at Dürer's Virgins enthroned and crowned withstars, that the attitude of later Protestants in regard to the worshipof the Virgin was in no sense shared by Dürer. And we touch the verypulse of the Renaissance in the phrase, "Being a painter, I looked aboutme a little more boldly, "--by which Dürer explains that the beautifulmaidens, almost naked, who figured in the mythological groups along theroute of Charles V. 's triumphal entry into Antwerp received a verydifferent reward, in his attentive gaze, to that which was meted to themby the young, austere, and unreformed Charles. One might almost belistening to Vasari when Dürer says: "I saw out behind the King's houseat Brussels the fountains, labyrinth and Beast-garden; anything morebeautiful and pleasing to me and more like Paradise I have never seen. "Dürer's admiration for Luther was like Michael Angelo's for Savonarola, and he never doubted that fiery indignation was directed against theabuse of wealth, force, and beauty, not against their use; thoughperhaps both the Italian and the German reformer occasionallyconfused the two. 

III

Duress journey was successful in that he obtained from Charles V. Whathe sought--the confirmation of his privilegium. 

CHARLES, by God's grace, Roman Emperor Elect, etc. 

Honourable, trusty, and well-beloved, Whereas the most illustrious Prince, Emperor Maximilian, our dear lordand grandfather of praiseworthy memory, appointed and assigned unto ourand the Empire's trusty and well-beloved Albrecht Dürer the sum of 100florins Rhenish every year of his life to be paid from and out of ourand the Empire's customary town contributions, which you are bound torender yearly into our Imperial Treasury; and whereas we, as RomanEmperor, have graciously agreed thereto, and have granted anew this lifepension unto him according to the terms of the above letter; wetherefore earnestly command you, and it is our will, that you render andgive unto the said Albrecht Dürer henceforward every year of his life, from and out of the said town contributions and in return for his properquittance, the said life pension of 100 florins Rhenish, together withwhatever part of it stands over unpaid since the Emperor Maximilian'sgrant; etc. 

Given at our and the Holy Empire's town Köln on the fourth day of themonth November (1520), etc. 

(Signed) KARL. (Signed) ALBRECHT, Cardinal, Archbishop of Mainz, Chancellor. 

Besides, he got back to Nuremberg without falling in with highwaymen, though the following little letter shows us that in this he wasfortunate. 

Dear Master Wolf Stromer, --My most gracious lord of Salzburg has sentme a letter by the hand of his glass-painter. I shall be glad to doanything I can to help him. He is to buy glass and materials here. Hetells me that near Freistadtlein he was robbed and had twenty florinstaken from him. He has asked me to send him to you, for his graciouslord told him if he wanted anything to let you know. I send him, therefore, to your Wisdom with my apprentice. Your Wisdom's, ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

No doubt he had enriched his mind and cheered his heart in the companyof prosperous, go-ahead, and earnest men; but as he says, "when I was inZeeland, a wondrous sickness overcame me, such as I never heard of fromany man, and this sickness remains with me" (see p. 156). And, alas! itwas to remain with him till he died of it. So that his journey cannot beconsidered as altogether fortunate. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: He was one of the leading Humanists of the time. TheMadonna referred to was still at Bamberg, at the beginning of thepresent century. ]

[Footnote 25: Owing to the existence of some rudimentary form ofZollverein, Dürer's pass not only freed him of dues in the Bambergdistrict but as far down the Rhine as Köln. ]

[Footnote 26: Hans Wolf, successor to Hans Wolfgang Katzheimer. ]

[Footnote 27: There is a portrait drawing of Jobst Plankfelt by Dürer inthe Städel collection at Frankfurt. ]

[Footnote 28: That is the head of the Fuggers' branch house at Antwerp. ]

[Footnote 29: Erasmus of Rotterdam, the famous Humanist. ]

[Footnote 30: Holbein also painted a portrait of this man in 1528. Thepicture is in the Louvre. ]

[Footnote 31: A pen-and-ink likeness of him by Dürer is in thepossession of the painter Bendemann, of Düsseldorf. It bears theinscription in Dürer's hand, "1520. _Hans Pfaffroth van Dantzgen einStarkmann_. "]

[Footnote 32: These were four pictures painted upon linen. Theyrepresented _The justice of Trajan, Pope Gregory praying for theHeathen_, and two incidents in the story of Erkenbald. The pictures wereburnt in 1695, but their compositions are reproduced in the well-knownBurgundian tapestries at Bern. See Pinchart, in the _Bulletins del'Academie de Bruxelles_, 2nd Series, XVII. : also Kinkel, _Die brusselerRathhausbilder_, &c. , Zurich, 1867. ]

[Footnote 33: A rapid sketch made by Dürer in this place is in theAcademy at Vienna. It is dated 1520, and inscribed, "that is thepleasure and beast-garden at Brussels, seen down behind out ofthe Palace. "]

[Footnote 34: A reproduction of an old view of this house will be foundin _L'Art_, 1884, I. P. 188. ]

[Footnote 35: This picture was painted on four panels and representedthe Seven Sacraments and a Crucifix. It is now lost. A similar pictureis in the Antwerp Gallery, ascribed to Roger van der Weyden. ]

[Footnote 36: This is perhaps the drawing in the Bounat collection atParis; it has been photographed by Braun (see illus. Opposite). ]

[Footnote 37: It is believed that Dürer here refers to an edition of thesatirical tale edited by Thomas Murner, and published at Strassburgin 1519. ]

[Footnote 38: "He afterwards particularly described to Melanchthon thesplendid spectacles he had beheld, and how in what were plainlymythological groups, the most beautiful maidens figured almost naked, and covered only with a thin transparent veil. The young Emperor did nothocour them with a single glance, but Dürer himself was very glad to getnear, not less for the purpose of seeing the tableaux than to have theopportunity of observing closely the perfect figures of the younggirls. " As he himself says, "Being a painter, I looked about me a littlemore boldly. "--See Thausing's "Life of Dürer, " vol. Ii. , p. 181. ]

[Footnote 39: _Het oud register van diversche mandementen_, afifteenth-century folio manuscript, still preserved in the Antwerparchives. ]

[Footnote 40: On April 6, 1520. ]

[Footnote 41: Tommaso was sent to Flanders in 1520 by Pope Leo X. Tooversee the manufacture of the "second series" of tapestries. Thepainter does not seem to have returned to Italy. ]

[Footnote 42: Engravings by Marcantonio from Raphael's designs. ]

[Footnote 43: The picture is lost, but an engraving of it made by And. Stock in 1629 is well-known. ]

[Footnote 44: The fine monoliths brought from Ravenna and still to beseen in Aachen Cathedral. ]

[Footnote 45: The confirmation of his pension; _see_ p. 166. ]

[Footnote 46: Member of a Nürnberg family. ]

[Footnote 47: The object of the whole expedition was doubtless, thatDürer might see and sketch the whale. In the British Museum is a studyof a walrus by Dürer, dated 1521, and inscribed, "The animal whose headI have drawn here was taken in the Netherlandish sea, and was twelveBrabant ells long and had four feet. "]

[Footnote 48: Gerhard van de Werve. ]

[Footnote 49: Pupil and afterwards friend of Erasmus. ]

[Footnote 50: These people were Dürer's principal Nürnberg friends. ]

[Footnote 51: It is assumed by commentators that _Chapel_ means_Altar-piece_, and it is guessed that the particular altar-piece is theone in the Berlin Museum which Charles V. Is reported to have carriedabout with him, and which belonged to the Miraflores Convent. Theguesses are worthless. ]

[Footnote 52: In St. Jacob's was the _Entombment_ by Hugo van der Goes. ]

[Footnote 53: It is in white marble. It was sculpted about 1501-6. Somecritics have refused to accept it as a genuine work. Dürer ought to havebeen in a position to know the truth. ]

[Footnote 54: At this time there were plenty of his pictures at Bruges. Dürer doubtless saw his Madonna in St. Donatien's, now in the Academy ofthe same town. ]

[Footnote 55: The famous altar-piece painted by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, of which the central part is still in its original place and the wingsare divided, two of their panels being at Brussels and the restat Berlin. ]

[Footnote 56: This drawing from Dürer's sketch-book is in the CourtLibrary at Vienna (see pl. Opposite). ]

[Footnote 57: The story is recounted in _Flandria illustrata_ (A. Sanderi, Colon. , 1641, i. 149. )]

[Footnote 58: Gerhard Horeboul of Ghent. Charles V. 's 'Book of Hours' inthe Vienna library is his work. He also had a hand in the GrimaniBreviary. After 1521 he went to England and entered the service of HenryVIII. His daughter Susanna was likewise in the service of the EnglishKing. She married and died in England. ]

[Footnote 59: Perhaps Jan van den Perre, afterwards goldsmith to CharlesV. ]

[Footnote 60: That is to say, drawings representing _Christ bearing HISCROSS_. _Mount of Olives_ means the Agony _in the_ Garden. ]

[Footnote 61: The inn-keeper of the _Golden Head_ is known to have beena painter. His name was Heinrich Keldermann. ]

[Footnote 62: Though born at Köln, he was called Hans von Nürnberg. Hewas cannon-founder and gun-maker to Charles V. ]

[Footnote 63: Doubtless Dürer's portrait of Maximilian, now in theGallery at Vienna, dated 1519. (_see_ p. 215). ]

[Footnote 64: Jacopo de' Barbari. ]

[Footnote 65: Bernard van Orley. ]

[Footnote 66: The catalogue of this library exists in the inventory ofthe Archduchess' possessions. ]

[Footnote 67: This is in the Musée Wicar at Lille; another portrait ofLukas van Leyden by Dürer was in the Earl of Warwick's collection (_see_opposite). ]

[Footnote 68: Hieronymus Imhof. ]

[Footnote 69: A quarto tract by Luther, printed in 1520 (without placeor date), entitled _Von der Babylonischen gefenglnuss der Kirchen_. ]

CHAPTER VII

DÜRER'S LAST YEARS

I

Dürer came back home with health broken: yet it is to this period thatthe magnificent portraits at Berlin of Nuremberg Councillors belong, andcertainly his hand and eye had never been more sure than when heproduced them. The hall of the Rathhaus was decorated under hisdirection and from his designs, the actual painting being, it issupposed, chiefly the work of George Penz, who with his fellow prenticesbecame famous in 1524 as one of "the three godless painters. "

We now come to a letter dated

NÜRNBERG, _December_ 5, 1523, Sunday after Andrew's

My dear and gracious Master Frey--I have received the little book yousent to Master (Ulrich) Varnbüler and me; when he has finished readingit I will read it too. As to the monkey-dance you want me to draw foryou, I have drawn this one here, unskilfully enough, for it is a longtime since I saw any monkeys; so pray put up with it. Convey my willingservice to Herr Zwingli (the reformer), Hans Leu (a Protestant painter), Hans Urich, and my other good masters. ALBRECHT DÜRER. Divide these fivelittle prints amongst you: I have nothing else new. 

This Master Felix Frey was a reformer at Zurich: he was probably notclosely related to Hans Frey, Dürer's father-in-law, whose death is thusrecorded in Dürer's book:

In the year 1523 (as they reckon it), on our dear Lady's Day, when shewas offered in the Temple, early, before the morning chimes, Hans Frey, my dear father-in-law, passed away. He had lain ill for almost six yearsand suffered quite incredible adversities in this world. He received theSacraments before he died. God Almighty be gracious to him. 

Next we have letters from and to Niklas Kratzer, Astronomer to HenryVIII. He had been present when Dürer drew Erasmus' portrait at Antwerp. Dürer had also made a drawing of Kratzer, and later on Holbein was topaint his masterpiece in the Louvre from the Oxford professor. 

To the honourable and accomplished Albrecht Dürer, burgher of Nürnberg, my dear Master and Friend. LONDON, _October_ 24, 1524. Honourable, dear Sir, I am very glad to hear of your good health and that of your wife. I havehad Hans Pomer staying with me in England. Now that you are allevangelical in Nürnberg I must write to you. God grant you grace topersevere; the adversaries, indeed, are strong, but God is stronger, andis wont to help the sick who call upon Him and acknowledge Him. I wantyou, dear Herr Albrecht Dürer, to make a drawing for me of theinstrument you saw at Herr Pirkheimer's, wherewith they measuredistances both far and wide. You told me about it at Antwerp. Or perhapsHerr Pirkheimer would send me the design of it--he would be doing me agreat favour. I want also to know how much a set of impressions of allyour prints costs, and whether anything new has come out at Nürnbergrelating to my art. I hear that our friend Hans, the astronomer, isdead. Would you write and tell me what instruments and the like he hasleft, and also where our Stabius' prints and wood-blocks are to befound? Greet Herr Pirkheimer for me. I hope to make him a map ofEngland, which is a great country, and was unknown to Ptolemy. He wouldlike to see it. All those who have written about England have seen nomore than a small part of it. You cannot write to me any longer throughHans Pomer. Pray send me the woodcut which represents Stabius as S. Koloman. [70]I have nothing more to say that would interest you, so Godbless you. Given at London, October 24. Your servant, NIKLAS KRATZEH. Greet your wife heartily for me. 

To the honourable and venerable Herr Niklas Kratzer, servant to hisRoyal Majesty in England, my gracious Master and Friend. 

NÜRNBERG, Monday after Barbara's (_December_ 5), 1524. 

First my most willing service to you, dear Herr Niklas. I have receivedand read your letter with pleasure, and am glad to hear that things aregoing well with you. I have spoken for you to Herr Wilibald Pirkheimerabout the instrument you wanted to have. He is having one made for you, and is going to send it to you with a letter. The things Herr Hans leftwhen he died have all been scattered; as I was away at the time of hisdeath I cannot find out where they are gone to. The same has happened toStabius' things; they were all taken to Austria, and I can tell you nomore about them. I should like to know whether you have yet begun totranslate Euclid into German, as you told me, if you had time, youwould do. 

We have to stand in disgrace and danger for the sake of the Christianfaith, for they abuse us as heretics; but may God grant us His grace andstrengthen us in His word, for we must obey Him rather than men. It isbetter to lose life and goods than that God should cast us, body andsoul, into hell-fire. Therefore, may He confirm us in that which isgood, and enlighten our adversaries, poor, miserable, blind creatures, that they may not perish in their errors. 

Now God bless you! I send you two likenesses, printed from copper, whichyou will know well. At present I have no good news to write you, butmuch evil. However, only God's will cometh to pass. Your Wisdom's, ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

Another letter to Dürer from Cornelius Grapheus at Antwerp gives us somehelp towards understanding how the Reformation affected Dürer andhis friends. 

To Master Albrecht Dürer, unrivalled chief in the art of painting, myfriend and most beloved brother in Christ, at Nürnberg; or in hisabsence to Wilibald Pirkheimer. 

I wrote a good long letter to you, some time ago, in the name of ourcommon friend Thomas Bombelli, but we have received no answer from you. We are, therefore, the more anxious to hear even three words from you, that we may know how you are and what is going on in your parts, forthere is no doubt that great events are happening. Thomas Bombelli sendsyou his heartiest greeting. I beg you, as I did in my last letter, togreet Wilibald Pirkheimer a score of times for me. Of my own condition Iwill tell you nothing. The bearers of this letter will be able toacquaint you with everything. They are very good men and most sincereChristians. I commend, them to you and my friend Pirkheimer as if theywere myself; for they, themselves the best of men, merit the highestrecommendation to the best of men. Farewell, dearest Albrecht. Amongstus there is a great and daily increasing persecution on account of theGospel. Our brethren, the bearers, will tell you all about it moreopenly. Again farewell. 

Wholly yours, CORNELIUS GRAPHEUS. 

ANTWERP, _February_ 23, 1524. 

II

The events which made Dürer an ardent Evangelical and Reformer in acoarser paste proved a leaven of anarchy and subversion. Young, hot-headed nobles like Ulrich Von Hutten became iconoclastic, wereforemost at the dispersion of convents and nunneries, often playing apart on such occasions that was anything but a credit to the cause theywere championing. Among the prentice lads and among the peasants, theunrest, discontent, and appetite for change took forms if not moreoffensive at least more alarming. The Peasants' War gave rulers aforetaste of the panic they were to undergo at the time of the FrenchRevolution. And in the towns men like "the three godless painters" madethe burghers shake in their shoes for the social order which kept themrich and respected and others poor and servile. It is strange that allthree should have come from Dürer's workshop. Probably they were themost talented prentices of the craft, since the great master chose them:besides, painting was an occupation which allowed of a certainintellectual development. They may have often listened with hungry earsto disputes between Pirkheimer and Dürer, and envied the good luck, grace and gift which had enabled the latter to bridge over a gulf asgreat as that which separated them from him, between him and Pirkheimeror Vambüler. All this and much more we can by taking thought imagine toour satisfaction; but the point which we would most desire tosatisfactorily conjecture we are utterly in the dark about. Though hisprentices were tried, Dürer appeared neither for nor against them; norcan we help ourselves to understand a fact so strange by any othermention of his attitude. He had a year or two previously married hisservant, (perhaps the girl that his wife took with her to theNetherlands), to Georg Penz, who went the farthest in his scepticism, recanted soonest, and possessed least talent of the three. But thisfact, which is not quite assured, narrows the grounds of conjecture butlittle; we still face an almost boundless blank. It is difficult toimagine that Dürer was quite as shocked as the Town Council by a man whosaid "he had some idea that there was a God, but did not know rightlywhat conception to form of him, " who was so unfortunate as to think"nothing" of Christ, and could not believe in the Holy Gospel or in theword of God; and who failed to recognise "a master of himself, his goodsand everything belonging to him" in the Council of Nuremberg. Now-a-days, when we think of the licence of assertion that has obtainedon these questions, we are inclined to admire the honesty andintellectual clarity of such a confession. And Dürer, who resolved thesimilar question of authority as to "things beautiful" in a manner muchthe same as this, may, we can at least hope, have viewed his prenticeswith more of pity than of anger. All the three "godless painters" werebanished from reformed Nuremberg; but Georg, whose confession had beenmost godless, recanted and was allowed to return. The others, Sebald andBarthel Beham, managed to perpetuate their names as "little masters"without the approbation of the Town Councillors, and are to-day lessforgotten than those who condemned them. Hieronymus Andreae, the mostskilful and famous of Dürer's wood engravers, caused the Council thesame kind of alarm and concern. He took part with the peasants in theirrebellion; but rebellion against a known authority was more pardonablethan that against the unknown, or else his services were of greatervalue. At any rate he was pardoned not once but many times, beingapparently an obstreperous character. 

III

If we can form no conjecture as to Dürer's relations with his hereticalaids, we have evidence as to his relations with their judges; for in1524 he wrote to the Town Council thus:

Prudent, honourable and wise, most gracious Masters, --During long years, by hardworking pains and labour under Gods blessing, I have saved out ofmy earnings as much as 1000 florins Rhenish, which I should now be gladto invest for my support. 

I know, indeed, that your Honours are not often wont at the present timeto grant interest at the rate of one florin for twenty; and I have beentold that before now other applications of a like kind have beenrefused. It is not, therefore, without scruple that I address yourHonours in this matter. Yet my necessities impel me to prefer thisrequest to your Honours, and I am encouraged to do so above all by theparticularly gracious favour which I have always received from yourHonourable Wisdoms, as well as by the following considerations. 

Your Wisdoms know how I have always hitherto shown myself dutiful, willing, and zealous in all matters that concerned your Wisdoms and thecommon weal of the town. You know, moreover, how, before now, I haveserved many individual members of the Council, as well as of thecommunity here, gratuitously rather than for pay, when they stood inneed of my help, art, and labour. I can also write with truth that, during the thirty years I have stayed at home, I have not received frompeople in this town work worth 500 florins--truly a trifling andridiculous sum--and not a fifth part of that has been profit. I have, onthe contrary, earned and attained all my property (which, God knows, hasgrown irksome to me) from Princes, Lords, and other foreign persons, sothat I only spend in this town what I have earned from foreigners. 

Doubtless, also, your Honours remember that at one time EmperorMaximilian, of most praiseworthy memory, in return for the manifoldservices which I had performed for him, year after year, of his ownimpulse and imperial charity wanted to make me free of taxes in thistown. At the instance, however, of some of the elder Councillors, whotreated with me in the matter in the name of the Council, I willinglyresigned that privilege, in order to honour the said Councillors and tomaintain their privileges, usages, and rights. 

Again, nineteen years ago, the government of Venice offered to appointme to an office and to give me a salary of 200 ducats a year. So, too, only a short time ago when I was in the Netherlands, the Council ofAntwerp would have given me 300 Philipsgulden a year, kept me there freeof taxes, and honoured me with a well-built house; and besides I shouldhave been paid in addition at both places for all the work I might havedone for the gentry. But I declined all this, because of the particularlove and affection which I bear to your honourable Wisdoms and to myfatherland, this honourable town, preferring, as I did, to live underyour Wisdoms in a moderate way rather than to be rich and held in honourin other places. 

It is, therefore, my most submissive prayer to your Honours, that youwill be pleased graciously to take these facts into consideration, andto receive from me on my account these 1000 florins, paying me 50florins a year as interest. I could, indeed, place them well with otherrespectable parties here and elsewhere, but I should prefer to see themin the hands of your Wisdoms. I and my wife will then, now that we areboth growing daily older, feebler, and more helpless, possess thecertainty of a fitting household for our needs; and we shall experiencethereby, as formerly, your honourable Wisdoms' favour and goodwill. Tomerit this from your Honours with all my powers I shall ever befound willing. 

Your Wisdoms' willing, obedient burgher, ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

Dürer obtained the desired five per cent. On his savings annually untilhis death, and afterwards his widow received four per cent. Untilher death. 

In 1526 the grateful artist finished and dedicated to hisfellow-townsmen his most important picture, representing the fourtemperaments in the persons of St. John, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Mark; he wrote thus to the Council:

Prudent, honourable, wise, dear Masters, --I have been intending, for along time past, to show my respect for your Wisdoms by the presentationof some humble picture of mine as a remembrance; but I have beenprevented from so doing by the imperfection and insignificance of myworks, for I felt that with such I could not well stand before yourWisdoms. Now, however, that I have just painted a panel upon which Ihave bestowed more trouble than on any other painting, I considered nonemore worthy to keep it as a remembrance than your Wisdoms. 

Therefore, I present it to your Wisdoms with the humble and urgentprayer that you will favourably and graciously receive it, and will beand continue, as I have ever found you, my kind and dear Masters. 

Thus shall I be diligent to serve your Wisdoms in all humility. 

Your Wisdoms' humble

ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

The gift was accepted, and the Council voted Dürer 100 florins, his wife10, and his apprentice 2. Underneath the two panels which form thepicture, the following was inscribed; the texts being fromLuther's Bible:

All worldly rulers in these dangerous times should give good heed thatthey receive not human misguidance for the Word of God, for God willhave nothing added to His Word nor taken away from it. Hear, therefore, these four excellent men, Peter, John, Paul, and Mark, their warning. 

Peter says in his Second Epistle in the second chapter: There were falseprophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachersamong you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denyingthe Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the wayof truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall theywith feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a longtime lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. 

John in his First Epistle in the fourth chapter writes thus: Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God:because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know yethe Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ iscome in the flesh, is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not thatJesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God: and this is thatspirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; andeven now already is it in the world. 

In the Second Epistle to Timothy in the third chapter St. Paul writes:This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. Formen shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without naturalaffection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, loversof pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, butdenying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort arethey which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden withsins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to cometo the knowledge of the truth. 

St. Mark writes in his Gospel in the twelfth chapter: He said unto themin His doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in longclothing, and love salutations in the market-places, and the chief seatsin the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts; which devourwidows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: these shallreceive greater damnation. 

These rather tremendous texts may make one fear that the "three godlesspainters" had found little pity in their master; but most sincereChristians are better than their creeds, and more charitable than theold-world imprecations, admonitions, and denunciations, with which theysoothe their Cerberus of an old Adam, who is not allowed to use histeeth to the full extent that their formidable nature would seem towarrant. For have they not been told above all things to love theirenemies, and do good to those whom they would naturally hate, by amaster whom they really love and strive to imitate?

IV

Dürer's last years were given more and more to writing down his ideasfor the sake of those who, coming after him, would, he was persuaded, goon far before him in the race for perfection. In 1525 he published hisfirst book--"Instruction in the Measurement with the Compass, and Rulesof Lines, Surfaces, and Solid Bodies, drawn up by Albert Dürer, andprinted, for the use of all lovers of art, with appropriate diagrams. "It contains a course of applied geometry in connection with Euclid'sElements. Dürer states from the very commencement that "his book will beof no use to any one who understands the geometry of the 'very acute'Euclid; for it has been written only for the young, and for those whohave had no one to instruct them accurately. " Thausing tells us his workshows certain resemblances to that of Luca Pacioli, a companion ofLeonardo's, who may have been the "man who is willing to teach me thesecrets of the art of perspective, " and whom Dürer in 1506 travelledfrom Venice to Bologna to see; it is even possible that he saw Leonardohimself in the latter town. In 1527 he issued an essay on the "Art ofFortification, " which the development of artillery was thentransforming; and authorities on this very special science tell us thatDürer is the true author of the ideas on which the "new Prussian system"was founded. It was dread of the unchristian Turk who was then besiegingVienna which called forth from Dürer this excursion. He dedicated it inthe following terms:

To the most illustrious, mighty prince and lord, Lord Ferdinand, King ofHungary and Bohemia, Infant of Spain, Archduke of Austria, Duke ofBurgundy and Brabant, Count of Hapsburg, Flanders, and Tirol, his RomanImperial Majesty, our most gracious Lord, Regent in the Holy Empire, mymost gracious Sire. 

Most illustrious mighty King, most gracious Sire, --During the lifetimeof the most illustrious and mighty Emperor Maximilian of praiseworthymemory, your Majesty's Lord and Grandsire, I experienced grace andfavour from his Imperial Majesty; wherefore I consider myself no lessbound to serve your Majesty according to my small powers. As ithappeneth that your Majesty has commanded some towns and places to befortified, I am induced to make known what little I know about thesematters, if perchance it may please your Majesty to gather somewhattherefrom. For though my theory may not be accepted in every point, still I believe something will arise from it, here and there, useful notto your Majesty only, but to all other Princes, Lords, and Towns, thatwould gladly protect themselves against violence and unjust oppression. I therefore humbly pray your Majesty graciously to accept from me thisevidence of my gratitude, and to be my most gracious lord, Your Royal Majesty's most humble

ALBRECHT DÜRER. 

It seems that at any rate the Kronenburg Gate and Roseneck bastion ofStrasburg were actually constructed in accordance with Dürer's method. 

When, on April 6, 1528, Dürer died suddenly, two volumes of his greatwork on "Human Proportions" were ready for the press, and enough rawmaterial, notes, drawings, &c. , to enable his friend Pirkheimer toprepare and issue the remaining two with them. Of the misunderstandingof this the most important of Dürer's writings I shall say nothing here, as I have devoted a separate chapter to it. 

V

It seems probable that the "wondrous sickness which overcame me inZeeland, such as I never heard of from any man, and which sicknessremains with me" of the Netherlands Journal (p. 156) was an intermittentfever. There exists at Bremen a sketch of Dürer, nude down to the waist, and pointing with his finger to a spot between the pit of the stomachand the groin, which spot he has coloured yellow; and from its size, with the other descriptions of his malady, the skilful have arrived atthe above diagnosis. The words on the sketch, "The yellow spot to whichmy finger points is where it pains me, " seem to indicate that he hadmade it to send to some skilled physician. Thausing suggests eitherMaster Jacob or Master Braun, whom he had met at Antwerp, and deducesfrom the length of his hair and the apparent vigour of his body, thatthe drawing was made soon after the disease was contracted. All doubt asto its nature would be removed, could it be made certain that by thewords, "I have sent to your Grace early this year before I became ill, "in a letter to the Elector Albert dated September 4, 1523, Dürer meantto imply that at a certain period he became ill every year; but ofcourse it is impossible to be sure of this. 

VI

If not rich, Dürer died comfortably off. Thausing tells us that his"widow entered into possession of his whole fortune;" a fourth partbelonged, according to Nuremberg law, to his brothers, but she was notbound to render it to them before her death. On June 9, 1530, however, she "of her own desire, and on account of the friendly feeling which sheentertained for them for her husband's sake, and as her dearbrothers-in-law, " made over both to Andreas Dürer, goldsmith, and toCaspar Altmulsteiner, on behalf of Hans Dürer, then in the service ofthe King of Poland, a sum of 553 florins, three pounds, eleven pfennigs, and gave them a mortgage for the remaining sum of 608 florins, twopounds, twenty-four pfennigs on the corner house in the Zistelgasse, nowcalled the Dürer House; for the property had been valued at 6848florins, seven pounds, twenty-four pfennigs. Johann Neudörffer, wholived opposite the Dürers, has recorded the fact that Dürer's brotherEndres inherited all his expensive colours, his copper plates and woodblocks, as well as any impressions there were, and all his drawingsbeside. And a year before her death, Agnes Dürer gave the interest onthe 1000 florins invested in the town to found a scholarship fortheological students at the University of Wittenberg; about whichMelanchthon wrote to von Dietrich that he thanked God for this aid tostudy, and that he had praised this good deed of the widow Dürer beforeLuther and others. And yet Pirkheimer, in his spleen at having lost thechance of procuring some stags' antlers which had belonged to hisfriend, and which he coveted, could write of Agues Dürer: "She watchedhim day and night and drove him to work ... That he might earn moneyand leave it her when he died. For she always thought she was on theborders of ruin--as for the matter of that she does still--thoughAlbrecht left her property worth as much as six thousand florins. Butthere! nothing was enough; and, in fact, she alone is the cause of hisdeath!" We know that what with the four Apostles and his books Dürer'slast years were not spent on remunerative labours; nor does theNetherlands Journal contain any hint that his wife tried to restrict theemployment either of his time or money. His journey into Zeeland was apure extravagance; for the sale of a copper engraving or woodcut of awhale would have taken some time to make up for such an expense, and, asit turned out, no whale was seen or drawn; and there is no hint thatFrau Dürer made reproach or complaint. On the other hand, Pirkheimer'swords probably had some slight basis; and as Dürer's sickness increasedupon him, while at the same time he applied himself less and less tomaking money, the anxious Frau may have become fretful or even naggingat times; and Pirkheimer, whose companionship was probably a cause ofextravagances to Dürer, may have been scolded by Agnes, or heard hisfriend excuse himself from taking part in some convivial meeting, on theplea that his wife found he was spending out of proportion to histakings at the moment. 

VII

We have the testimony of a good number of Dürer's friends as to thevalue of his character; and first let us quote from Pirkheimer--writingimmediately after Dürer's death and before' the loss of the covetedantlers had vexed him--to a common friend Ulrich, probably UlrichVarnbüler. 

What can be more grievous for a man than to have continually to mourn, not only children and relations whom death steals from him, but friendsalso, and among them those whom he loved best? And though I have oftenhad to mourn the loss of relations, still I do not know that any deathever caused me such grief as fills me now at the sudden departure of ourgood and dear Albrecht Dürer. Nor is this without reason, for of all mennot united to me by ties of blood, I have never loved or esteemed anylike him for his countless virtues and rare uprightness. And because Iknow, my dear Ulrich, that this blow has struck both you and me alike, Ihave not been afraid to give vent to my grief before you of all others, so that together we may pay the fitting tribute of tears to such afriend. He is gone, good Ulrich; our Albrecht is gone! Oh, inexorabledecree of fate! Oh, miserable lot of man! Oh, pitiless severity ofdeath! Such a man, yea, such a man, is torn from us, while so manyuseless and worthless men enjoy lasting happiness, and live onlytoo long!

Thausing insists on the fact that in this letter there is no mention ofDürer's death having been caused by his wife's behaviour; but as therelation of Ulrich to the deceased seems to have been well-nigh asintimate as his own, there may have been no need to mention a factpainfully present to both their minds. On the other hand, it is at leastas probable that the idea was not present even to the mind of thewriter, who, in a style less studiously commonplace, inscribed onDürer's tomb:

Me. AL. DU. 

QVICQVID ALBERTI DVRERI MORTALE FVIT, SVB HOC CONDITVR TVMVLO. EMIGRAVITVIII IDVS APRILIS MDXXVIII. 

(To the memory of Albrecht Dürer. All that was mortal of Albrecht Düreris laid beneath this mound. He departed on April 6, 1528. )

Luther wrote to Eoban Hesse:

As to Dürer, it is natural and right to weep for so excellent a man;still you should rather think him blessed, as one whom Christ has takenin the fulness of His wisdom, and by a happy death, from these mosttroublous times, and perhaps from times even more troublous which are tocome, lest one who was worthy to look upon nothing but excellence shouldbe forced to behold things most vile. May he rest in peace. Amen. 

Erasmus had some months before written and printed in a treatise on theright pronunciation of Latin and Greek an eulogy of Dürer. It is notknown whether a copy had reached him before his death; in any case tomost people it came like a funeral oration from the greatest scholar onthe greatest artist north of the Alps. Thausing quotes the followingpassage from it:

I have known Dürer's name for a long time as that of the first celebrityin the art of painting. Some call him the Apelles of our time. But Ithink that did Apelles live now, he, as an honourable man, would givethe palm to Dürer. Apelles, it is true, made use of few and unobtrusivecolours, but still he used colours; while Dürer, --admirable as he is, too, in other respects, --what can he not express with a singlecolour--that is to say, with black lines? He can give the effect oflight and shade, brightness, foreground and background. Moreover, hereproduces _not merely the natural aspect of a thing, but also observesthe laws of perfect symmetry and harmony with regard to the position ofit_. He can also transfer by enchantment, so to say, upon the canvas, things which it seems not possible to represent, such as fire, sunbeams, storms, lightning, and mist; he can portray every passion, show us thewhole soul of a man shining through his outward form; nay, even make ushear his very speech. All this he brings so happily before the eye withthose black lines, that the picture would lose by being clothed incolour. Is it not more worthy of admiration to achieve without thewinning charm of colour what Apelles only realised with its assistance?

Melanchthon wrote in a letter to Camerarius:

"It grieves me to see Germany deprived of such an artist and such aman. "

And we learn from his son-in-law, Caspar Penker, that he often spoke ofDürer with affection and respect; he writes:

Melanchthon was often, and many hours together, in Pirkheimer's company, at the time when they were advising together about the churches andschools at Nürnberg; and Dürer, the painter, used _also_ to be invitedto dinner with them. Dürer was a man of great shrewdness, andMelanchthon used to say of him that though he excelled in the art ofpainting, it was the least of his accomplishments. Disputes often arosebetween Pirkheimer and Dürer on these occasions about the mattersrecently discussed, and Pirkheimer used vehemently to oppose Dürer. Dürer was an excessively subtle disputant, and refuted his adversary'sarguments, just as if he had come fully prepared for the discussion. Thereupon Pirkheimer, who was rather a choleric man and liable to verysevere attacks of the gout, fired up and burst forth again and againinto such words as these, "What you say cannot be painted. " "Nay!"rejoined Dürer, "but what you advance cannot be put into words or evenfigured to the mind. " I remember hearing Melanchthon often tell thisstory, and in relating it he confessed his astonishment at the ingenuityand power manifested by a painter in arguing with a man ofPirkheimer's renown. 

Such scenes no doubt took place during the years after Dürer's returnfrom the Netherlands. Melanchthon also wrote in a letter to Georgevon Anhalt:

I remember how that great man, distinguished alike by his intellect andhis virtue, Albrecht Dürer the painter, said that as a youth he hadloved bright pictures full of figures, and when considering his ownproductions had always admired those with the greatest variety in them. But as an older man, he had begun to observe nature and reproduce it inits native forms, and had learned that this simplicity was the greatestornament of art. Being unable completely to attain to this ideal, hesaid that he was no longer an admirer of his works as heretofore, butoften sighed when he looked at his pictures and thought over his wantof power. 

And in another letter he remembers that Dürer would say that in hisyouth he had found great pleasure in representing monstrous and unusualfigures, but that in his later years he endeavoured to observe nature, and to imitate her as closely as possible; experience, however, hadtaught him how difficult it was not to err. And Thausing continues:"Melanchthon speaks even more frequently of how Dürer was pleased withpictures he had just finished, but when he saw them after a time, wasashamed of them; and those he had painted with the greatest caredispleased him so much at the end of three years that he could scarcelylook at them without great pain. "

And this on his appreciation of Luther's writings:

Albrecht Dürer, painter of Nürnberg, a shrewd man, once said that therewas this difference between the writings of Luther and othertheologians. After reading three or four paragraphs of the first page ofone of Luther's works he could grasp the problem to be worked out in thewhole. This clearness and order of arrangement was, he observed, theglory of Luther's writings. He used, on the contrary, to say of otherwriters that, after reading a whole book through, he had to considerattentively what idea it was that the author intended to convey. 

Lastly, Camerarius, the professor of Greek and Latin in the new schoolof Nuremberg, in his Latin translation of Dürer's book on "HumanProportions, " writes thus:

It is not my present purpose to talk about art. My purpose was to speaksomewhat, as needs must be, of the artificer, the author of this book. He, I trust, has become known by his virtue and his deserts, not only tohis own country, but to foreign nations also. Full well I know that hispraises need not our trumpetings to the world, since by his excellentworks he is exalted and honoured with undying glory. Yet, as we werepublishing his writings, and an opportunity arose of committing to printthe life and habits of a remarkable man and a very dear friend of ours, we have judged it expedient to put together some few scraps ofinformation, learnt partly from the conversations of others and partlyfrom our own intercourse with him. This will give some indication of hissingular skill and genius as artist and man, and cannot fail ofaffording pleasure to the reader. We have heard that our Albrecht was ofHungarian extraction, but that his forefathers emigrated to Germany. Wecan, therefore, have but little to say of his origin and birth. Thoughthey were honourable, there can be no question but that they gained moreglory from him than he from them. 

Nature bestowed on him a body remarkable in build and stature, and notunworthy of the noble mind it contained; that in this, too, Nature'sJustice, extolled by Hippocrates, might not be forgotten--that Justice, which, while it assigns a grotesque form to the ape's grotesque soul, iswont also to clothe noble minds in bodies worthy of them. His head wasintelligent, [71] his eyes flashing, his nose nobly formed, and, as theGreeks say, tetrágônon. His neck was rather long, his chest broad, hisbody not too stout, his thighs muscular, his legs firm and steady. Buthis fingers--you would vow you had never seen anything more elegant. 

His conversation was marked by so much sweetness and wit, that nothingdispleased his hearers so much as the end of it. Letters, it is true, hehad not cultivated, but the great sciences of Physics and Mathematics, which are perpetuated by letters, he had almost entirely mastered. Henot only understood principles and knew how to apply them in practice, but he was able to set them forth in words. This is proved by hisgeometrical treatises, wherein I see nothing omitted, except what hejudged to be beyond the scope of his work. An ardent zeal impelled himtowards the attainment of all virtue in conduct and life, the display ofwhich caused him to be deservedly held a most excellent man. Yet he wasnot of a melancholy severity nor of a repulsive gravity; nay, whateverconduced to pleasantness and cheerfulness, and was not inconsistentwith honour and rectitude, he cultivated all his life and approved evenin his old age. The works he has left on Gymnastic and Music are of suchcharacter. 

But Nature had specially designed him for a painter, and therefore heembraced the study of that art with all his energies, and was everdesirous of observing the works and principles of the famous painters ofevery land, and of imitating whatever he approved in them. Moreover, with respect to those studies, he experienced the generosity and won thefavour of the greatest kings and princes, and even of Maximilian himselfand his grandson the Emperor Charles; and he was rewarded by them withno contemptible salary. But after his hand had, so to speak, attainedits maturity, his sublime and virtue-loving genius became bestdiscoverable in his works, for his subjects were fine and his treatmentof them noble. You may judge the truth of these statements from hisextant prints in honour of Maximilian, and his memorable astronomicaldiagrams, not to mention other works, not one of which but a painter ofany nation or day would be proud to call his own. The nature of a man isnever more certainly and definitely shown than in the works he producesas the fruit of his art.... What single painter has there ever been whodid not reveal his character in his works? Instead of instances fromancient history, I shall content myself with examples from our own time. No one can fail to see that many painters have sought a vulgar celebrityby immodest pictures. It is not credible that those artists can bevirtuous, whose minds and fingers composed such works. We have also seenpictures minutely finished and fairly well coloured, wherein, it istrue, the master showed a certain talent and industry; but art waswanting. Albrecht, therefore, shall we most justly admire as an earnestguardian of piety and modesty, and as one who showed, by the magnitudeof his pictures, that he was conscious of his own powers, although noneeven of his lesser works is to be despised. You will not find in them asingle line carelessly or wrongly drawn, not a single superfluous dot. 

What shall I say of the steadiness and exactitude of his hand? You mightswear that rule, square, or compasses had been employed to draw lines, which he, in fact, drew with the brush, or very often with pencil orpen, unaided by artificial means, to the great marvel of those whowatched him. Why should I tell how his hand so closely followed theideas of his mind that, in a moment, he often dashed upon paper, or, aspainters say, composed, sketches of every kind of thing with pencil orpen? I see I shall not be believed by my readers when I relate, thatsometimes he would draw separately, not only the different parts of acomposition, but even the different parts of bodies, which, when joinedtogether, agreed with one another so well that nothing could have fittedbetter. In fact this consummate artist's mind endowed with all knowledgeand understanding of the truth and of the agreement of the parts onewith another, governed and guided his hand and bade it trust to itselfwithout any other aids. With like accuracy he held the brush, wherewithhe drew the smallest things on canvas or wood without sketching them inbeforehand, so that, far from giving ground for blame, they always wonthe highest praise. And this was a subject of greatest wonder to mostdistinguished painters, who, from their own great experience, couldunderstand the difficulty of the thing. 

I cannot forbear to tell, in this place, the story of what happenedbetween him and Giovanni Bellini. Bellini had the highest reputation asa painter at Venice, and indeed throughout all Italy. When Albrecht wasthere he easily became intimate with him, and both artists naturallybegan to show one another specimens of their skill. Albrecht franklyadmired and made much of all Bellini's works. Bellini also candidlyexpressed his admiration of various features of Albrecht's skill, andparticularly the fineness and delicacy with which he drew hairs. Itchanced one day that they were talking about art, and when theirconversation was done Bellini said: "Will you be so kind, Albrecht, asto gratify a friend in a small matter?" "You shall soon see, " saysAlbrecht, "if you will ask of me anything I can do for you. " Then saysBellini: "I want you to make me a present of one of the brushes withwhich you draw hairs. " Dürer at once produced several, just like otherbrushes, and, in fact, of the kind Bellini himself used, and told him tochoose those he liked best, or to take them all if he would. ButBellini, thinking he was misunderstood, said: "No, I don't mean these, but the ones with which you draw several hairs with one stroke; theymust be rather spread out and more divided, otherwise in a long sweepsuch regularity of curvature and distance could not be preserved. " "Iuse no other than these, " says Albrecht, "and to prove it, you may watchme. " Then, taking up one of the same brushes, he drew some very longwavy tresses, such as women generally wear, in the most regular orderand symmetry. Bellini looked on wondering, and afterwards confessed tomany that no human being could have convinced him by report of the truthof that which he had seen with his own eyes. 

A similar tribute was given him, with conspicuous candour, by AndreaMantegna, who became famous at Mantua by reducing painting to someseverity of law--a fame which he was the first to merit, by digging upbroken and scattered statues, and setting them up as examples of art. Itis true all his work is hard and stiff, inasmuch as his hand was nottrained to follow the perception and nimbleness of his mind; still it isheld that there is nothing better or more perfect in art. While Andreawas lying ill at Mantua he heard that Albrecht was in Italy, and had himsummoned to his side at once, in order that he might fortify his(Albrecht's) facility and certainty of hand with scientific knowledgeand principles. For Andrea often lamented in conversation with hisfriends that Albrecht's facility in drawing had not been granted to himnor his learning to Albrecht. On receiving the message Albrecht, leavingall other engagements, prepared for the journey without delay. Butbefore he could reach Mantua Andrea was dead, and Dürer used to say thatthis was the saddest event in all his life; for, high as Albrecht stood, his great and lofty mind was ever striving after something yetabove him. 

Almost with awe have we gazed upon the bearded face of the man, drawn byhimself, in the manner we have described, with the brush on the canvasand without any previous sketch. The locks of the beard are almost acubit long, and so exquisitely and cleverly drawn, at such regulardistances and in so exact a manner, that the better any one understandsart, the more he would admire it, and the more certain would he deem itthat in fashioning these locks the hand had employed artificial aid. 

Further, there is nothing foul, nothing disgraceful in his work. Thethoughts of his most pure mind shunned all such things. Artist worthy ofsuccess! How like, too, are his portraits! How unerring! How true!

All these perfections he attained by reducing mere practice to art andmethod, in a way new at least to German painters. With Albrecht all wasready, certain, and at hand, because he had brought painting into thefixed track of rule and recalled it to scientific principles; withoutwhich, as Cicero said, though some things may be well done by help ofnature, yet they cannot always be ready to hand, because they are doneby chance. He first worked his principles out for his own use;afterwards with his generous and open nature he attempted to explainthem in books, written to the illustrious and most learned WilibaldPirkheimer. And he dedicated them to him in a most elegant letter whichwe have not translated, because we felt it to be beyond our power torender it into Latin without, so to speak, disfiguring its naturalcountenance. But before he could complete and publish the books, as hehad hoped, he was carried off by death--a death, calm indeed andenviable, but in our view premature. If there was anything at all inthat man which could seem like a fault, it was his excessive industry, which often made unfair demands upon him. 

Death, as we have said, removed him from the publication of the workwhich he had begun, but his friends completed the task from his ownmanuscript. About this, in the next place, and about our own version, weshall say a few words. The work, being founded on a sort of geometricalsystem, is unpolished and devoid of literary style; so it seems ratherrugged. But that is easily forgiven in consideration of the excellenceof the matter. He requested me himself, only a few days before hisdeath, to translate it into Latin while he should correct it; and Iwillingly turned my attention and studies to the work. But death, whichtakes everything, took from him his power of supervision and correction. His friends subsequently, after publishing the work, prevailed on me, bytheir claims rather than their requests, to undertake the Latintranslation, and to complete after his death the task Dürer had laidupon me in his life. 

If I find that my industry and devotion in this matter meet with myreaders' approval, I shall be encouraged to translate into Latin therest of Albrecht's treatise on painting, a work at once more finishedand more laborious than the present. Moreover, his writings on othersubjects will also be looked for, his Geometries and Tichismatics, inwhich he explained the fortification of towns according to the system ofthe present day. These, however, appear to be all the subjects on whichhe wrote books. As to the promise, which I hear certain persons aremaking in conversation or in writing, to publish a book by Dürer on thesymmetry of the parts of the horse, I cannot but wonder from whatsource they will obtain after his death what he never completed duringhis life. Although I am well aware that Albrecht had begun toinvestigate the law of truth in this matter too, and had made a certainnumber of measurements, I also know that he lost all he had done throughthe treachery of certain persons, by whose means it came about that theauthor's notes were stolen, so that he never cared to begin the workafresh. He had a suspicion, or rather a certainty, as to the sourcewhence came the drones who had invaded his store; but the great manpreferred to hide his knowledge, to his own loss and pain, rather thanto lose sight of generosity and kindness in the pursuit of his enemies. We shall not, therefore, suffer anything that may appear to beattributed to Albrecht's authorship, unworthy as it must evidently be ofso great an artist. 

A few years ago some tracts also appeared in German, containing rules, in general faulty and inappropriate, about the same matter. On these Ido not care now to waste words, though the author, unless I am muchmistaken, has not once repented of his publication. But these rulesabove-mentioned, which are easily proved to be Albrecht's, not onlybecause he prepared them himself for publication, but also because oftheir own excellence, you will, I think, obtain considerably better herethan from other sources. Not that they are more finished in point oferudition and learning in the present book than elsewhere, but becausethose who interpret them in the author's own workshop, among theexpansions and corrections of his autograph manuscripts and thevariations of his different copies, stand in the light about manypoints, which must of necessity seem obscure to others, however learnedthey may be. 

This will be seen in the case of the book on Geometry, which a learnedman has in hand and will shortly publish in a more elaborate form, andwith more explanation of certain points than it possesses at present. For it will be increased by no less than twenty-six [Greek: schêmata](figures) and countless corrections or improvements of earlier editions. The author himself on rereading had thus improved and amplified what hadalready been issued. As though he foresaw that he would publish no more, he had directed his future editors as to what was to be done about theletterpress and figures; and we shall take care that it is published atthe earliest possible date in the German language, in which the authorwrote it. It is only to be expected that this will be welcome to thepublic, who will thus return thanks for the author's burning desire todo something by his discoveries for the public good, and for our ownlabour and eagerness in publishing to all nations what appears to bewritten only for one. 

Though these testimonies may often seem either trifling, or obscured bythe pedantic affectation of the writers, they, like the signatures ofwell-respected men, endorse the impression produced by Dürer's works andwritings. As we study the character of Dürer's creative gift in relationto his works, several of the phrases used by Erasmus, Camerarius, andMelanchthon should take added significance, being probably rememberedfrom conversations with the great artist himself. [72] Dürer, likeLuther, was depressed and distressed at the course the Reformation hadrun; but, like Erasmus, though regretting and disparaging the present, he looked forward to the future, and knew "that he would be surpassed, "and had no morbid inclination to see the end and final failure of humaneffort in his own exhaustion. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 70: B. 106, published in 1513. The block is in the CourtLibrary at Vienna. Thawing says it was designed by Burgkmair orSpringinklee. ]

[Footnote 71: "_Caput argutum_". The phrase is from Virgil's descriptionof the thorough-bred horse (_Georg. Iii_). The above passage isintroduced (with modifications) into Melchior Adam's _Vitae Germ. Philos. _ (p. 66). Where this sentence runs: "The deep-thinking, serene-souled artist was seen unmistakably in his _arched_ and _lofty_brow and in the fiery glance of his eye. "]

[Footnote 72: In the foregoing quotations the sentences which seem to memost reminiscent of Dürer's ideas are printed in italics. ]

PART III

DÜRER AS A CREATOR

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

DÜRER'S PICTURES

I

Dürer's paintings have suffered more by the malignity of fortune thanany of his other works. Several have disappeared entirely, and severalare but wrecks of what they once were. Others are, as he tells us, "ordinary pictures, " of which "I will in a year paint a pile which noone would believe it possible for one man to do in the time, " and areperhaps more the work of assistants than of the master. Others, again, have since been repainted, more or less disastrously. Yet enough remainto show us that Dürer was not a painter born, in the sense that Titianand Correggio or Rembrandt and Rubens are; nay, not even in the sensethat a Jan Van Eyck or a Mantegna is. Mantegna is certainly the painterwith whom Dürer has most affinity, and whose method of employing pigmentis least removed from his; but Mantegna is a born colourist--a man whoseeye for colour is like a musician's ear for melody--while Dürer is atbest with difficulty able to avoid glaring discords, and, if we are tojudge by the "ordinary pictures, " did not avoid them. Again, Mantegna isnot so dependent on line as Dürer--nearly the whole of whose surface isproduced by hatching with the brush point. These facts may, perhaps, account for the large portion of Dürer's time devoted to engraving. Asan engraver he early found a style for himself, which he continued todevelop to the end of his life. As a painter he was for everexperimenting, influenced now by Jacopo de' Barbari, again by Belliniand the pictures he saw at Venice, and yet again by those he saw in theNetherlands. As Velasquez, after each of his journeys to Italy, returnsto attempt a mythological picture in the grand style, so Dürer turns topainting after his return from Venice or from the Netherlands; and hispictures divide themselves into three groups: those painted after orduring his _Wanderjahre_ and before he went to Venice in 1505, thosepainted there and during the next five years after his return, and thosepainted in the Netherlands or commenced immediately on hisreturn thence. 

II

The mediums of oil and tempera lend themselves to the production ofbroad-coloured surfaces that merge imperceptibly into one another. Thereare men the fundamental unit of whose picture language is a blot orshape; as children or as savages, they would find these most capable ofexpressing what they saw. There are others for whom the scratch or lineis the fundamental unit, for whom every object is most naturallyexpressed by an outline. There are, of course, men who present us withevery possible blend of these two fundamental forms of picture language. 

The mediums of oils and tempera are especially adapted to therequirements of those who see things rather as a diaper of shapes thanas a map of lines; while for these last the point of pen, burin, oretching-needle offers the most congenial implement. Dürer was verygreatly more inclined to express objects by a map of lines than as adiaper of coloured shapes; and for this reason I say that he was not apainter born. If this be true, as a painter he must have been at adisadvantage. In this preponderance of the draughtsman qualities heresembles many artists of the Florentine school, as also in histheoretic pre-occupation with perspective, proportion, architecture, andtechnical methods. We are impressed by a coldness of approach, anausterity, a dignity not altogether justified by the occasion, but as itwere carried over from some precedent hour of spiritual elevation; theprophet's demeanour in between the days of visitation, a little tooconsciously careful not to compromise the divinity which informs him nolonger. This tendency to fall back on manner greatly acquired indeed, but no longer consonant with the actual mood, which is really too vacantof import to parade such importance, is often a fault of natures whosenative means of expression is the thin line, the geometer's precision, the architect's foresight in measurement. And by allowing for it I thinkwe can explain the contradiction apparent between the critics' continualinsistence on what they call Dürer's great thoughts, and the sparsity ofintellectual creativeness which strikes one in turning over hisengravings, so many are there of which either the occasion or theconception are altogether trivial when compared with the grandioseaspect of the composition or the impeccable mechanical performance. Dürer's literary remains sufficiently prove his mind to have beenconstantly exercised upon and around great thoughts, and their influencemay be felt in the austerity and intensity of his noblest portraits andother creations. But "great thoughts" in respect of works of art eithermeans the communication of a profound emotion by the creation of asuitable arabesque for a deeply significant subject, as in the flowingmasses of Michael Angelo's _Creation of Man_, or it means the pictorialenhancing of the telling incidents of a dramatic situation such as wefind it in Rembrandt's treatment of the Crucifixion, Deposition, orEntombment. Now it seems to me the paucity of successes on these linesin one who nevertheless occasionally entirely succeeds, is what is moststriking in Dürer. Perhaps when dealing with the graphic arts one shouldrather speak of great character than great thoughts; yet Dürer, whileconstantly impressing us as a great character, seems to be one who wasall too rarely wholly himself. The abundant felicity in expression ofRembrandt or Shakespeare is altogether wanting. The imperial impositionof mood which Michael Angelo affects is perhaps never quite certainlyhis, even in the _Melancholy_. Yet we feel that not only has he acapacity of the same order as those men, but that he is spiritually akinto them, despite his coldness, despite his ostentation. 

But not only is Dürer praised for "great thoughts, " but he is praisedfor realism, and sometimes accused of having delighted in ugliness; or, as it is more cautiously expressed, of having preferred truth to grace. This is a point which I consider may better be discussed in respect tohis drawings than his pictures, which nearly always have some obviousconventional or traditional character, so that the word realism cannotbe applied to them. Even in his portraits his signature or aninscription is often added in such a manner as insists that this is apainting, a panel;--not a view through a window, or an attempt todeceive the eye with a make-believe reality. 

III

The altar-piece, consisting of a centre, the Virgin Mary adoring herbaby son in the carpenter's shop at Nazareth, and two wings, St. Anthonyand St. Sebastian, though the earliest of Dürer's pictures which hassurvived, is perhaps the most beautiful of them all, at least as far asthe two wings are concerned. The centre has been considerably damaged byrepainting, and was probably, owing to the greater complication ofmotives in it, never quite so successful. Whether at Venice orelsewhere, it would seem almost necessary that the young painter hadseen and been impressed by pictures by Gentile Bellini and AndreaMantegna, both of whom have painted in the same thin tempera on finecanvas, obtaining similar beauties of colour and surface. It is hardlypossible to imagine one who had seen none but German or Flemish picturespainting the St. Sebastian. The treatment of the still life in theforeground is in itself almost a proof of this. Perhaps this thin, flattempera treatment was that most suited to Dürer's native bias, and weshould regret his having been tempted to overcome the more brilliant andexacting medium of oils. In any case he more than once reverted to it inportraits and studies, while the majority of the pictures painted beforehe went to Venice in 1506 have more or less kinship with it. Thesupposed portrait of Frederic the Wise is another masterpiece in thiskind, and the _Hercules slaying the birds of the Stymphalian Lake_ inthe Germanic Museum, Nuremberg, 1500, was probably another. For thoughnow considerably damaged by restorations and dirt, it suggests fargreater pleasures than it actually imparts. The contrast between

 "The sea-worn face sad as mortality, Divine with yearning after fellowship, "

and the blond richly curling hair blown back from it, is extremely fineand entirely suited to the treatment; as is also the similar contrastbetween the richly inlaid bow, shield, and arrows, and the broad andflowing modulation of the energetic limbs and back. 

The Paumgartner altar-piece, 1499, stands out from the "ordinarypictures" belonging to this early period. It consists of a charming andgay Nativity in the centre, and two knights in armour on the wings, probably portraits of the donors, Stephan and Lucas Paumgartner, figuring as warlike saints. Stephan, a personal friend of Dürer's, figured again as St. George in the _Trinity and All Saints_ picturepainted in 1511. There were originally two panels with female saintsbeyond these again, but no trace of them remains. Now that the landscapebackgrounds have been removed from the side panels, there is no reasonto suppose that any one but Dürer had a hand in these works. But inwriting to Heller, he tells him that it was unheard of to put so muchwork into an altar-piece as he was then putting into his _Coronation ofthe Virgin_, and we may feel certain that Dürer regarded this picture asin the altar-piece category. The two knights are represented againstblack grounds, and their silhouettes form a very fine arabesque, whichthe streamers of their lances, artificially arranged, complete andemphasise. This black ground points probably to the influence of Jacopode' Barbari, whom Dürer had met and been mystified by. (See p. 63. )

[Illustration: ST. GEORGE AND ST. EUSTACE Side panels in oils of thePaumgartner Altar-piece in the Alt Pinakothek, Munich]

No doubt there was much in such a background that appealed to thedraughtsman in Dürer. It insisted on the outline which had probably beenthe starting-point of his conception. Nothing could be lesspainter-like, or make the modelling of figures more difficult, as Dürer, perhaps, realised when he later on painted the _Adam and Eve_ at Madrid. These two warriors are, however, most successful and imposing, andimmeasurably enhanced now that the spurious backgrounds, artfullyconcocted out of Dürer's own prints by an ingenious improver of hisbetters, have been removed. This person had also tinkered the centrepicture, painting out two heraldic groups of donors, far smaller inscale than the actual personages of the scene, but very useful in thecomposition, as giving a more ample base to the masses of broken andfretted quality; useful also now as an additional proof of how free fromthe fetters of an impertinent logic of realism Dürer ever was. Theselittle kneeling donors and their coats of arms emphasise the surface, and are delightful in their naïvety, while they serve to render the gay, almost gaudy panel more homely, and give it a place and a function inthe world. For they help us to realise that it answered a demand, andwas not the uncalled-for and slightly frigid excursion of the aestheticimagination which it must otherwise appear. In the same way thebrilliant _Adoration of the Magi_ (dated 1504) in the Uffizi, alsosomewhat gaudy and frigid, could we but see it where it originally hungin Luther's church at Wittenberg, might invest itself with some charmthat one vainly seeks in it now. The failure in emotion might seem morenatural if we saw the wise Elector discussing his new purchase; we mighthave felt what Dürer meant when a year later he wrote from Venice: "I ama gentleman here and only a hanger-on at home. " The expectation andprophecy of his success in those who surround a painter, --even if it bechiefly expressed by bitter rivalry, or the craft by which one greedypurchaser tries to over-reach another, even if he has to be careful notto eat at some tables for fear of being poisoned by a host whoseambition his present performance may have dashed--even expressed in thistruly Venetian manner, the expectation and prophecy of his success inthose about him make it easier for a painter to soar, and may touch hiswork with an indefinable glow that the approval of honest and astuteelectors or solid burghers may have been utterly powerless to impart. 

IV

At Venice, perhaps the occasion for his journey thither, Dürer undertooka more important work than any he had yet attempted. _The Feast of theRose Garlands_ was painted for the high altar of the church of SanBartolommeo, belonging to the German Merchants' Exchange, and close totheir Pondaco. [73] In it we find a very considerable influence of Italyin general, and Giovanni Bellini in particular; it is a splendid andpompous parade piece, and probably the portraits of the German merchantswhich it contained were the part of the work which was most successful, as it was certainly that most congenial to Dürer's genius. The _Christamong the Doctors_, dated 1506, and now in the Barberini Palace at Rome, might seem to have been painted chiefly to justify Giovanni Bellini'sastonishment at the calligraphical painting of hair. It is one of thosepictures of which a literary description would please more than the workitself. Though the contrast between the sweet childish face and those ofthe old worldly scribes is well conceived, it is in reality so violentas to be grotesque, and the play of hands produces the effect of adiagram explanatory of a conjuring trick, or a deaf and dumb alphabet, instead of conveying the inner sense of the scene represented afterRossetti's fashion, who so often succeeded in making hands speak. Another work, which dates from Venice, is the little _Crucifixion_ (atDresden. ) Perhaps the landscape and suffering body are just sufficientlytouched with acute emotion to make the arabesque of the two floatingends of the loin-cloth appear a little out of place; for in spite of thedelicacy and all but tenderness which Dürer has for once attained to inthe workmanship, one's satisfaction seems let and hindered. 

V

Shortly after his return from Venice, Dürer completed two life-sizepanels representing Adam and Eve; there are drawings for them datedduring his stay at Venice, but as a work of art they are far lessinteresting than the engraving of the same subject completed three yearsearlier. The treatment, even the conception, has been inadequatelyinfluenced by the proposed scale of the work. Probably they were likethe earlier Hercules, done to please the artist himself rather than somepatron; they are an effort to prove that he could do something which wasafter all too hard for him. Not only had he set himself the problemwhich the Greeks and Michael Angelo, and Raphael with their aid alone, had solved, of finding proportions suitable to express harmoniously theinfinite capacity for complex motion combined with that constancy ofintention which gives dignity to men and women alone among animals; butthe technical problems involved in representing life-size nude figuresagainst a plain black ground were indeed an unconscious confession thatDürer did not understand paint. There is a copy of these panels, recently attributed to Baldung Grien, in the Pitti. Animals and birdshave been added from drawings made by Dürer, but the picture is stillfarther from success, though Grien may not improbably have executed itwith Dürer at his elbow. Dürer made one more attempt at representing alife-size nude, the _Lucretia_, finished in 1518, at a period when hispowers seem to have been clouded, for the few pictures which belong toit are all inferior. However, studies for the figure exist dated 1508, so we may suppose it was a project brought back from Venice. Hisill-success with this subject may remind us of Shakespeare's longpedantic exercise in rhyme on the same theme. The pictorial motive ofDürer's work is beautiful and worthy of a Greek: indeed it is identicalwith that of Watts' _Psyche_, of which the version in private hands isvery superior to that in the Tate Gallery. The position of the bed, theidea of the draperies all are parallel. No doubt the lonely feather shedfrom Love's wing at which Psyche gazes is both more of a poet's and ofa painter's invention than the cold steel of Lucretia's dagger. And inspite of his wide knowledge of Greek and Italian art, our English mastercould scarcely have produced a work of such classic dignity with themore violent motive of the dagger, which seems to call for "The torchthat flames with many a lurid flake, " or at least the torpid glow ofsmouldering embers, to light it in such a manner as would make a reallypictorial treatment possible. No doubt Dürer has been misled by a tootyrannous notion as to what ought to be the physical build of so chastea matron, and in his anxiety to make chastity self-evident, hasforgotten to explain the need for it by such a degree of attractivenessas might tempt a tyrant to be dangerous. Just as Shakespeare, inattempting to exhaust every possible motive which the situationcomports, has forgotten that for a character that can move us aselection is needed. Another elaborate piece of frigid invention is the_Massacre of the Ten Thousand Saints in the reign of Sapor II. OfPersia_, in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna, dated 1508. However, in thiscase no doubt Dürer could plead that the subject was not of his ownchoice, for he was commissioned by the Elector, Frederic the Wise, whosewisdom probably did not extend to a knowledge of what subjects lendthemselves to pictorial treatment. Still, making every allowance forthese facts, it cannot be admitted that Dürer did the best possible withhis subject. Probably it did not move him, and neither does he us. PeterBreughel and Albrecht Altdorfer would certainly have done far better sofar as the conception of the picture is concerned, though neither ofthem had so much skill to waste on its realisation. Nevertheless, thistour _de force_ is the picture of Dürer's most pleasing in surface andcolour, with the exception of the Wings _of the Dresden Altar-piece_. Itcontains beautiful groups and figures, and is extremely well executed;so that it may amuse and delight the eye for a long time while thesignificance of the subject is forgotten. 

[Illustration: THE MARTYRDOM OF TEN THOUSAND SAINTS UNDER SAPOR II. OFPERSIA--Oil picture. "Iste faciebat anno domini 1508 Albertus DürerAlemanus"]

VI

We now turn to the third and fourth of the half-dozen pictures of Dürer, which stand out from all the rest by their elaboration and importance. The _Coronation of the Virgin (see_ p. 97), painted as the centre panelof the altar-piece commissioned by Jacob Heller at Frankfort, wasunfortunately burnt with the palace at Munich on the night of April 9, 1674; the Elector Maximilian of Bavaria having forced or cajoled theDominicans, to whose church Heller had left it, to sell it to him. It isnow represented by a copy made by Paul Juvenal in its original position, where the almost ruined portraits of Heller and his wife are supposed tohave been partly Dürer's, though the other panels are obviously the workof assistants. This work exists for us in a series of magnificent brushdrawings in black and white line on grey paper, rather than in the copy, and we can in a measure imagine its appearance by the perfectly-preserved _Trinity and All Saints_ commenced immediately afterit for Matthew Landauer, and now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. Nothing can surpass this last picture in elaboration and finish; thecolour, if not beautiful, is rich and luminous; and though it isseparate faces and draperies which chiefly delight the eye, thecomposition of the whole is an adequate adaptation of the traditionaltreatment for such themes which had been handed down through the middleages. It invites comparison rather with the similar subjects painted byFra Angelico than with the _Disputa_ of Raphael, to which German criticscompare it; however, it possesses as little of Angelico's sweetblissfulness as the Dominican painter possessed of Dürer's accuracy ofhand and searching intensity of visual realisation. Both painters areinterested in individuals, and, representing crowds of faces, make everyone a portrait; both evince a dramatic sense of propriety in gesture, both revel in bright, clear colours, especially azure; but as the lightin Dürer's masterpiece has a rosy hotness, which ill bears comparisonwith the virginal pearliness of Angelico's heaven, so the costumes andthe figures of the Florentine are doll-like, when compared with theunmistakable quality of the stuffs in which the fully-resurrected bodiesof Dürer's saints rumple and rustle. The wings of his angels are atleast those of birds, though coloured to fancy, while Angelico's are ofpasteboard tinsel and paint. But in spite of the comparative genuinenessof his upholstery, as a vision of heaven there can be no hesitation inpreferring that of the Florentine. 

In a frame designed by Dürer and carved under his supervision, thismonument to thoroughness and skill was ensconced in a little chapeldedicated to All Saints, which in style approaches our Tudor buildings. There the frame remained till lately with a poor copy of the picture andan inscription in old German to this effect: ('Matthew Landauercompleted the dedication of this chapel of the twelve brethren, togetherwith the foundation attached to it, and this picture, in the year 1511after the birth of Christ, ')

Dürer signed his picture with the same Latin formula as that of the_Coronation_:

"Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg did this the year from when the Virginbrought forth 1511. "

VII

Of all Dürer's paintings of the Madonna, there is only one which, by itssuperb design, deserves special notice among his masterpieces. This_Madonna with the Iris_ exists in two versions, both unfinished; one theproperty of Sir Frederick Cook, the other at Prague, in the Rudolphium. This latter Mr. Campbell Dodgson considers to be a poor copy. The panelis badly cracked, and weeds and long grasses have been added, apparentlywith a view to masking the cracks. Judging from a photograph alone, manyof these additions seem so appropriately placed and freely sketched thatI feel it at least to be possibly a work by the master himself. On theother hand, Sir Frederick's picture is so sleepy and clumsy in handling, that though it is unfinished, and perhaps in part damaged by somerestorer, I feel great hesitation in regarding it as Dürer's handiwork. In both cases the magnificent design is his, and that alone in either isfully representative of him. Mr. Campbell Dodgson ventures to criticisethe profusion of drapery as excessive, but my feeling, I must confess, endorses Dürer's in this, rather than that of his learned critic. To methis profusion, and the grandeur it gives as a mass in the design, is ofthe very essence of what is most peculiarly creative in Dürer'simagination. 

The last picture of which it is necessary to speak is that of the _FourApostles_ or the _Four Preachers_, as they have been more appropriatelycalled; it was perhaps the last he painted, and is in many respects themost successful. It is the only one by which the comparison withRaphael, so dear to German critics, seems at all warranted: there iscertainly some kinship between Dürer's St. John and St. Paul andapostolic figures in the cartoons or on the Vatican walls. The Germanartist's manner is less rhetorical, but his conception is hardly lessgrandiose; and his taste does not so closely border on over-emphasis, but neither is it so conscious or so fluent. Technically it seems to methat the chief influence is a recollection of the large canvases of Janand Hubert Van Eyck and Hubert Van der Goes which Dürer had admired inthe Netherlands; these had strengthened and directed the bias of hisself-culture towards simple masses on a large scale. [74] He may verywell have sought to combine what he learnt from them with hints he foundin the engravings after Raphael which he obtained in Antwerp. Hisincreasing sickness may probably account for the fact that the whitemantle of St. Paul is the only portion quite finished. The assertion ofthe writing-master, Johann Neudörffer, who in his youth had known Dürer, that the four figures are typical of the four temperaments, thesanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, and the melancholic, --into whichcategories an amateurish psychology arbitrarily divided humancharacters, --is as likely to be correct as it is certain that it addsnothing to the power and beauty of the presentation. Though Dürer in hiswork on human proportions describes the physical build of thesedifferent types, we do not know exactly what degree of precision heimagined it possible to attain in discerning them, or to what extenttheir names were merely convenient handles for certain types which hehad chosen æsthetically. To us to-day this classification is merely atrace of an obsolete pedantry, which it would be a vain curiosity toattempt to follow with the object of identifying its imaginary bases. 

The four preachers have all the air of being striking likenesses ofactual people which it is possible for work so broadly and grandlyconceived to have. These panels are interesting, even more than by theiractual success, as showing us what a scholar Dürer was to the end; howhe learned from every defeat as well as every victory, and constantlyapproached a conception and a rendering of human beauty which seemsintimately connected with man's fullest intellectual and spiritualfreedom--a conception and rendering of human beauty which Raphaelhimself had to learn from the Greeks and Michael Angelo. The work hassuffered, it is supposed, from restorers, and also from the Munichmonarch, Maximilian, who had the tremendous texts (see page 177) whichDürer had inscribed beneath the two panels sawn off in order to sparethe feelings of the Jesuits, who were dominant at his court, for theirconception of religion did not consist with terrors to come for thosewho, abuse their trust as governors and directors of mankind. 

Lastly, mention must be made of Dürer's monochrome masterpiece, The Roadto Calvary 15. 27 (see illus. ), in the collection of Sir Frederick Cook. A poor copy of this work is at Dresden, a better one at Bergamo. Theeffect of it, and several elaborate water-colour designs of the sameclass, is akin to the peculiar richness of chased metal work; glintinglight hovers over crowds of little figures. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 73: The original, now in the Monastery of Strahow-Prague, isvery much damaged, and in part repainted. There are copies in theImperial Gallery at Vienna (No. 1508), and in the possession of A. W. Miller, Esq. , of Sevenoaks. It is to be regretted that the Dürer Societypublished a photogravure of this latter work, which, though till thenunknown, is far less interesting than the original, of which they onlygave a reproduction in the text, an exhaustive history of its fortunesfrom the learned pen of Mr. Cambell Dodgson. This picture, which is sofrequently referred to in the letters from Venice, contains portraits ofthe Emperor Maximilian and Pope Julius II. , though neither of them fromlife, and in the background those of Dürer and Pirkheimer. ]

[Footnote 74: See what Melanchthon says, p. 187. ]

CHAPTER II

DÜRER'S PORTRAITS

I

If Dürer's pictures are as a whole the least satisfactory section of hiswork, in his portraits he makes us abundant amends for the time he mightotherwise have been reproached for wasting to obtain a vain mastery overbrushes and pigment. 

Unfortunately it is probable that many even of these have been lost ordestroyed, while of his most interesting sitters we have nothing butdrawings. He did not paint his friend, the boisterous and learnedPirkheimer; and what would we not give for a painted portrait ofErasmus, or a portrait of Kratzer, the astronomer royal, to compare withthe two masterpieces by Holbein in the Louvre? Even the posthumousportrait of his Imperial patron Maximilian is less interesting than thedrawings from which it was done, the eccentric sitter not having thetime to spare for so sensible a monument. 

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST Pen drawing in dark brown ink atErlangen (This drawing has been cut down for reproduction)]

II

However, Dürer had one sitter who was perhaps the most beautiful of allthe sons of men, whose features combined in an equal measure noblenessof character, intellectual intensity and physical beauty; and, findinghim also most patient and accessible, he painted him frequently. The twoearliest portraits of himself are the drawings which show him at theages of thirteen and nineteen(?) respectively (see illustration). Then, as a young man with a sprouting chin, we have the picture till recentlyat Leipzig of which Goethe's enthusiastic description has already beenquoted (p. 62). It is probable that neither Titian nor Holbein couldhave shown at so early an age a portrait so admirably conceived andexecuted. It is a masterpiece, even now that the inevitable improvementswhich those who lack all relish of genius rarely lack the opportunity, never the inclination, to add to a masterpiece, have confused thedrawing of the eyes, and reduced the bloom and delicacy that thefeatures traced by a master hand, even when they become an almostcomplete wreck, often retain; for time and fortune are not soconscientiously destructive as the imbecility of the incapable. Next wehave a portrait of Dürer when only five years older, in perfectpreservation, --that in the Prado at Madrid. This charming picture mustcertainly have drawn a sonnet from the Shakespeare who wrote _Love'sLabour Lost_, could he have seen it. For it presents a young dandy, thedelicacy and sensitiveness of whose features seem to demand and warrantthe butterfly-like display of the white and black costume hemmed withgold, and of a cap worthy to crown those flowing honey-coloured locks. There is a good copy of this delightful work in the Uffizi, where, in acongregation of self-painted artists, it does all but justice to themost beautiful of them all. For fineness of touch the original has neverbeen surpassed by any hand of European or even Chinese master. Nextthere are the dapper little full-length portraits which Dürer insertedin his chief paintings. He stands beside his friend Pirkheimer at theback of the adoring crowd in the _Feast of the Roses_, and again in themidst of the mountain slope, where on all sides of them the ten thousandsaints suffer martyrdom. Dürer stands alone beside an inscription in agentle pastoral landscape beneath the vision of the Virgin's Assumptionseen over the heads of the Apostles, who gaze up in rapture; and againhe is alone beside a broad peaceful river beneath the vision of the HolyTrinity and All Saints. I know of no parallel to these little portraits. Rembrandt and Botticelli and many others have introduced portraits ofthemselves into religious pictures, but always in disguise, as apersonage in the crowd or an actor in the scene. Only the master who wasreally most exceptional for his good looks, has had the kindness, inspite of every incongruity, to present himself before us on allimportant occasions, like the court beauty in whom it is charity ratherthan vanity to appear in public. It is expected that the very beautifulbe gracious thus. Emerson tells us that two centuries ago the TownCouncil of Montpelier passed a law to constrain two beautiful sisters tosit for a certain time on their balcony every other day, that all mightenjoy the sight of what was most beautiful in their town. It was one ofthe most gracious traits of Jeanne d'Arc's character that she liked towear beautiful clothes, because it pleased the poor people to see herthus. And Palm Sunday commemorates another historical example of suchgrace and truth. Dürer's face had a striking resemblance to thetraditional type for Jesus, adding to it just that element of individualpeculiarity, the absence of which makes it ever liable to appear alittle vacant and unconvincing. The perception of this would seem tohave dictated the general arrangement of Dürer's crowning portrait ofhimself, that at Munich dated 1500 (see illus. ), "Before which" (Mr. Ricketts writes in his recently published volume on the Prado) "oneforgets all other portraits whatsoever, in the sense that this perfectrealisation of one of the world's greatest men is equal to theoccasion. " The most exhaustive visual power and executive capacity meetin this picture, which would seem to have traversed the many perils towhich it has been exposed without really suffering so much as theirenumeration makes one expect. Thausing tells us:

The following is the story of the picture's wanderings, as told atNuremberg. It was lent by the magistrates, after they had taken theprecaution of placing a seal and strings on the back of the panel, tothe painter and engraver Kügner, to copy. He, however, carefully sawedthe panel in half (layer-wise) and glued to the authentic back hismiserable copy, which now hangs in the Town Hall. The original he sold, and it eventually came into the possession of King Ludwig I. , beforeNuremberg belonged to Bavaria. 

[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl_ "I, Albert Dürer of Nuremberg, painted myown portrait here in the proper colours at the age of twenty-eight"Oil-painting. Alt Pinakothek, Munich]

He suggests that the colour was once bright and varied, and that byvarnish and glazes it has been reduced to its present harmoniouscondition. The hair is certainly much darker than the other portraitswould have led one to expect, and the almost walnut brown of the generalcolour scheme is unique in Dürer's work. However, if some suchtransmogrification has been effected, it is marvellous that it shouldhave obliterated so little of the inimitable handiwork of the master. Thausing considered the date (1500), monogram and inscription on theback to be forgeries, and it certainly looks as if it ought to comenearer to the portrait in the _Feast of the Rose Garlands_ (1506) thanto that at Madrid (1498). A genuine scalloped tablet is faintly visibleunder the dark glazes which cover the background; and this, no doubt, bears the original inscription and date. What may not have happened to apicture after or before it left the artist's studio? Critics are tooquick to determine that such changes have been introduced by others. Inthis case we must remember how experimental Dürer was, even with regardto his engravings on metal. He tries iron plates and etching, andfinally settles on a method of commencing with etching and finishingwith the burin; and this was in a medium in which he soon found himselfat home. But with painting he was vastly more experimental, and neversatisfied with his results, as he told Melanchthon (see p. 187). Then wemust remember that this picture probably was during Dürer's lifetime, ifnot in his own possession, at least never out of his reach; and no doubthe was aware that it was the grandest and most perfectly finished of allhis portraits--therefore, as he came more and more, especially after hisvisit to the Netherlands, to desire and seek after simplicity, he mayhimself have added the dark glazes. If the original inscriptioncontained a dedication to Pirkheimer or some other notable Nuremberger, there was every reason for the artist who stole the picture toobliterate this and add a new one: or this may have been done when itbecame the property of the town, for those who sold it may have wishedthat it should not be known that it might have been an heirloom in theirfamily. Infinite are the possibilities, those only decide in such caseswho have a personal motive for doing so; "la rage de conclure" (asFlaubert saw) is the pitfall of those who are vain of their knowledge. 

[Illustration: OSWOLT KREL Oil portrait in the Alt Pinakothek at Munich]

[Illustration: _By permission_ of the "_Burlington_ Magazine" ALBERTDÜRER THE ELDER, 1497 National Gallery]

III

Though fearing that it will appear but tedious, I will now attemptbriefly to describe in succession the remaining master portraits whichwe owe to Dürer, and the effect that each produces. It is by these worksand not by his creative pictures that his ranks among the greatest namesof painting. These might be compared with the very finest portraits byRaphael and Holbein, and the precedence would remain a question ofpersonal predilection; since nothing reasoned, no distinguishablesuperiority over Dürer in vision or execution could be urged for either. Rather, if mere capacity were regarded, he must have the palm; nor dideither of his compeers light upon a happier subject than was Dürer'swhen he represented himself; nor did they achieve nobler designs. Ineffect upon our emotions and sensations, these portraits may competewith the masterpieces of Titian and Rembrandt, though the method ofexpression is in their case too different to render comparison possible. Whatever in the glow of light, in the power of shadow, to envelop andenhance the features portrayed, is theirs and not his, his superiorityof searching insight, united with its equivalent of unique facility indefinition, seems more than to outweigh. Before he left for Venice, besides the renderings of himself already mentioned, Dürer had paintedhis father twice, in 1494 and in 1497. The latter was the pair to andcompeer of his own portrait at Madrid, ; and, hitherto unknown, was lentlast year by Lord Northampton to the Royal Academy, and has sincebeen bought for the National Gallery. This beautiful work is unique evenamong the works of the master, and is not so much the worse forrepainting as some make out. The majority of Dürer's portraits standalone. In each the Esthetic problem has been approached and solved in astrikingly different manner. This picture and its fellow, the portraitof the painter at Madrid, the _Oswolt Krel_, the portrait of a lady seenagainst the sea at Berlin, the _Wolgemut_, and Dürer's own portrait atMunich, though seen by the same absorbing eyes, are rendered each inquite a different manner. No man has ever been better gifted forportraying a likeness than Dürer; but the absence of a nativecomprehension of pigment made him ever restless, and it might bepossible to maintain that each of these pictures presented us with adiffering strategy to enforce pigment, to subserve the purposes of adraughtsman. Still this would seem to imply a greater sacrifice of easeand directness than those brilliant masterpieces can be charged with. They none of them lack beauty of colour, of surface, or of handling, though each so unlike the other. In this portrait of his father, Dürerhas developed a shaken brushline, admirably adapted to suggest thewrinkled features of an old man, but in complete contrast to the rapidsweep of the caligraphic work in the _Oswolt Krel_; and it is to benoticed how in both pictures the touch seems to have been invented tofacilitate the rendering of the peculiar curves and lines of thesitter's features, and further variations of it developed to express thedraperies and other component parts of the picture. It is thisinventiveness in handling which most distinguishes Dürer from painterslike Raphael and Holbein, and makes his work comparable with themasterpieces of Rembrandt and Titian, in spite of the extremeopposition in aspect between their work and his. 

The noble portrait of a middle-aged man, No. 557c, in the Royal Galleryat Berlin, (supposed to represent Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, Dürer's first patron), gives us a master portrait, in which thetechnical treatment is comparable to that of the early triptych atDresden, and which is a monument of sober power and distinction, thoughagain very difficult to compare with the other splendid portraits by thesame hand which hang beside or near it in that Gallery. 

The vivid _Oswolt Krel_ at Munich shows the peculiarity of Dürer'scaligraphic touch better than perhaps any other of his portraits. Thefinish is not carried so far as in the Madrid portrait of himself, whereeven the texture of the gloves has been softened by touches of thethumb, and the absence of these extra refinements leaves it the mostspontaneous and vigorously bold of all Dürer's paintings. Theconcentrated energy of the sitter's features demanded such a treatment;he seems to burn with the inconsiderate atheism of a Marlowe. Young, andless surprised than indignant to be alone awake in a sleepy and bigotedworld, he seems convinced of a mission to chastise, _even_ to scandalisehis easy-going neighbours. Let us hope he met with better luck than theMarlowes, Shelleys, and Rimbauds, whose tragedies we have read; for onecan but regret, as one meets his glance so much fiercer than need be, that he is not known to history. 

[Illustration: Oil Portrait of a Lady seen against the Sea In the BerlinGallery]

[Illustration: Oil portrait, dated 1506, at Hampton Court]

The fine portrait of Hans Tucher, 1499, in the Grand Ducal Museum atWeimar should, judging from a photograph alone, be mentioned here. Ithas obvious affinities with the _Oswolt Krel_, but the caligraphicmethod is again modified in harmony with the character of thesitter's features. The companion piece, representing Felicitas Tucherin, would seem at some period to have been restored to the insignificanceand obscurity that belonged to the sitter before Dürer painted her. 

IV

The portraits which Dürer painted at Venice, or soon after his return, betray the influence of other masterpieces on his own. Mr. Ricketts haspointed to that of Antonello da Messina in the portraits of young men atVienna (1505) and at Hampton Court (1506). The former of these has anallegorical sketch of Avarice, painted on the back in a thick impasto, such as seems almost a presage of after developments of the Venetianschool, and may possibly show the influence of some early experiment byGiorgione which Dürer wished to show that he could imitate if he liked. The latter represents a personage who appears on the left of the _Feastof Rose Wreaths_ in exactly the same cap and with the same fastening tohis jerkin, crossing his white shirt (see illustration opposite). 

Not improbably Dürer may have painted separate portraits of nearly allthe members of the German Guild at Venice who appear in the _RoseGarlands_. In any case much of his work during his stay there hasdisappeared. It was here that he painted that beautiful head of a woman(No. 557 G in the Berlin Gallery) with soft, almost Leonardesqueshadows, seen against the luminous hazy sea and sky, which remainsabsolutely unique in method and effect among his works, and makes oneask oneself unanswerable questions as to what might not have been theresult if he could but have brought himself to accept the offeredcitizenship and salary, and stop on at Venice. A Dürer, not onlysecluded from Luther and his troubling denunciations, but living to seeTitian and Giorgione's early masterpieces, perhaps forming friendshipswith them, and later visiting Rome, standing in the Sistine Chapel, seated in the Stanze between the School of Athens and the Disputa! I atleast cannot console myself for these missed opportunities, as so manyof his critics and biographers have done, by saying that doubtless hadhe stayed he would have been spoiled like those second-class German andDutch painters, for whom the siren art of Italy proved a banefulinfluence. One could almost weep to think of what has been probably lostto the world because Dürer could not bring himself to stay on at Venice. It _was_ here he painted the tiny panel representing the head of a girlin gay apparel dated 1507 (in the Berlin Gallery), that makes one think, even more than do Holbein's _Venus_ and _Lais_ at Basle, of the triumphsthat were reserved for Italians in the treatment of similar subjects. 

After his return the influence of Venetian methods gradually waned, tillwe find in the masterly and refined portrait of _Wolgemut_ (1516) (seeillustration); something of a return to the caligraphic method sonoticeable in the _Oswolt Krel_. About the same time Dürer recommencedpainting in tempera in a manner resembling the early Dresden _Madonna_and the _Hercules_, as we see by the rather unpleasant heads of Apostlesin the Uffizi and the tine one of an old man in a vermilion cap in theLouvre, &c. &c. 

[Illustration: _Bruckmann_--"Albrecht Dürer took this likeness of hismaster, Michael Wolgemut, in the year 1516, and he was 82 years of age, and lived to the year 1519, and then departed on Saint Andrew's Day, very early before sunrise"--Oil-painting. Alt Pinakothek, Munich]

[Illustration: HANS IMHOF (?)--From the painting in the Royal Galleryat Madrid--(By permission _of Messrs. Braun, Clément & Co. , Dornach(Alsace), Paris and New York_)]

V

On his arrival at Antwerp in 1521 Dürer commenced the third and lastgroup of master-portraits; foremost is the superb head and bust atMadrid, supposed to represent Hans Imhof, a patrician of Dürer's nativetown and his banker while at Antwerp; of the same date are thetriumphant renderings of the grave and youthful Bernard van Orley (atDresden) and that of a middle-aged man--lost for the National Gallery, and now in the possession of Mrs. Gardner, of Boston. All three wereprobably painted at Antwerp. 

It may be that the portrait of Imhof and the report of the honours andcommissions showered on their painter while in the Netherlands, woke theNuremberg Councillors up, for we have portraits of three of them dated1526--Jacob Muffel, Hieronymus Holzschuher, (both in the Royal Gallery, Berlin, ) and the eccentric and unpleasing medallion representingJohannes Kleeberger, at Vienna. With the exception of this last, thisgroup is composed of masterpieces absolutely unrivalled for intensityand dignity of power. Van Eyck painted with inhuman indifference a fewugly grotesque but otherwise uninteresting people. All but a very few ofHolbein's best portraits pale before these instances of searchinginsight; and, north of the Alps at least, there are no others which canbe compared to them. The _Hans Imhof_ shows a shrewd and forbiddingschemer for gain on a large scale--a face which produces the impressionof a trap or closed strong box, but, being so alert and intelligent, seems to demand some sort of commiseration for the constraint put uponits humanity in the creation of a master, a tyrant over himself firstand afterwards over an ever-widening circle of others. The unknownmaster who is represented in Mrs. Gardner's beautiful picture is lessforbidding, though not less patently a moulder of destiny. _JacobMuffel_ has a more open face, a more serene gaze; but his mouth too hasthe firmness acquired by those who live always in the presence ofenemies, or are at least aware that "a little folding of the hands" maybe fatal to all their most cherished purposes. The last of these mastersof themselves and of their fortunes in hazardous and change-fraughttimes is _Hieronymus Holzschuher_, Dürer's friend. Only less felicitousbecause less harmonious in colour than the three former, this vivaciousportrait of a ruddy, jovial, and white-haired patrician seen against abright blue background might produce the effect of a Father Christmas, were it not for the resolute mouth and the puissant side-glance of theeyes. Bernard van Orley, the only youthful person immortalised in thisgroup, has a gentle, responsible air which his features are a little tooheavy to enhance. 

I have now mentioned the chief of his portraits, which are the best ofhis painting, and by which he ranks for the directness and power of hisworkmanship and of his visual analysis in the company of the verygreatest. Raphael and Holbein have alone produced portraits which, asthey can be compared to Dürer's, might also be held to rival them;Titian, Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Reynolds have done assplendidly, but the material they used and the aims they set themselveswere too different to make a comparison serviceable. These men arepre-eminent among those who have produced portraits which, whileunsurpassed for technical excellences, present to us individuals whosebeauty or the character it expresses are equally exceptional. 

[Illustration: "JAKOB MUFFEL" Oil portrait in the Berlin Gallery]

CHAPTER III

DÜRER'S DRAWINGS

I

Perhaps Dürer is more felicitous as a draughtsman than in any otherbranch of art. The power of nearly all first-rate artists is more whollylive and effective in their drawings than in elaborated works. Dürerhimself says:

An artist of understanding and experience can show more of his greatpower and art in small things, roughly and rudely done, than manyanother in his great work. Powerful artists alone will understand thatin this strange saying I speak truth. For this reason a man may oftendraw something with his pen on a half sheet of paper in one day, or cutit with his graver on a small block of wood, and it shall be fuller ofart and better than another's great work whereon he hath spent a wholeyear's careful labour. 

But it is possible to go far beyond this and say not only "another'sgreat work, " but his own great work. 

In the first chapter of this work I said that the standard in works ofart is not truth but sincerity; that if the artist tells us what hefeels to be beautiful, it does not matter how much or how littlecomparison it will bear with the actual objects represented. And fromthis fact, that sincerity not truth is of prime importance in matters ofexpression, results the strange truth that Dürer says will berecognised by powerful artists alone (see page 227). Any one whorecognises how often the sketches and roughs of artists, especially ofthose who are in a peculiar degree creators, excel their finished worksin those points which are the distinctive excellences of such men, willgrant this at once. Only to turn to the sketch (inscribed _Memento Mei1505_) of _Death_ on horseback with a scythe, or the pen-portrait ofDürer leaning on his hand, will be enough to convince those who alonecan be convinced on these points. For any who need to explain tothemselves the character of such sketches--as the authoress of a recentlittle book on Dürer does that of the pen drawing "in which the boy'schin rests on his hand" by telling us that "it is unfinished and wasevidently discarded as a failure, "--any who must be at such pains in acase of this sort is one of those who can never understand wherein thegreat power of a work of art resides. Such people may get great pleasurefrom works of art; only I am content to remain convinced that thepleasure they get has no kind of kinship with that which I myselfobtain, or that which the greatest artists most constantly seek to give. This marvellous portrait of himself as a lad of from seventeen tonineteen years of age is just one of those things "roughly and rudelydone, " of which Dürer speaks. There is probably no parallel to it formastery or power among works produced by artists so youthful. 

[Illustration: Study of a hound for the copper engraving "St. Eustache. "B. 57 Brush drawing at Windsor]

There is often some virtue in spontaneity which is difficult to define;perhaps it bears more convincing witness to the artist's integrity thanslower and longer labours, from which it is difficult to ward allduplicity of intention. The finishing-touch is too often a Judas' kiss. "Blessed are the pure in heart" is absolutely true in art. (Of course, I do not use purity in the narrow sense which is confined to avoidanceof certain sensual subjects and seductive intentions. ) It is onlypoverty of imagination which taboos subject-matter, and lack of charitythat believes there are themes which cannot be treated with any butignoble intentions. But the virtue in a spontaneous drawing is akin tothat single devotion to whatever is best, which true purity is; as therefinement of economy which results in the finished work is akin to thatdelicate repugnance to all waste, which is true chastity. A sketch byRembrandt of a naked servant girl on a bed is as "simple as the infancyof truth"--as single in intention. A Greek statue of a raimentlessApollo is pre-eminently chaste. But it does not follow that Rembrandtwas in his life eminently pure, or the Greek sculptor signal forchastity. Drawings rapidly executed have often a lyrical, rapturous, exultant purity, and are for that reason, to those whose eyes areblinded neither by prejudice nor by misfortune, as captivating as arehealthy, gleeful children to those whose hearts are free. And while thejoy that a child's glee gives is for a time, that which a drawing givesmay well be for ever. 

We say a "spirited sketch" as we say "a spirited horse"; but works ofart are instinct with a vast variety of spirits and exert manifoldinfluences. It is a poverty of language which has confined the use ofthis word to one of the most obvious and least estimable. It can benever too much insisted on that a work of art is something that exertsan influence, and that its whole merit lies in the quality and degree ofthe influence exerted; for those who are not moved by it, it is no morethan a written sentence to one who cannot read. 

II

Many people in turning over a collection of Dürer's drawings would beconstantly crying, "How marvellously realistic!" and would glow withenthusiasm and smile with gratitude for the perception which these wordsexpressed. Others would say "merely realistic"; and the words wouldconvey, if not disapprobation for something shocking, at leastindifference. In both cases the word "realistic" would, I take it, meanthat the objects which the pen, brush, or charcoal strokes representedwere described with great particularity. And in the first case delightwould have been felt at recognising the fulness of detailed informationconveyed about the objects drawn--that each drawing represented not ageneralisation, but an individual. In the other case the mind would havebeen repelled by the infatuated insistence on insignificant ornegligible details, the absence of their classification andsubordination to ideas. The first of these two frames of mind is that ofPaul Pry, who is delighted to see, to touch, or behold, for whomeverything is a discovery; and there are members of this class oftemperament who in middle life continue to make the same discoveriesevery day with zest and a wonder equal to that which they felt whenchildren. The second of these frames of mind is that of the man with asystem or in search of a system, who desires to control, or, if hecannot do that, at least to be taken into the confidence of thecontroller, or to gain a position from which he can oversee him, andapprove or disapprove. Now neither of these judgments is in itselfaesthetic, or implies a comprehension of Dürer as an artist. 

[Illustration: ME-ENTO MEI, 1505. From the drawing in the BritishMuseum]

The man who cries out: "Just look how that is done!" "Who could havebelieved a single line could have expressed so much?" judges as anartist, a craftsman. The man who, like Jean Francois Millet, exclaims:"How fine! How grand! How delicate! How beautiful!" judges as a creator. He sees that "it is good. " An artist--a creator--may possess either oreven both the two former temperaments; but as an artist he must begoverned by the latter two, either singly or combined. Dürer, doubtless, had a considerable share in all four of these points of view. Hedelighted in objects as such, in the new and the strange as new andstrange, in the intricate as intricate, in the powerful as powerful. Andabove all in his drawings does he manifest this direct and childishinterest and curiosity. He was also in search of a system, of anintellectual key or plan of things; and in the many drawings he devotedto explaining or developing his ideas of proportion, of perspective, ofarchitecture, he shows this bias strongly. But nearly every drawing byhim, or attributed to him, manifests the third of these temperaments. The never-ceasing economy and daring of the invention displayed in histouch, or, as he would have said, "in his hand, " is almost as signal ashis perfect assurance and composure. And when one reflects that he wasnot, like Rembrandt, an artist who made great or habitual use of thespaces of shade and light, but that his workmanship is almost entirelyconfined to the expressive power of lines, wonder is only increased. Ofthe fourth character that creates and estimates value, though in certainworks Dürer rises to supreme heights, though in almost all his importantworks he appeases expectation, yet often where he could surely have donemuch better he seems to have been content not to exert his rarestgifts, but rather to play with or parade those that are secondary. Notonly is this so in drawings like the _Dance of Monkeys_ at Basle, doneto content his friend the reformer Felix Frey (see page 168), and in theborders designed to amuse Maximilian during the hours that customordained he should pretend to give to prayer; but there are drawingswhich were not apparently thrown as sops to the idleness of others, butdone to content some half-vacant mood of his own (see Lippmann, 41, 83, 394, 4. 20, 333). 

In such drawings the economy and daring of the strokes is alwaysadmirable, can only be compared to that in drawings by Rembrandt andHokusai; but the occasion is often idle, or treated with a condescensionwhich well-nigh amounts to indifference. There is no impressiveness ofallure, no intention in the proportions or disposition on the paper suchas Erasmus justly praised in the engravings on copper, probablyrecollecting something which Dürer himself had said (see page 186). 

Yet in his portrait heads the right proportions are nearly always found;and in many cases I believe it is no one but the artist himself who hascut down such drawings after they were completed, to find a moreharmonious or impressive proportion (see illustration opposite). Andoften these drawings are as perfect in the harmony between the meansemployed and the aspect chosen, and in the proportion between the headand the framing line and the spaces it encloses, as Holbein himselfcould have made them; while they far surpass his best in brilliancy andintensity. 

[Illustration: Drawing in black chalk heightened with white on reddishground Formerly in the collection at Warwick Castle]

[Illustration: Silver-point drawing on prepared grey ground, in thecollection of Frederick Locker, Esq. ]

III

Something must be said of Dürer's employment of the water-colours, pen-and-ink, silver-point, charcoal, chalk, &c. , with which he made hisdrawings. He is a complete master of each and all these mediums, in sofar as the line or stroke may be regarded as the fundamental unit; he isequally effective with the broad, soft line of chalk (see illustration, page I. ), or the broad broken charcoal line (see illustration, pageII. ), as with the fine pen stroke (see illustration, page III. ), thedelicate silver-point (see illustration, page IV. ), or the supple andtapering stroke produced by the camel's hair brush (see illustration, page V. ). But when one comes to broad washes, large masses of light andshade, the expression of atmosphere, of bloom, of light, he is wantingin proportion as these effects become vague, cloudy, indefinite, mist-like. His success lies rather in the definite reflections onpolished surfaces; he never reproduces for us the bloom on peach orflesh or petal. He does not revel, like Rembrandt, in the veils andmysteries of lucent atmosphere or muffling shadow. The emotions forwhich such things produce the most harmonious surroundings he hardlyever attempts to appeal to; he is mournful and compassionate, orindignant, for the sufferings, of his Man of Sorrows; not tender, romantic, or awesome. Only with the tapering tenuity and delicate springof the pure line will he sometimes attain to an infantile or virginalfreshness that is akin to the tenderness of the bloom on flowers, or thelight of dawn on an autumn morning. [75]

In the same way, when he is tragic, it is not with thick clouds rent inthe fury of their flight, or with the light from shaken torches cast andscattered like spume-flakes from the angry waves; nor is it with theaccumulated night that gives intense significance to a single tranquilray. Only by a Rembrandt, to whom these means are daily present, could asubject like the _Massacre of the Ten Thousand_ have been treated withdramatic propriety; unless, indeed, Michael Angelo, in a grey dawn, should have twisted and wrung with manifold pain a tribe of giants, stark, and herded in some leafless primeval valley. With Dürer theoccasion was merely one on which to coldly invent variations, as thoughthis human suffering was a motive for _an_ arabesque. Yet even from thedays when he copied Andrea Mantegna's struggling sea-monsters, or whenhe drew the stern matured warrior angels of his Apocalypse fighting, with their historied faces like men hardened by deceptions practisedupon them, like men who have forbidden salt tears and clenched theirteeth and closed their hearts, who see, who hate; even from these earlydays, the energy of his line was capable of all this, and hisspontaneous sense of arabesque could become menacing and explosive. There are two or three drawings of angry, crying cupids (Lipp. , 153 and446, see illustration opposite), prepared for some intended picture ofthe Crucifixion, where he has made the motive of the winged infantshead, usually associated with bliss and scattered rose-leaves, becometerrible and stormy. And the _Agony in the Garden_, etched on iron, contains a tree tortured by the wind (see illustration), as marvellousfor rhythm, power, and invention as the blast-whipped brambles and nakedbushes that crest a scarped brow above the jealous husband who stabs hiswife, in Titian's fresco at Padua. Again, the unspeakable tragedy of thestooping figure of Jesus, who is being dragged by His hair up the stepsto Annas' throne, in the _Little Passion_, is rendered by lines instinctwith the highest dramatic power. These are a draughtsman's creations;though they are less abundant in Dürer's work than one could wish, stillonly the greatest produce such effects; only Michael Angelo, Titian, andRembrandt can be said to have equalled or surpassed Dürer in this kind, rarely though it be that he competes with them. 

[Illustration: CHERUB FOR A CRUCIFIXION Black chalk drawing heightenedwith white on a blue-grey paper In the collection of Herr DoctorBlasius, Brunswick]

It is for the intense energy of his line, combined with its uniqueassurance, that Dürer is most remarkable. The same amount of detail, thesame correctness in the articulation and relation between stem and leaf, arm and hand, or what not, might be attained by an insipid workmanshipwith lifeless lines, in patient drudgery. It is this fact that those whopraise art merely as an imitation constantly forget. There is often asmuch invention in the way details are expressed by the strokes of pen orbrush, as there could be in the grouping of a crowd; the deftness, theeconomy of the touches, counts for more in the inspiriting effect thanthe truth of the imitation. A photograph from nature never conveys this, the chief and most fundamental merit of art. Reynolds says:

Rembrandt, in older to take advantage of an accident, appears often tohave used the pallet-knife to lay his colours on the canvas instead ofthe pencil. Whether it is the knife or any other instrument, _itsuffices, if it is something that does not follow exactly the will. Accident, in the hands of_ an artist _who knows horn to take theadvantage of its hints, will often produce bold and capricious beautiesof handling_, and facility such as he would not have thought of orventured with his pencil, under the regular restraint of his hand. [76]

In such a sketch as the _Memento Mei_, 1505, (_Death_ riding onhorseback, ) all those who have sense for such things will perceive howthe rough paper, combined with the broken charcoal line, lends itself toqualities of a precisely similar nature to those described by Reynoldsas obtained by Rembrandt's use of the pallet-knife. Yet, just as, in theuse of charcoal, the "something that does not follow exactly the will"is infinitely more subtle than in the use of the palette-knife torepresent rocks or stumps of trees, so in the pen or silver-point linethis element, though reduced and refined till it is hardly perceptible, still exists, and Dürer takes "the advantage of its hints. " And not onlydoes he do' this, but he foresees their occurrence, and relies on themto render such things as crumpled skin, as in the sketches for Adam'shand holding the apple. (Lipp. 234). The operation is so rapid, soinstantaneous, that it must be called an instinct, or at least a habitbecome second nature, while in the instance chosen by Reynolds, it isobvious and can be imagined step by step; but in every case it is thiscapacity to take advantage of the accident, and foresee and calculateupon its probable occurrences, that makes the handling of any materialinventive, bold, and inimitable. It is in these qualities that an artistis the scholar of the materials he employs, and goes to school to thecapacities of his own hand, being taught both by their failure to obeyhis will here, and by their facility in rendering his subtlestintentions there. And when he has mastered all they have to teach him, he can make their awkwardness and defects expressive; as stammererssometimes take advantage of their impediment so that in itself itbecomes an element of eloquence, of charm, or even of explicitness;while the extra attention rendered enables them to fetch about and dareto express things that the fluent would feel to be impossible andnever attempt. 

[Illustration: APOLLO AND DIANA--Pen drawing in the British Museum, supposed to show the influence of the Belvedere Apollo]

IV

Lastly, it is in his drawings, perhaps, even more than in his copperengravings, that Dürer proves himself a master of "the art of seeingnature, " as Reynolds phrased it; and the following sentence makes clearwhat is meant, for he says of painting "perhaps it ought to be as farremoved from the vulgar idea of imitation, as the refined, civilisedstate in which we live is removed from a gross state of nature";[77] andagain: "If we suppose a view of nature, represented with all the truthof the camera obscura, and the same scene represented by a great artist, how little and how mean will the one appear in comparison of the other, where no superiority is supposed from the choice of the subject. "[78]Not only is outward nature infinitely varied, infinitely composite; buthuman nature--receptive and creative--is so too, and after we have gazedat an object for a few moments, we no longer see it the same as it wasrevealed to our first glance. Not only has its appearance changed forus, but the effect that it produces on our emotions and intelligence isno longer the same. Each successful mind, according to its degree ofculture, arrives finally at a perception of every class of objectspresented to it which is most in agreement with its own nature--that is, calls forth or nourishes its most cherished energies and efforts, whileharmonising with its choicest memories. All objects in regard to whichit cannot arrive at such a result oppress, depress, or even torment it. At least this is the case with our highest and most creative moods; butevery man of parts has a vast range of moods, descending from this tothe almost vacant contemplation of a cow--the innocence of whose eye, which perceives what is before it without transmuting it by recollectionor creative effort, must appear almost ideal to the up-to-date criticwho has recently revealed the innocent confusion of his mind in aponderous tome on nineteenth-century art. The art of seeing nature, then, consists in being able to recognise how an object appears inharmony with any given mood; and the artist must employ his materials tosuggest that appearance with the least expenditure of painful effort. The highest art sees all things in harmony with man's most elevatedmoods; the lowest sees nature much as Dutch painters and cows do. Now wecan understand what Goethe means when he says that "Albrecht Dürerenjoyed the advantages of a profound realistic perception, and anaffectionate human sympathy with all present conditions. " The man whocontinued to feel, after he had become a Lutheran, the beauty of the artthat honoured the Virgin, the man who cannot help laughing at the most"lying, thievish rascals" whenever they talk to him because "they knowthat their knavery is no secret, but 'they don't mind, '" isaffectionate; he is amused by monkeys and the rhinoceros; he can bearwith Pirkheimer's bad temper; he looks out of kindly eyes that allowtheir perception of strangeness or oddity to redeem the impression thatmight otherwise have been produced by vice, or uncouthness, orsullen frowns. 

I have supposed that a realistic perception was one which saw thingswith great particularity; and the words "a profound realisticperception" to Goethe's mind probably conveyed the idea of such aperception, in profound accord with human nature, that is where thehuman recognition, delight and acceptance followed the perception evento the smallest details, without growing weary or failing to find atleast a hope of significance in them. If this was what the great criticmeant, those who turn over a collection of Dürer's drawings will feelthat they are profoundly realistic (realistic in a profoundly humansense), and that their author enjoyed an affectionate human sympathywith all present conditions; and by these two qualities is infinitelydistinguished from all possessors of so-called innocent eyes, whetherquadruped or biped. 

It is well to notice wherein this notion of Goethe's differs from theconventional notions which make up everybody's criticism. For instance, "In all his pictures he confined himself to facts, " says Sir MartinConway, [79] and then immediately qualifies this by adding, "He paintedevents as truly as his imagination could conceive them. " We may safelysay that no painter of the first rank has ever confined himself tofacts. Nor can we take the second sentence as it stands. Any one wholooks at the _Trinity_ in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna will see atonce that the artist who painted it did not shut his eyes and try toconjure up a vision of the scene to be represented; the ordering of thepicture shows plainly throughout that a foregone conventionalarrangement, joined with the convenience of the methods ofrepresentation to be employed, dictated nearly the whole composition, and that the details, costumes, &c. , were gradually added, being chosento enhance the congruity or variety of what was already given. Perhapsit was never a prime object with Dürer to conceive the event, it wasrather the picture that he attempted to conceive; it is Rembrandt whoattempts to conceive events, not Dürer. He is very far from being arealist in this sense: though certain of his etchings possess aconsiderable degree of such realism, it is not what characterises him asa creator or inventor. But a "profound realistic perception" almostunequalled he did possess; what he saw he painted not as he saw it, notwhere he saw it, but as it appeared to him to really be. So he paintedreal girls, plain, ugly or pretty as the case might be, for angels, andput them in the sky; but for their wings he would draw on his fancy. Often the folds of a piece of drapery so delighted him that they arecontinued for their own sake and float out where there is no wind tosupport them, or he would develop their intricacies beyond everypossibility of conceivable train or other superfluity of real garments;and it is this necessity to be richer and more magnificent thanprobability permits which brings us to the creator in Dürer; not onlyhad he a profound realistic perception of what the world was like, buthe had an imagination that suggested to him that many things could beplayed with, embroidered upon, made handsomer, richer or moreimpressive. When Goethe adds that "he was retarded by a gloomy fantasydevoid of form or foundation, " we perceive that the great critic isspeaking petulantly or without sufficient knowledge. Dürer's gloomyfantasy, the grotesque element in his pictures and prints, was not hisown creation, it is not peculiar to him, he accepted it from traditionand custom (see Plate "Descent into Hell"). What is reallycharacteristic of him is the richness displayed in devils' scales andwings, in curling hair or crumpled drapery, or flame, or smoke, orcloud, or halo; and, still more particularly, his is the energy of lineor fertility of invention with which all these are displayed, and thedignity or austerity which results from the general proportion of themasses and main lines of his composition. 

V

For the illustration of this volume I have chosen a larger proportion ofdrawings than of any other class of work; both because Dürer's drawingsare less widely known than his engravings on metal, and because, thoughhis fame may perhaps rest almost equally on these latter, and they mayrightly be considered more unique in character, yet his drawings showthe splendid creativeness of his handling of materials in greatervariety. One engraving on copper is like another in the essentialproblem that it offered to the craftsman to resolve; but every differentmedium in which Dürer made drawings, and every variety of surface onwhich he drew, offered a different problem, and perhaps no other artistcan compare with him in the great variety of such problems which he hassolved with felicity. And this power of his to modify his method withchanging conditions is, as we have seen, from the technical side thehighest and greatest quality that an artist can possess. It only failshim when he has to deal with oil paintings, and even there he shows acorresponding sense of the nature of the problems involved, if he showsless felicity on the whole in solving them; and perhaps could he havestayed at Venice and have had the results of Giorgione's and Titian'sexperiments to suggest the right road, we should have been scarcely ableto perceive that he was less gifted as a painter than as draughtsman. Asit is, he has given us water-colour sketches in which the blot is usedto render the foliage of trees in a manner till then unprecedented. (Lipp. 132, &c. ) He can rival Watteau in the use of soft chalk, Leonardoin the use of the pen, and Van Eyck in the use of the brush point; andthere are examples of every intermediate treatment to form a chainacross the gulf that separates these widely differing modes of graphicexpression. There can be no need to point the application of theseremarks to the individual drawings here reproduced; those who arecapable of recognising it will do so without difficulty. 

[Illustration: AN OLD CASTLE Body-dour drawing at Bremen]

VI

In conclusion, Dürer appears as a draughtsman of unrivalled powers. Andwhen one looks on his drawings as what they most truly were, hispreparation for the tasks set him by the conditions of his life, thereis room for nothing but unmixed admiration. It is only when one askswhether those tasks might not have been more worthy of such high giftsthat one is conscious of deficiency or misfortune. And can one helpasking whether the Emperor Max might not have given Dürer his Bible orhis Virgil to illustrate, instead of demanding to have the borders ofhis "Book of Hours" rendered amusing with fantastic and curiousarabesques; whether Dürer's learned friends, instead of requiring fromhim recondite or ceremonious allegories, might not have demandedtitle-pages of classic propriety; or whether the imperial bent of hisown imagination might not have rendered their demands malleable, and bidthem call for a series of woodcuts, engravings or drawings, which couldrival Rembrandt's etchings in significance of subject-matter andimaginative treatment, as they rival them in executive power? In hisportraits--the large majority of which have come down to us only asdrawings, the majority of which were never anything else--the demandmade upon him was worthy; but even here Holbein, a man of lesser giftand power, has perhaps succeeded in leaving a more dignified, a moresatisfying series; one containing, if not so many masterpieces, fewer onwhich an accidental or trivial subject or mood has left its impress. Yet, in spite of this, it is Dürer's, not Rembrandt's, not Holbein'scharacter, that impresses us as most serious, most worthy to be held asa model. It is before his portrait of himself that Mr. Ricketts "forgetsall other portraits whatsoever, in the sense that this perfectrealisation of one of the world's greatest men is worthy of theoccasion. " So that we feel bound to attribute our dissatisfaction tosomething in his circumstances having hindered and hampered the flow ofwhat was finest in his nature into his work. From Venice he wrote: "I ama gentleman here, but only a hanger-on at home. " Germany was a betterhome for a great character, a great personality, than for a greatartist: Dürer the artist was never quite at home there, never agentleman among his peers. The good and solid burghers rated him as agood and solid burgher, worth so much per annum; never as endowed withthe rank of his unique gift. It was only at Venice and Antwerp that hewas welcomed as the Albert Dürer whom we to-day know, love, and honour. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 75: See the exquisite landscape in the collection of Mr. C. S. Ricketts and Mr. C. H. Shannon, reproduced in the sixth folio of theDürer Society, 1903. Mr. Campbell Dodgson describes the drawing as in ameasure spoilt by retouching, but what convinces him that theseretouches are not by Dürer? The pen-work seems to be at once too cleverand too careless to have been added by another hand to preserve afading drawing. ]

[Footnote 76: XII. Discourse. ]

[Footnote 77: XIII, Discourse. ]

[Footnote 78: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 79: Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, p. I 50. ]

CHAPTER IV

DÜRER'S METAL ENGRAVINGS

I

For the artist or designer the chief difference between the engravingdone on a wood block and that done on metal lies in the thickness of theline. The engraved line in a wood block is in relief, that on a metalplate is entrenched; the ink in the one case is applied to the crest ofa ridge, in the other it fills a groove into which the surface of thepaper is squeezed. Though lines almost as fine as those possible onmetal have been achieved by wood engravers, in doing this they force thenature of their medium, whereas on a copper plate fine lines comenaturally. Perhaps no section of Dürer's work reveals his unique powersso thoroughly as his engravings on metal. They were entirely his ownwork both in design and execution; and no expenditure of pains orpatience seems to have limited his intentions, or to have hindered hisexecution or rendered it less vital. And perhaps it is this fact whichwitnesses with our spirit and bids us recognise the master: rather thanthe comprehension of natural forms which he evinces, subtle and vigorousthough it be; or than the symbols and types which he composed from suchforms for the traditional and novel ideas of his day. And thisunweariable assiduity of his is continually employed in the discoveryof very noble arabesques of line and patterns in black and white, morevaried than the grain in satin wood or the clustering and dispersion ofthe stars. Intensity of application, constancy of purpose, when revealedto us by beautifully variegated surfaces, the result of human toil, maywell impress us, may rightly impress us, more than quaint and antiquatednotions about the four temperaments, or about witches and theirsabbaths, or about virtues and vices embodied in misconceptions of thecharacters of pagan divinities, and in legends about them which scholarshad just begun to translate with great difficulty and very ill. It isthe astonishing assurance of the central human will for perfection thatawes us; this perception that flinches at no difficulty, this perceptionof how greatly beauty deserves to be embodied in human creations andgiven permanence to. 

II

In the encomium which Erasmus wrote of Albert Dürer he dealt, as onesees by the passage quoted (p. 186), with Dürer's engraved work almostexclusively. Perhaps the great humanist had seen no paintings by Dürer, and very likely had heard Dürer himself disparage them, as Melanchthontells us was his wont (p. 187). We know that Dürer gave Erasmus some ofhis engravings, and we may feel sure that he was questioned prettyclosely as to what were the aims of his art, and wherein he seemed tohimself to have best succeeded. The sentence I underlined (on p. 186)gives us probably some reflection of Dürer's reply. We must rememberthat Erasmus, from his classical knowledge as to how Apelles waspraised, was full of the idea that art was an imitation, and mayprobably have refused to understand what Dürer may very likely have toldhim in modification of this view; or he may by citing his Greek andLatin sources have prevented the reverent Dürer from being outspoken onthe point. But though most of his praise seems mere literarycommonplace, the sentence underlined strikes us as havinganother source. 

"He reproduces not merely the natural aspect of a thing, but alsoobserves the laws of perfect symmetry and harmony with regard to theposition of it. " How one would like to have heard Dürer, as Erasmus mayprobably have heard him, explain the principles on which he composed! Nodoubt there is no very radical difference between his sense ofcomposition and that of other great artists. But to hear one sopreoccupied with explaining his processes to himself discourse on thisdifficult subject would be great gain. For though there are doubtless noabsolute rules, and the appeal is always to a refined sense forproportion, --yet to hear a creator speak of such things is to have thissense, as it were, washed and rendered delicate once more. We can butregret that Erasmus has not saved us something fuller than this hint. Inthe same way, how tempting is the criticism that Camerarius gives ofMantegna, --we feel that Dürer's own is behind it; but as it stands it isdisjointed and absurd, like some of the incomplete and confused parableswhich give us a glimpse of how much more was lost than was preserved bythe reporters of the sayings of Jesus. It is the same thing with thereported sayings of Michael Angelo, and indeed of all other great men. It is impossible to accept "his hand was not trained to follow theperception and nimbleness of his mind" as Dürer's dictum on Mantegna;but how suggestive is the allusion to "broken and scattered statues setup as examples of art, " for artists to form themselves upon! Yet thefact that Dürer missed coming into contact not only with Mantegna butwith Titian, Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, is indeed the saddestfact in regard to his life. We can well believe that he felt it inMantegna's case. Ah! Why could he not bring himself to accept theovertures made to him, and become a citizen of Venice?

III

The subjects of these engravings are even generally trivial orantiquated, either in themselves or by the way they are approached. Perhaps alone among them the figure of Jesus, as it is drawn in thevarious series on copper and wood illustrating the Passion, is conceivedin a manner which touches us to-day with the directness of a revelation;and even this cannot be compared to the same figure in Rembrandtetchings and drawings, either for essential adequacy, or for various andconvincing application. No, we must consent to let the expression "greatthoughts" drop out of our appreciation of Dürer's works, and be replacedby the "great character" latent in them. 

However, one among Dürer's engravings on copper stands out from amongthe rest, and indeed from all his works. In the _Melancholy_ thecomposition is not more dignified in its spacing and proportion; thearabesque of line is not richer or sweeter, the variations from black towhite are not more handsome, than in some half dozen of his otherengravings. No, by its conception alone the _Melancholy_ attains to itsunique impressiveness. And it is the impressiveness of an image, not theimpressiveness of an idea or situation, as in the case of the _Knight, Death, and the Devil_, by which almost as much bad literature has beeninspired. There is nothing to choose between the workmanship of the twoplates; both are absolutely impeccable, and outside the work of Dürerhimself, unrivalled. The _Melancholy_ is the only creation by a Germanwhich appears to me to invite and sustain comparison with the works ofthe greatest Italian. In it we have the impressiveness that belongs onlyto the image, the thing conceived for mental vision, and addressed tothe eye exclusively. If there was an allegory, or if the plate formed(as has been imagined) one of a series representative of the fourtemperaments, the eye and the visual imagination are addressed with suchforce and felicity that the inquiries which attempt to answer thesequestions must for ever appear impertinent. They may add some languidinterest to the contemplation which is sated with admiring theimpeccable mastery of the Knight; for that plate always seems to me themere illustration of a literary idea, a sheer statement of items whichrequire to be connected by some story, and some of which have the crudeobviousness of folk-lore symbols, without their racy and genial naïvety. They have not been fused in the rapture of some unique mood, notfocussed by the intensity of an emotion. With the _Melancholy_ all isdifferent; perhaps among all his works only Dürer's most hauntingportrait of himself has an equal or even similar power to bind us in itsspell. For this reason I attempt the following comparison between the_Sibyls_ of the Sistine Chapel and the _Melancholy_ a comparison which Ido not suppose to have any other value or force than that of a stimulantto the imagination which the works themselves address. 

[Illustration: MELANCHOLIA Copper engraving, B. 74]

The impetuosity of his Southern blood drives Michael Angelo to betrayhis intention of impressing in the pose and build of his Sibyls. Largeand exceptional women, "limbed" and thewed as gods are, with an habitualcommand of gesture, they lift down or open their books or unwind theirscrolls like those accustomed to be the cynosure of many eyes, who havelived before crowds of inferiors, a spectacle of dignity from theirchildhood upwards. On the other hand, the pose and build of the_Melancholy_ must have been those of many a matron in Nuremberg. It isnot till we come to the face that we find traits that correspond withthe obvious symbolism of the wings and wreath, or the serious richnessof the black and white effect of the composition; but that face holdsour attention as not even the Sibylla Delphica cannot by beauty, not byconscious inspiration, but by the spell of unanswerable thought, by thepower to brood, by the patience that can and dare go unresolved for manyyears. Everything is begun about her; she cannot see unto the end; sheis powerful, she is capable in many works, she has borne children, sherests from her labours, and her thought wanders, sleeps or dreams. Thespirit of the North, with its industry, its cool-headed calculation, itsabundance in contrivance, its elaboration of duty and accumulation ofpossessions--there she sits, absorbed, unsatisfied. Impetuosity and thefrank avowal of intention are themselves an expression of the will tocreate that which is desirable; they can but form the habit of everyartist under happy circumstances. They proceed on the expectation ofimmediate effectiveness, they belong to power in action; while, ifbeauty be not impetuous, she is frank, and adds to the avowal of herintention the promise of its fulfilment. The work of art and the artistare essentially open; they promise intimacy, and fulfil that promisewith entirety when successful. Nor is anything so impressive as intimacywhich implies a perfect sincerity, a complete revelation, a gift withoutreserve, increase without let. But the circumstances of the artist neverare happy: even Michael Angelo's were not. An intense broodingmelancholy arises from the repressed and baffled desire to create; andin some measure this gloom of failure underlying their success is anecessary character of all lovely and spiritual creations in this world. Now Michael Angelo's works, because of their Southern impetuosity andvolubility, are not so instinct with this divine sorrow, this immobilityof the soul face to face with evil, as is Dürer's _Melancholy_. Heinspires and exhilarates us more, but takes us out of ourselves ratherthan leads us home. 

Here is Dürer's success: let and hindered as it really is, he makes usfeel the inalienable constancy of rational desire, watching adversecircumstance as one beast of prey watches another. She keeps hold on thebird she has caught, the ideal that perhaps she will never fully enjoy. Michael Angelo pictures for us freedom from trammels, the freedom thataction, thought and ecstasy give, the freedom that is granted to beautyby all who recognise it; Dürer shows us the constancy that bridges theintervals between such free hours, that gives continuity to man'snecessarily spasmodic effort. Thus he typifies for us the Northerngenius: as Michael Angelo's athletes might typify by their naked beautyand the unexplained impressiveness of their gestures, the genius of thesudden South--sudden in action, sudden in thought, suddenly mature, suddenly asleep--as day changes to night and night to day the morerapidly as the tropics are approached. 

[Illustration: Detail enlarged from the "Agony in the Garden. " Etching onIron, B. 19 _Between_ pp. 250 & 251]

[Illustration: ANGEL WITH THE SUDARIUM Engraving in Iron, 1516. B. 26_Between_ pp. 250 & 251]

Instances of the highest imaginative power are rare in Dürer's work. The_Melancholy_ has had a world-wide success. The _Knight, Death and theDevil_ has one almost equal, but which is based on the facility withwhich it is associated with certain ideas dear to Christian culture, rather than on the creation of the mood in which these ideas arise. Itdoes not move us until we know that it is an illustration of Erasmus'sChristian Knight. Then all its dignity and mastery and the supremacy ofthe gifts employed on it are brought into touch with the idea, and eachadmirer operates, according to his imaginativeness, something of thetransformation which Dürer had let slip or cool down beforerealising it. 

IV

Among the prints with lesser reputations are several which attain a farhigher success. There is the iron plate of the _Agony in the Garden, _ B. 19, already mentioned (p. 235), in which the storm-tortured tree and thebroken light and shade are full of dramatic power (see illustration), the _Angel with the Sudarium_, B. 26, where the arabesque of the foldsof drapery and cloud unite with the daring invention of the centralfigure to create a mood entirely consonant with the subject. There isthe woman carried off by a man on an unicorn, in which the turbulence ofthe subject is expressed with unrivalled force by the rich and beautifularabesque and black and white pattern. 

B. Nos. 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, of the _Little Passion_, oncopper, are all of them noteworthy successes of more or less the samekind; and in these, too, we come upon that racy sense for narrationwhich can enhance dramatic import by emphasising some seemingly trivialcircumstance, as in the gouty stiffness of one of Christ's scourgers inthe _Flagellation_, or the abnormal ugliness of the man who with suchperfect gravity holds the basin while Pilate _washes his hands:_ whilein the _Crown of Thorns_ and _Descent into Hades_ we have peculiarlyfine and suitable black and white patterns, and in the _Peter and Johnat the Beautiful Gate_[80] and the _Ecce Homo_ figures of monumentaldignity in tiny gems of glowing engraver's work. The repose and serenityof the lovely little _St. Antony_;[81] the subsidence of commotion inthe noonday victory of the little _St. George on foot_, B. 53--perhapsthe most perfect diamond in the whole brilliant chain of little plates, or the staid naïvety of the enchanting _Apollo and Diana_, B. 68;[82]who shall prefer among these things? Every time we go through them wechoose out another until we return to the most popular and slightlyobvious _St. George on Horseback_, B. 54. Next come the dainty series oflittle plates in honour of Our Lady the Mother of God, commencing beforeDürer made a rule of dating his plates; before 1503 and continuing tillafter 1520, in which the last are the least worthy. Among these theVirgin embracing her Child at the foot of a tree, B. 34, dated 1513; TheVirgin standing on the crescent moon, her baby in one arm, her sceptrein the other hand and the stars of her crown blown sideways as she bowsher head, B. 32, dated 1516, and the stately and monumental Virginseated by a wall, B. 40, dated 1514, are at present my favourites. Andto these succeeded the noble army of Apostles and Martyrs of which themore part are dated from 1521 to 1526, though two, B. 48 and 50, fall asearly as 1514. 

[Illustration: THE SMALL HORSE--Copper Engraving, B. 96]

Then amongst the most perfect larger plates I cannot refrain frommentioning the _St. Jerome_, B. 60, with its homely seclusion as ofDürer's own best parlour in summer time which not even the presence of alion can disturb; the idyllic and captivating _St. Hubert_, B. 57; theaugust and tranquil _Cannon_, B. 99: and lastly, perhaps, in the little_Horse_, B. 96, we come upon a theme and motive of the kind best suitedto Dürer's peculiar powers, in which he produces an effect reallycomparable to those of the old Greek masters, about whose lost works hewas so eager for scraps of information, and whose fame haunted him eveninto his slumbers, so that he dreamed of them and of those who should"give a future to their past. " This delightful work may illustrate anallegory now grown dark or some misconception of a Grecian story; butthough the relation between the items that compose it should remain forever unexplained, its beauty, like that of some Greek sculpture that hasbeen admired under many names, continues its spell, and speaks of howthe simplicity, austerity and noble proportions of classical art werepotent with the spirit of the great Nuremberg artist, and occasionallyhad free way with him, in spite of all there was in his circumstancesand origins to impede or divert them. (See also the spirited drawing, Lipp. 366. )

V

It would be idle to attempt to say something about every masterpiece inDürer's splendidly copious work on metal plates. There is perhaps notone of these engravings that is not vital upon one side or another, amazingly few that are not vital upon many. One other work, however, which has been much criticised and generally misunderstood, it may be aswell to examine at more length, especially as it illustrates what wasoften Dürer's practice in regard to his theories about proportion, withwhich my next Part will deal. I speak of the _Great Fortune_ or_Nemesis_ (B. 77). His practice at other times is illustrated by thesplendid _Adam and Eve_ (B. 1), over the production of which the natureof the canon he suggested was perhaps first thoroughly worked out. Butbefore this and afterwards too he no doubt frequently followed theadvice he gives in the following passage. 

To him that setteth himself to draw figures according to this book, notbeing well taught beforehand, the matter will at first become hard. Lethim then put a man before him, who agreeth, as nearly as may be, _withthe proportions he desireth_; and let him draw him in outline accordingto his knowledge and power. And a man is held to have done well if heattain accurately to copy a figure according to the life, so that hisdrawing resembleth the figure and is like unto nature. _And inparticular if the thing copied as beautiful; then is the copy held to beartistic_, and, as it deserveth, it is highly praised. 

Dürer himself would seem to have very often followed his own advice inthis. The _Great Fortune_ or Nemesis is a case in point. The remarks ofcritics on this superb engraving are very strange and wide. ProfessorThausing said, "Embodied in this powerful female form, the Northernworship of nature here makes its first conscious and triumphantappearance in the history of art. " With the work of the great Jan VanEyck in one's mind's eye, of course this will appear one of thoselittle lapses of memory so convenient to German national sentiment. "Everything that, according to our aesthetic formalism based on theantique, we should consider beautiful, is sacrificed to truth. " (I havealready pointed out that this use of the word "truth" in matters of artconstitutes a fallacy)[83] "And yet our taste must bow before theimperishable fidelity to nature displayed in these forms, the fulness oflife that animates these limbs. " Of course, "imperishable fidelity tonature" and "taste that bows before it" are merely the figures of aclumsy rhetoric. But the idea they imply is one of the most common ofvulgar errors in regard to works of art. In the first place one mustremind our enthusiastic German that it is an engraving and not a womanthat we are discussing; and that this engraving is extremely beautifulin arabesque and black and white pattern, rich, rhythmical andharmonious; and that there is no reason why our taste should be violatedin having to bow submissively before such beauties as these, which it isa pleasure to worship. Now we come to the subject as presented to theintelligence, after the quick receptive eye has been satiated withbeauty. Our German guide exclaims, "Not misled by cold definite rules ofproportion, he gave himself up to unrestrained realism in thepresentation of the female form. " Our first remark is, that though thetreatment of this female form may perhaps be called realistic, thisadjective cannot be made to apply to the figure as a whole. Thismassively built matron is winged; she stands on a small globe suspendedin the heavens, which have opened and are furled up like a garment in amanner entirely conventional. She carries a scarf which behaves as nofabric known to me would behave even under such exceptional andthrilling circumstances. 

Dr. Carl Giehlow has recently suggested that this splendid engravingillustrates the following Latin verses by Poliziano:

 Est dea, quse vacuo sublimis in aëre pendens It nimbo succincta latus, sed candida pallam, Sed radiata comam, ac stridentibus insonat alis. Haec spes immodicas premit, haec infesta superbis Imminet, huic celsas hominum contundere mentes Incessusque datum et nimios turbare paratus. Quam veteres Nemesin genitam de nocte silenti Oceano discere patri. Stant sidera fronti. Frena manu pateramque gerit, semperque verendum Ridet et insanis obstat contraria coeptis. Improba vota domans ac summis ima revolvens Miscet et alterna nostros vice temperat actus. Atque hue atque illuc ventorum turbine fertur. 

There is a goddess, who, aloft in the empty air, advances girdled aboutwith a cloud, but with a shining white cloak and a glory in her hair, and makes a rushing with her wings. She it is who crushes extravaganthopes, who threatens the proud, to whom is given to beat down thehaughty spirit and the haughty step, and to confound over-greatpossessions. Her the men of old called Nemesis, born to Ocean from thewomb of silent Night. Stars stand upon her forehead. In her hand shebears bridles and a chalice, and smiles for ever with an awful smile, and stands resisting mad designs. Turning to nought the prayers of thewicked and setting the low above the high she puts one in the other'splace and rules the scenes of life with alternation. And she is bornehither and thither on the wings of the whirlwind. 

If this suggestion is a good one it shows us that Dürer was no moreconsistently literal than he was realistic. The most striking featuresof his illustration are just those to which his text offers nocounterpart, i. E. , the nudity and physical maturity of his goddess. Neither has he girdled her about with cloud nor stood stars upon herforehead. I must confess that I find it hard to believe that there wasany close connection present to his mind between his engraving andthese verses. 

In a former chapter I have spoken of the fashion in female dress thenprevalent; how it underlined whatever is most essential in the physicalattributes of womanhood, and how probably something of good taste isshown in this fashion (see pp. 92 and 93). What I there said willexplain Dürer's choice in this matter; and also that what Thausing feltbow in him was not taste, but his prejudices in regard to womanlyattractiveness, and his misconception as to where the beauty of anengraving should be looked for and in what it consists. These sameprejudices and misconceptions render Mrs. Heaton (as is only natural inone of the weaker sex) very bold. She says, "A large naked winged woman, whose ugliness is perfectly repulsive. " This object, I must confess, appears to me, a coarse male, "welcome to contemplation of the mind andeye. " The splendid Venus in Titian's _Sacred and Profane Love_, or his_Ariadne_ at Madrid; or Raphael's _Galatea_; or Michael Angelo's _Eve_(on the Sistine vault) are all of them doubtless far more akin to the_Aphrodite_ of Praxiteles, or to her who crouches in the Louvre, than isthis _Nemesis_; but we must not forget that they are works on a scalemore comparable with a marble statue; and that in works of which thescale is more similar to that of our engraving, Greek taste was oftenfar more with Dürer than with Thausing. This is an important point, though one which is rarely appreciated. However, there is no reason whywe should condemn "misled by cold definite rules of taste" even suchpictures as Rembrandt's _Bathing Woman_ in the Louvre, though here theproportions of the work are heroic. Oil painting was an art notpractised by the Greeks, and this medium lends itself to beauties whichtheir materials put entirely out of reach. Besides, Rembrandt appealedto an audience who had been educated by Christian ideals to appreciate apathos produced by the juxtaposition of the fact with the ideal, and ofthe creature with the creator, to appeal to which a Greek would have hadto be far more circumspect in his address--even if he had, through anexceptional docility and receptiveness of character, come under itsinfluence himself. These considerations when apprehended will, Ibelieve, suffice to dispel both prejudice and misconception in regard tothis matter; and we shall find in Professor Thausing's remarks relativeto the treatment of the "female form divine" in this engraving noadditional reason for considering it a comparatively early work. And weshall only smile when he tells us "The _Nemesis_ to a certain _degree_(sic) marks the extreme _point_ (sic) reached by Dürer in his unbiasedstudy of the nude. His further progress became more and more influencedby his researches into the proportions of the human body. " The bias willappear to us of rather more recent date, and we shall be ready toconsider with an open mind how far Dürer's practice was influenced forgood or evil by his researches into the proportions of the human body. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 80: See page 258. ]

[Footnote 81: See page 260. ]

[Footnote 82: See Frontispiece. ]

[Footnote 83: See page 19. ]

CHAPTER V

DÜRER'S WOODCUTS

It is now generally accepted that Dürer did not himself engrave on wood. In his earliest blocks he shows a greater respect for the limitations ofthis means of expression than later on. The earliest wood blocks, thoughno doubt they aimed at being facsimiles, were not such in fact; but theengraver took certain liberties for his own convenience, and probablydid not attempt to render what Dürer calls "the hand" of the designer. "The hand" was equivalent to what modern artists call "the touch, " andmeant the peculiar character recognisable in the vast majority of thestrokes or marks which each artist uses in drawing or painting. Düreraffected extremely curved and rapid strokes, Mantegna the deliberatestraight line, Rembrandt the straight stroke used so as to seem acontinual improvisation; though indeed he varies the character of histouch more continually and more vastly than any other master, yet in hisdrawings and etchings the majority of the strokes are straight. Alreadyin the woodcuts provided by Michael Wolgemut, Dürer's master, toillustrate books, there is a general attempt to render cross hatching:and the eyes and hair, though still those of an engraver, arefrequently modified to some extent in deference to the character givenby the draughtsman. Still, no one with practical experience wouldconsider these woodcuts as adequate facsimiles: which makes the questionof their attribution to Wolgemut, or his partner and step-son, Pleydenwurff, of still less interest and importance than it is on allother grounds. So conscious an exception as the soul of the accurateAlbert Dürer was, could not be expected to endure a partner in hiscreations, especially one whose character was revealed chiefly by theclumsy compromises convenient to lack of skill. Doubtless the demand for"his hand" was a new factor in the education of the engraver, asconstant and as imperturbable as the action of a copious stream, which, having its source in lonely heights, wears a channel through the hardestrock, the most sullen soils. It may have been the pitiless tyranny ofthe master's will for perfection which drove Hieronymus Andreae, "themost famous of Dürer's wood engravers, " into religious and even civilrebellion, joining hands with levelling fanatics and taking active partin the Peasant War. Dürer probably would have commanded too muchreverence and affection for these rebellions to be directed against him;but an insupportably heavy yoke is not rendered lighter because it isimposed by a loved hand, --though every other burden and restraint may insuch a case be shaken off and resented before that which is the realcause of oppression. Dürer's wood cutters had no doubt to resign anyindolence, any impatience, or whatever else it might be that hadotherwise stamped a personal character on their work; and allremonstrance must have been shamed by the evident fact that the youngmaster spared himself not a whit more. The perseverance and docilitywhich made such engraving possible was perhaps the greatest aid thatDürer drew from German character; it was not only an aid, but an exampleto and restraint upon that haughty spirit of his that restively everagain vows never to take so much pains over another picture to be sopoorly paid (see page 103); that complains of failure and discouragementafter years of repeatedly more world-wide successes (see page 187). These are not German traits, but it may have been the German blood heinherited from his mother and the example of his friends, fellow-workers, and helpers, which enabled him to get the better of suchpetulant and gloomy outbursts, and return to the day of small thingswith the will to continue and endure. 

The difference introduced by the engravers becoming more and morecapable of rendering Dürer's hand is well illustrated by comparing thefrontispiece to the _Apocalypse_, added about 1511, with the other cutswhich had appeared in 1498. Doubtless Dürer's hand had changed itscharacter considerably during this period of constant and rapiddevelopment, and it requires tact and knowledge to separate thedifferences due to the creator from those due to the engraver. Dürer'sdrawings differed as widely from the earlier drawings as does theengraving from the earlier blocks. But, as we may see by early drawingsdone as preliminary studies for engravings, the method of his penstrokes had changed less than the character of the forms they rendered;the conception of the design as a whole had advanced more rapidly thanthe skill and sleight of hand which expressed it. The engraver has by1511 become capable of expressing a greater variety of speed in thestroke, makes it taper more finely, and can follow the tongue-like lapand flicker as the pen rises and dips again before leaving the surfaceof the block (as in the outer ends of the strokes that represent theradiance of the Virgin's glory). Holbein, later on, was to obtain a yetmore wonderful fidelity from Lutzelburger, the engraver of his _Dunceof Death_. 

Still it were misleading to suppose that Dürer's disregard for thefacilities and limitations of wood-cutting went the lengths that thedemands made upon modern skill have gone. Not only has the line beenreproduced, but it has been drawn not with a full pen or brush, but inpencil or with watered ink; and the delicate tones thus produced havebeen demanded of and rendered by human skill. Dürer always uses a cleardefinite stroke; and in thus limiting himself he shows an appreciationof the medium to be used in reproducing his drawing, and recognises itslimits to a large extent, though this is the only limitation he accepts. Less and less does he consider the possibilities which engraving offersfor the use of a white line on black Doing his drawing with a blackline, he contents himself with the qualities that the resources andfacilities of the full pen line give: and his design is for a drawingwhich can be cut on wood, not for something that first really exists inthe print; the prints are copies of his drawings. His drawings were notprepared to receive additions in the course of cutting, such as couldonly be rendered by the engraver. Faithfulness was the only virtue herequired of Hieronymus Andreae. Yet even in such drawings as Dürer's nodoubt were, there would have been some qualities, some defects perhaps, that the print does not possess. For a print, from the mode of inking, has a breadth and unity which the drawing never can have. Even indrawings made with full flowing brush or pen, there will bemodulations in the strength of the ink, or occasioned by the surface ofthe wood or paper, in every stroke, by which the, sensitive artist inthe heat of work cannot help being influenced, and which will lead himto give a bloom, a delicacy, to his drawing, such as a print can neverpossess. And, on the other hand, the unity of the print can never bequite realised in the drawing, however much the artist may strive toattain it, because the conditions must change, however slightly, forstrokes produced in succession; while in a print all are producedtogether, and variations, if variations there are, occur over widespaces and not between stroke and stroke. It is considerations, of thiskind that in the last resort determine the quality of works of art. Theartist is taught, though often unconsciously, by the means he employs, but the diligent man who is not by nature an artist never can learnthese things: he can Imitate the manner and form, never the grace, thebloom, and the life. 

[Illustration: THE APOCALYPSE, 1498 St. Michael fighting the Dragon, Woodcut, B. 72 From the impression in the British Museum Face p. 262]

II

Dürer's first important issue of woodcuts was the _Apocalypse_. A greatdeal has been written in praise of this production as a politicalpamphlet against the corrupt Papacy. It was undoubtedly the mostimportant series of woodcuts that had ever appeared, by the size, numberand elaboration of the designs. It also undoubtedly attacksecclesiastical corruption, but not ecclesiastical only. Whether to Dürerand his friends it appeared even chiefly directed against prelates, oreven against those who sat in high places; whether the popes, bishopsand figures typical of the Church seemed to him to illustrate the moralin any pre-eminent degree, may be doubted. Still more doubtful is itwhether there was any objection to papacy or priesthood as institutionsconnected with these figures in his mind. Unworthy popes, unworthybishops, and an unworthy Rome were censured: but not popes, bishops, orRome as the capital see of the Church. Dürer's work as a whole shows nodistaste for saints, the Virgin, or bishops and popes; he had noobjection, no scruple apparently, to introducing the notorious JuliusII. Into his _Feast of the_ Rosary, some ten years later. There hasperhaps been a tendency to read the intention of these designs too muchin the light of after events: and by so doing a great slur is cast onDürer's consistency; for, had these designs the significance read intothem, he must be supposed an altogether convinced enemy of the Church;and the tremendous salaams which he afterwards made to her in far moreimportant works ought, to logical minds, to appear horribly insincere. 

Viewed as works of art, one reads about the cut of the four riders uponhorses, "For simple grandeur this justly famous design has never beensurpassed. " One's sense of proportion receives such a shock as gives onethe sensation of being utterly outcast, in a world where such a preciousdictum can pass without remark as a sample of the discrimination of thechief authority on the life and art of Albert Dürer. Neither simple norgrand is an adjective applicable to this print in the sense in which weapply it to the chief masterpieces of antiquity and of the Renaissance. To say even that Dürer never surpassed this design is to utter what tome at least seems the most palpable absurdity. There is an immenseadvance in design, in conception and in mastery of every kind shown overthe best prints of the _Apocalypse_ and _Great Passion_, in theprints added to the latter series ten years later, and still more in the_Life of the Virgin_. And still finer results are arrived at in singlecuts of later date, and in the _Little Passion_. If we want to see whatDürer's woodcuts at their finest are for breadth and dignity ofcomposition, for richness and fertility of arabesque and black and whitepattern, for vigour and subtlety of form, for boldness and vivacity ofworkmanship, we must turn to the _Samson_ (1497?) (B. 2), the Man's_Bath_ (14-?), (B. 128), among the earlier blocks published before the_Apocalypse_, then to those designed in or about the year 1511. Thegolden period for Dürer's woodcuts, the date of the publication of hismost magnificent series, the _Life of the Virgin_ and several delightfulseparate prints. Among these we find it hard to choose, but if some mustbe mentioned let it be the _St. Joachim's Offering Rejected by the HighPriest_ (B. 77), the _Meeting at the Golden Gate_ (B. 79) (seeillustration), the _Marriage of the Virgin_ (B. 82), the _Visitation_(B. 84), the _Nativity_ (B. 85) (see illustration), the _Presentation_(B. _55_), the _Flight into Egypt_ (B. 89). 

[Illustration: Detail enlarged from "Nativity. "--"Life of the Virgin"Woodcut, B. 85]

[Illustration: Enlarged detail from "The Embrace of St. Joachim and St. Anne at the Golden Gate. "--"Life of the Virgin, " Woodcut, B. 79]

In the glorious masterpieces of this series Dürer has found the truebalance of his powers. The dignity and charm of the decorative effect ofthese cuts has never been surpassed; and to the racy narrative vivacityof such groups and figures as those isolated and enlarged in ourillustration there is added an idyllic charm of which perhaps the bestexamples are the _Visitation_ and the _Flight into Egypt_. Thissweetness of allure is still more pervasive in the separate cuts thatbear this golden date, 1511, that is in the _St. Christopher_ (B. 103), and the _St. Jerome_ (B. 114). And the _Adoration of the Magi_ (B. 3) ismuch finer than the one included in the _Life of the Virgin_. Thisidyllic charm had already been touched _upon before_ in the _Assumptionof the Magdalen_ (B. 121) (15?), and in the _St. Antony_ and _St. Paul_and the _Baptist_ and _St. Onuphrius of_ 1504. It is not felt to lievery deep in the conception of the subject, for all are treated in anobviously conventional manner, the touches of racy realism beingconfined to subordinate incidents and details. Neither the subjects northe mood of the artist lend themselves to the dramatic impressiveness ofsuch cuts as the _Blowing of the Sixth Trumpet_ or the _St. Michaeloverwhelming the Dragon of the Apocalypse_ (_see_ page 262), where theinspiration appears to be Gothic, perhaps developed under the influenceof Mantegna's _Combat between Sea Monsters_, of which Dürer early madean elaborate pen-and-ink copy. We find an aftermath of the sameinspiration in the engraving on iron, dated 1516, representing a manriding astride of an unicorn carrying off a shrieking woman. Such stormyand strenuous lowerings of the imagination break in upon Dürer'shabitual mood as St. Peter's thunders into Milton's "Lycidas, " of whichthe general felicitous mingling of a conventional pedantry with idylliccharm and racy touches of realistic effect is very similar to thegeneral effect of the golden group we have been describing. Among allthe work that finds its climax in the beautiful creations of 1511, onlyin a few prints of the _Little Passion_, published in 1511, do we findany dramatic power or creativeness of essential conception. I maymention the _Christ Scourging the Money-changers in the Temple_, the_Agony in the Garden_, and Judas' _Kiss_, where, though the generaleffect be rather confused, the central figure is full of appropriatepower. _Christ haled by the hair before_ _Annas_ (the most wonderfulof all), Christ before _Pilate_, Christ _Mocked_, the _Ecce Homo_ (amost beautiful composition), the Veronica's napkin incident, _Christ_being nailed _to the Cross_ (a masterpiece), the _Deposition_, the_Entombment_:--several others of the series have idyllic charm ortouches of narrative force which link them with the general group, butthese alone stand out and in some ways surpass it. After this date Dürerseems in a great measure to have relinquished wood for metal engraving;however, most of his occasional resumptions of the process were markedby the production of masterpieces, if we put on one side the workshopmonsters produced for Maximilian--and even in these, in details, Dürer'sfull force is recognisable. I may mention the _Madonna_ crowned and_worshipped by a concert of Angels_, 1518 (B. 101), which, though alittle cold, like all the work of that period, is still a masterpiece;and then, after the inspiriting visit to Antwerp, we have themagnificent portrait of Ulrich Varnbüler, 1522 (B. 155), the _LastSupper_, 1523 (B. 53) (see illustration here), and the glorious piece ofdecoration representing Dürer's Arms, 1523 (B. 160) (see illustration). I have reproduced less of Dürer's wood engravings than would benecessary to represent their importance and beauty, because most, beinglarge and bold, are greatly impoverished by reduction; besides, they arenearly all well known through comparatively cheap reproductions. I haveenlarged two details to give an idea of Dürer's workmanship whenemployed upon racy realism (see illustration, page 264), and whenemployed in endowing a single figure with supreme grace and dignity (seeillustration, page 265). 

[Illustration: Christ haled before Annas From the "LittlePassion"--_Between_ pp. 266 & 267]

[Illustration: DÜRER'S ARMORIAL BEARINGS Woodcut, B. 160]

CHAPTER VI

DÜRER'S INFLUENCES AND VERSES

I

Before closing this part of my book something must be said of Dürer'sinfluence on other artists. It is one of the foibles of modern criticismto please itself by tracing influences, a process of the same nature asthat of tracing resemblances to ferns and other growths on a frostedpane. No one would deny that resemblances are there; it is todistinguish them and estimate their significance without yielding tofancifulness, which is the well-nigh hopeless task. It is oftenforgotten that similar circumstances produce similar effects, and thatcoincidences from this cause are very rife. Then, too, it is forgottenthat the influence that produces rivalry is stronger, more important, and less easily estimated, than that which is expressed by imitation orplagiarism; besides, it affects more original and fertile natures. Thestimulus of a great creative personality often is more potent wherediscernible resemblances are few and vague, than where they are many andobvious. In Dürer's day the study and imitation of antique art which hadbrought about the Renascence in Italy was the fashion that in successivewaves was passing over Europe and moulding the future. He himself feltit, and welcomed it now as an authority not to be gainsaid, and againas an example to be competed against and surpassed. This fashion, thistrend of opinion and hope, was the significance behind the effectproduced on him by Jacopo de' Barbari, whose charming but ineffectualoriginality succeeded merely in creating an eddy in that stream. It wasthe tide behind him which so powerfully stirred and stimulated Dürer. The resemblances traceable between certain still life studies by the twomen, or even in figures of their engravings, is insignificant comparedwith the fact that through Jacopo Dürer probably first felt the energyand true direction of the great tidal waves which were then rollingforth from Italy. Even Mantegna's influence was probably less the effectof a personal affinity than that through him a power streamed directfrom the antique dawn. This great and master influence of those days wasmore one of hope, indefinite, incomprehensible, visionary, than one ofknowledge and assured discovery. Raphael may have received it fromDürer, as well as Dürer from Bellini. Figures and incidents from Dürer'sengravings are supposed to have been adapted in certain works, if not ofhis own hand at least proceeding from his immediate pupils. For Raphael, Dürer was a proof of the excellence of human nature in respect to thearts, even when it could not form itself on the immediate study andcontemplation of antiques, and thus added to the zest and expectationwith which he improved himself in that direction. These great men didnot distinguish clearly between pregnancy due to their own efforts, thatof their contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and that due totheir more mystic passion for antiquity. Michael Angelo, Titian, andCorreggio were destined to be the signets by which this great power wasto be most often and clearly stamped on the work of future artists. From the unhappy location of his life Dürer was debarred from any suchobvious and overwhelming effect on after generations. The influenceswhich helped to shape him were no doubt at work on all the more eminentartists, his fellow-countrymen; on Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Burgkmair, Lucas Cranach, or Baldung Grien, to mention only the elect. What thestimulus of his achievements, of his renown, meant for these men we haveno means of computing; yet we may feel sure that it was vastly moreimportant and significant than any actual traces of imitation orplagiarism from his works, which can with difficulty and for the morepart very doubtfully be brought home to them;--vastly more important andsignificant too we may be sure than his effect upon his pupils and othermore or less obscure painters, engravers, and block designers, in whosework actual imitation or adaption of his creations is more certain andmore abundant. His pictures, plates, and woodcuts were copied both inItaly and in the North, both as exercises for the self-improvement ofartists and to supply a demand for even secondhand reflections of hisgenius and skill. He was not destined to lend the impress of hissplendid personality to the tide of fashion like the great Italians;their influence was to supersede his even in the North. 

This is obvious: but who shall compare or estimate the accession offorce which the tide as a whole gained from him, or that more latentpower which begins to be disengaged from the reserve and lack of properissue from which he evidently suffered, now that the great tide of theRenaissance has spent its mighty onrush and become merged in theconstant movement of life--that power by which he moves us tocommiserate his circumstances and to feel after the more and better, which we cannot doubt that he might have given us had he been morehappily situated?

[Illustration: THE LAST SUPPER Woodcut, p. 53]

II

Only to compare the value of Michael Angelo's sonnets with that of thedoggerel rhymes which Dürer produced, may give us some idea of theportentous inferiority in Dürer's surroundings to those of the greatItalian. Both borrow the general idea of the subject, treatment, andform of their poems from the fashion around them. But that fashion inMichael Angelo's case called for elevated subject, intimate andimaginative treatment, and adequacy of form, whereas none of these werecalled for from Albrecht Dürer; and if his friends laughed at therudeness of his verses, it was not that they themselves conceived ofanything more adequate in these respects, only something more scholarly, more pedantic. Michael Angelo's verse was often crabbed and rude, butthe scholarship and pedantry of Italy forbore to laugh at that rudeness, because a more adequate standard made them recognise its vital power andnoble passion as of higher importance to true success. Still, in thefollowing rhymes, Dürer shows himself a true child of the Renascence, atleast in intention; and was proud of a desire for universal excellence. 

When I received this from Lazarus Spengler, I made him the followingpoem in reply (Mrs. Heaton's translation):

 In Nürnberg it is known full well A man of letters now doth dwell, One of our Lord's most useful men, He is so clever with his pen, And others knows so well to hit, And make ridiculous with wit; And he has made a jest of me, Because I made some poetry, And of True Wisdom something wrote, But as he likes my verses not, He makes a laughing stock of me, And says I'm like the Cobbler, he Who criticised Apelles' art. With this he tries to make me smart, Because he thinks it is for me To paint, and not write poetry. But I have undertaken this (And will not stop for him or his), To learn whatever thing I can, For which will blame me no wise man. For he who only learns one thing, And to naught else his mind doth bring, To him, as to the notary, It haps, who lived here as do we, In this our town. To him was known To write one form and one alone. Two men came to him with a need That he should draw them up a deed; And he proceeded very well, Until their names he came to spell: Gotz was the first name that perplexed, And Rosenstammen was the next. The Notary was much astonished, And thus his clients he admonished, "Dear friends, " he said, "you must be wrong, These names don't to my form belong; Franz and Fritz[84] I know full well, But of no others have heard tell. " And so he drove away his clients, And people mocked his little science. To me that it may hap not so, Something of all things I will know. Not only writing will I do, But learn to practise physic too; Till men surprised will say, "Beshrew me, What good this painter's medicines do me!" Therefore hear and I will tell Some wise receipts to keep you well. A little drop of alkali, Is good to put into the eye; He who finds it hard to hear, Should mandel-oil put in his ear; And he who would from gout be free, Not wine but water drink should he; He who would live to be a hundred, Will see my counsel has not blundered. Therefore I will still make rhymes Though my friend may laugh at times. So the Painter with hairy beard Says to the Writer who mocked and jeered. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 84: Equivalent to our John Doe and Richard Roe. ]

PART IV

DÜRER'S IDEAS

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

THE IDEA OF A CANON OF PROPORTION FOR THE HUMAN FIGURE

Dürer often painted the Virgin's head as a mere exercise or example inthose proportion studies with which we must presently deal. 

Sir W. M. CONWAY, in "Dürer's Literary Remains, " p. 151. 

As soon as he comes to speak of the very essence of artistic work, heforgets theories and imitations of the antique; he knows nothing ofcomposition from fragments of Nature, of measurements and speculations. No longer trusting to such aids as these, but launching himself boldlyon the broad stream of Nature, he believes that he shall attain to ahigher harmony in his work. 

THAUSING'S "Albert Dürer, " vol. Ii. , p. 318. 

I

The idea of a canon for human proportions has proved a greatstumbling-block for so-called classical or academic artists. It isusually taken to mean an absolutely right or harmonious proportion, anydeviation from which cannot fail to result in a diminution of beauty. According to their thoroughness, the devotees of this idea seek toarrive at such a scale of proportions for a varying number of differentages in either sex; often even modifying this again for diverse types, as tall or short, fat or lean, dark or blonde, but allowing no excessivevariation for these causes; so that abnormally tall people and dwarfsare not considered. This is, I take it, what the great artist AlbertDürer is generally taken to have been aiming at in his books onproportion. It will not be difficult, I think, to show that Dürer hadquite a different idea of what a canon of proportion should be, and howit should be applied. And certainly, had it been possible to study Greekpractice more closely, and in a larger number of examples, when thisidea (supposed to be drawn from that source) was chiefly mooted, a verydifferent notion of the canon of proportion would have been forced onthe most academical of theorists. Dürer's great superiority over suchacademical masters is, that his idea of a canon of proportion and itsuse agrees far better with what was apparently Greek practice. 

Any one who has followed at all the interesting attempts made byProfessor Furtwängler and others to group together, by attention to themeasurements of the different parts of the figure, works belonging tothe different masters, schools, and centres, will have perceived that heis led to assume a traditional canon of proportion from which a masterdeviates slightly in the direction of some bias of his own mind towardscloser knit or more slim figures; such variations being in the earlierstages very slight. Again, it is supposed that from the canon followedby a master, different pupils may branch off in opposite directionsaccording to the leanings of their personal sentiment for beauty. Theconception of these ramifications has at least created the hope thatcritics may follow them through a great number of complications, sincea master may modify his canon--after certain pupils have already struckout for themselves, and new pupils may start from his modified canon;and so on into an infinite criss-cross of branches, as any sculptor maybe influenced to modify his canon by his fellows or by the masters ofother schools whose work he comes across later. In any case, this mainfact arises, that the canon appears as what the artist deviated from, not what he abided by: and any one who has any feeling for the infinitenicety of the results obtained by Greek sculptors will easily apprehendthat each masterpiece established a new and slightly different canon, and was then in the position to be in its turn again deviated from, asFlaubert says:

"The conception of every work of art carries within it its own rule andmethod, which must be found out before it can be achieved. "

"Chayue ceuvre à faire a sa poëtique en soi, qu'il faut trouver. "

II

The same thing is asserted by literary critics to have been the cause ofthe repetition of subjects in Greek tragedy, and to have resulted in theinfinite niceties of their forms, which are never the same and neverradically new. 

The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon thespectator's mind; it stood in his memory as a group of statuary, faintlyseen, at the end of a long dark vista. Then came the poet, embodyingoutlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentimentcapriciously thrown in. Stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded; thelight deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to theriveted gaze of the spectator; until at last, when the final words werespoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model ofimmortal beauty. 

This passage from Matthew Arnold's deservedly famous preface wellemphasises one advantage that a tradition of subject and treatment gaveto the Greek poet as to the Greek sculptor: the economy of means it madepossible, "not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrownin, "--since every deviation from, every addition to, the traditionalstory and treatment, was immediately appreciated by an audiencethoroughly conversant with that tradition, and often with severalprevious masterpieces treating it. By merely leaving out an incident, oromitting to appeal to a sentiment, a Greek tragedian could flood hiswhole work with a new significance. So that the temptation to beeccentric, the temptation to hit too hard or at random because he wasnot sure of exactly where the mind stood that he would impress, did notexist in anything like the same degree for him as it did for Shakespeareand Michael Angelo as it does for romantic and origina natures to-day. The absence of a sufficient body of traditional culture belonging toevery educated person tends always to force the artist to commence byteaching the alphabet to his public. As Coleridge so justly remarked inthe case of Wordsworth: "He had, like all great artists, to create thetaste by which he was to be relished, to teach the art by which he wasto be seen and judged. " All great artists no doubt have to do this, butthe modern artist is in the position of the Israelite who was bidden notonly to make bricks, but to find himself in stubble and straw, ascompared with a Greek who could appeal to traditional conceptions withcertainty. Dr. Verrall is no doubt right when he says:

Every one knows, even if the full significance of the fact is not alwayssufficiently estimated, that the tragedians of Athens did not tell theirstory at all as the telling of a story is conceived by a moderndramatist, whose audience, when the curtain goes up, know nothing whichis not in the play-bill. 

This ignorant public, this uncultivated and unmanured field with whichevery modern artist has to commence, is the greatest let to the creator. What wonder that he should so often prefer to make a gaudy show withyellow weeds, when he perceives that there is hardly time in one man'slife to produce a respectable crop of wheat from such a wilderness?

"The story of an Athenian tragedy is never completely told; it isimplied, or, to repeat the expression used above, it is illustrated by aselected scene or scenes. And the further we go back the truer this is, "continues Dr. Verrall; and the same was doubtless true of sculpture andpainting. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance or advantageof this fact to the artist. For religious art, for art that appeals tothe sum and total of a man's experience of beauty in life, a publiccultivated in this sense is a necessity. Giotto and Fra Angelico enjoyedthis almost to the same degree as Æschylus or Phidias; Michael Angeloand the great artists of the Renascence generally enjoyed it in a verygreat degree, and reaped an advantage comparable to that which Euripidesand his contemporaries and immediate successors enjoyed. The traditionenabled such an artist to impress by means of subtleties, niceties, andrefinements, instead of forcing him to attempt always to more or lessseduce, astonish or overawe; strong measures which grow almostnecessarily into bad habits, and end by perverting the taste theycreated. This, it has often been remarked, was the case even withMichael Angelo, even with Shakespeare. Yet nowadays, to enable a man toremark this, exceptional culture is required. 

III

This idea of the use of a canon may be illustrated in many ways; for, like all notions which resume actual experiences, it will be foundapplicable in many spheres. Thus, on the subject of verse, the eternalquarrel between the poet and the pedant is, that for the first the rulesof prosody and rhyme are only useful in so far as they make the licenseshe takes appreciable at their just value; while for the pedant suchlicenses ever anew seem to imply ignorance of the rule or incapacity tofollow it, --an absurd mistake, since the power to create and impress haslittle to do with the means employed; and if a man builds up for himselfa barrier of foregone conclusions about the exact manner in which alonehe will allow himself to be deeply impressed, it is very certain he willhave few save painful impressions. Or take another illustration--anartist the other day told me that he had noticed that one could almostalways trace a faintly ruled vertical line on the paper which thegreatest of all modern draughtsmen used. Ingres, then, with all hisfreedom, vivacity, and accuracy of control over the point he employed todraw with, still found it useful to have a straight line ruled on hispaper as a student does, and may often even have resorted to theplumb-line. It enabled his eye to test the subtlest deviations in theother lines with which he was creating the balance, swing or stabilityof a figure. Rules of art are, like this straight line, dead andpowerless in themselves: they help both creator and lover to follow andappreciate the infinite freedom and subtlety of the living work. Thesame thing might be illustrated with regard to manners; a fine standardof social address and receptivity must be established before thevarieties and subtleties of those whose genius creates beautifulrelations can be appreciated at their full value in their full variety. This dead law must be buried in everybody's mind and heart before theycan rise to that conscious freedom which is opposite to the freedom ofthe wild animals, who never know why they do, nor appreciate how it isdone; neither are they able to rejoice in the address of others; muchless can they relish the infinite refinements of exhilaratingapprehension, which make of laughter, tears, speech, silence, nearnessand distance, a music which holds the enraptured soul in ecstasy; whichcreated and constantly renews the hope of Heaven. And what blackerminister of a more sterile hell than the social pedant who only knowsthe rule, and mistakes grace and delicacy, frankness and generosity, formore or less grave infractions of it? But the happy critic, free fromany personal knowledge of what creation means, or what aids are likelyto forward it, is for ever in such a hurry to correct great creatorslike Leonardo, Dürer, or Hokusai, that he fails to understand them; andwhen he has caught them saying, "This is how anger or despair isexpressed, " calmly smiles in his superiority and says, "He had a scientific law for putting a battle on to canvas, onecondition of which was that 'there must not be a level spot which isnot trampled with gore. ' But Leonardo did no harm; his canon was basedon literary rather than artistic interests. "

Analogies with scientific laws have served art and art criticism a verybad turn of late years. Nothing can be more useful to an artist thanknowledge of how the emotions are expressed by the contortion of thefeatures; but nobody in his senses could ever imagine that a rule forthe expression of anger was rigid throughout and must never be departedfrom; every one approaching such a rule with a view to practice insteadof criticism must immediately perceive that its only use is to bedeparted from in various degrees. Leonardo's advice for the painting ofa battle-piece is excellent if it is understood in the sense in which itwas meant, --"everything is what it is and not another thing, " as BishopButler put it. Be sure and make your battle a battle indeed. It is timewe should realise that what the great artists wrote about art is likelyto be as sensible as are the works they created. How absurd it is forsome one who can neither carve nor paint, much less create, to imaginehe easily grasps the rules of art better than a great master! To suchpeople let us repeat again and again Hamlet's impatient: "Oh, mend italtogether!"

IV

Now it will easily be seen that the causes which shape an art traditionmay often be independent of, and foreign to, the will that createsbeautiful objects. Religious superstition or formalism may often hem theartist in, and hamper his will in every direction; though it is notwholly accidental that the Greeks had a religion the spirit of whichtended always to defeat the conservatism and bigotry of its priests. Sothat their formalism, instead of frustrating or warping the growth oftheir art tradition, merely served as a check that may well seem to havebeen exactly proportioned to its need; preventing the weakness orrankness of over rapid growth such as detracts from the art of theRenascence, and at the same time causing no vital injury. The spirit ofthe race deserved and created and was again in turn recreated byits religion. 

Since it is generally recognised that too much freedom is not good forgrowing life, I think that almost everybody must at this stage havebecome aware of how immensely stupid the academical idea of a canonappears besides this idea. How suitable both to life and the desire forperfection the Greek practice was! How theologically dense theunprogressive inflexibility of the academical practitioner! And now letus hear Dürer. 

But first I will quote from Sir Martin Conway the explanation of whatDürer means by the phrase, "Words of Difference. "

These are what he calls the "Words of Difference": large, long, small, stout, broad, thick, narrow, thin, young, old, fat, lean, pretty, ugly, hard, soft, and so forth; in fact any word descriptive of a quality"whereby a thing may be differentiated from the thing (normal figure)first made. "

Or, as Dürer says in another place, "difference such as maketh a thingfair or foul. "

But further, it lieth in each man's choice whether or how far he shallmake use of all the above written "Words of Difference. " For a man maychoose whether he will learn to labour with art, wherein is the truth, or without art in a freedom by which everything he doth is corrupted, and his toil becometh a scorn to look upon to such as understand. 

Wherefore it is needful for every one that he use discreetness in suchof his works as shall come to the light Whence it ariseth that he whowould make anything aright must in no wise abate aught (that isessential) from Nature, neither must he lay what is intolerable uponher. Howbeit some will (by going to an opposite extreme) makealterations (from Nature) so slight that they can scarce be perceived. Such are of no account if they cannot be perceived; to alter over muchalso answereth not. A right mean (in such alterations) is best. But inthis book I have departed from this right mean in order that it might beso much the better traced in small things. Let not him who wishes toproceed to some great thing imitate this my swiftness, but let him setmore slowly (gradually) about his work, that it be not brutish butartistic to look upon. For figures which differ from the mean are notgood to look upon _when_ they are wrongly and unmasterly employed. 

It is not to be wondered at that a skilful master beholdeth manifolddifferences of figure, all of which he might make if he had time enough, but which, for lack of time, he is forced to pass by. For such chancescome very often to artists, and their imaginations also are full offigures which it were possible for them to make. Wherefore, if to livemany hundred years were granted unto a man who had skill in the use ofsuch art and were thereto accustomed, he would (through the power whichGod hath granted unto men) have wherewith daily to mould and make manynew figures of men and other creatures, which none had before seen norimagined. God, therefore, in such and other ways granteth great powerunto artistic men. 

Although there be such talking of differences, still it is well knownthat all things that a man doth differ of their own nature one fromanother. Consequently, there liveth no artist so sure of hand as to beable to make two things exactly alike the one to the other, so that theymay not be distinguished. For of all our works none is quite andaltogether like another, and this we can in no wise avoid. 

We see that if we take two prints from an engraved copper-plate, or casttwo images in a mould, very many points may immediately be found wherebythey may be distinguished one from another. If, then, it cometh thus topass in things made by processes the least liable to error, much morewill it happen in other things which are made by the free hand. 

This, however, is _not the kind of Difference_ whereof I here treat; forI am speaking of a difference (from the mean) which a man speciallyintendeth, and which standeth in his will, of which I have spoken onceand again.... 

This is not the aforesaid Difference which we cannot sever from ourwork, but, such a difference as maketh a thing fair or foul, and whichmay be set forth by the "Word of Difference" dealt with above in thisBook. If a man produce "different" figures of this kind in his work, itwill be judged in every man's mind according to his own opinion, andthese judgments seldom agree one with another.... Yet let every manbeware that he make nothing impossible and inadmissible in Nature, unless indeed he would make some fantasy, in which it is allowed tomingle creatures of all kinds together.... 

Any one who leads this carefully cannot fail to see that it is not onlythat Dürer is not "desirous of laying down rules applicable to allcases, " or even of "proposing a definite canon for the relativeproportions of the human body, " as Thausing indeed points out (p. 305, v. 11): but that he does not conceive the proportions he gives as evenapproximately capable of these functions; and considers it indeed thevery nature and special use of a canon of proportions to be wilfullydeviated from, pointing out that, though the deviations of which he isspeaking are slight and subtle, they are not to be confused with theaccidental ones that can but appear even in work done by mechanicalprocesses. Rather they are such variation as a man "specially intendeth, and which standeth in his will;" and again, "such a difference as maketha thing fair or foul;" for the use of these normal proportions is thatthey may enable an artist to deviate from the normal without theproportions he chooses having the air of monstrosities or mistakes ornegligences. He does not insist that either of the scales he gives isthe best that could be, even for this purpose, but that they aresufficiently good to be used; and he would have marvelled at the wonderthat has been caused in innocent critical minds that in his own work headhered to them so little. He never intended them to be adhered to. 

V

It may be objected that Dürer certainly sometimes thought of a Canon ofProportion as a perfect rule, because he wrote on a MS. Page asfollows:--

Vitruvius, the ancient architect, whom the Romans employed upon greatbuildings, says that whosoever desires to build should study theperfection of the human figure, for in it are discovered the most secretmysteries of proportion. So, before I say anything about architecture, Iwill state how a well-formed man should be made, and then about a woman, a child and a horse. Any object may be proportioned out (_literally_, measured) in a similar way. Therefore, hear first of all what Vitruviussays about the human figure, which he learnt from the greatest masters, painters and founders, who were highly famed. They said that the humanfigure is as follows. 

That the face from the chin upward to where the hair begins is thetenth part of a man, and that an out-stretched hand is the samelength, &c. 

[Illustration: "This is my appearance in the eighteenth year of my age"Charcoal-drawing in the Academy, Vienna _Face p. _288]

And again in another place, as Sir Martin Conway points out, he gives areligious basis to this notion, [85] "the Creator fashioned men once forall as they must be, and I hold that the perfection of form and beautyis contained in the sum of all men. " In an obvious sense these passagescertainly run counter to those which I have quoted (pp. 285-207): but Iwould like to point out that these are dogmatic assertions aboutsomething that if it were true could never be proved by experience (seealso pp. 64, 254), those former are Dürer's advice with a view topractice. Men frequently carry about a considerable amount of dogmaticopinion, which has so little connection with actual experience that itis never brought to the test without being noticeably incommoded by it. Yet it is not absolutely necessary to consider Dürer as inconsistent inregard to this matter, even to this degree. 

The beauty of form which he held had been Adam's, and which was nowparcelled out among his vast progeny in various amounts as a consequenceof his fall--this beauty of form doubtless Dürer considered it part ofan artist's business to recollect and reveal in his work. This beauty isan ideal, and his canon (or rather canons) were intended as means tohelp the artist to approach towards the realisation of that ideal. It isobvious also that a man occupied in comparing the proportions of thosewhom he considers to be exceptionally beautiful will develop and feedhis power of imagining beautifully proportioned figures. It would befutile to deny that this is very much what took place in the evolutionof Greek statues, or that such works are perhaps of all others the mostcentral and satisfying to the human spirit. The sentences that precedethat quoted by Sir Martin are Greek in tendency. 

A good figure cannot be made without industry and care; it shouldtherefore be well considered before it is begun, so that it be correctlymade. For the lines of its form cannot be traced by compass or rule, butmust be drawn by the hand from point to point, so that it is easy to gowrong in them. And for such figures great attention should be paid tohuman proportions, and all their kinds should be investigated. _I holdthat the more nearly and accurately a figure is made to resemble a man, so much the better the work will be. _ If the best parts chosen from manywell-formed men are united in one figure, it will be worthy of praise. But some are of another opinion, and discuss how men ought to be made. Iwill not argue with them about that. I hold Nature for Master in suchmatters, and the fancy of men for delusion. 

And then follows the passage quoted by Sir Martin Conway (see p. 289). It is obvious that, joined with the two preceding sentences, thispassage can in no way be made to serve the academical practitioner, asit seems to when taken alone. In the same way, the sentence printed initalics in the above quotation, if isolated, would certainly seem toserve the scientific practitioners and their slavish realism, though inconnection with those that follow this is no longer possible. Dürerregards nature as providing raw material for a creation which may nottally exactly with any individual natural object. This was the Greekartists' idea of the serviceableness of nature, as revealed both bytheir practice and by such traditions as that concerning Zeuxis and hisfive beautiful models for the figure of Venus. But Dürer does notconfine the use of his canons even to this aim, but clearly perceivedtheir utility in regard to quite other aims, as is shown by the passagebeginning, "It is not to be wondered at, " &c. (see p. 286), in which theimagination of figures not merely intended to embody beautiful or newlyassorted proportions is clearly considered; and if we review Dürer'sactual work we shall see how much oftener he created figures forpicturesque or dramatic effect than he did to embody beautifulproportions in them, though he evidently also considered the lastpurpose as of the first importance, as we see when he goes on to say:

Let any one who thinks I alter the human form too much or too littletake care to avoid my error and follow nature. There are many differentkinds of men in various lands: whoso travels far will find this to beso, and see it before his eyes. We are considering about the mostbeautiful human figure conceivable, but (only) the Maker of the worldknows how that should be. Even if we succeed well we do but approachtowards it from afar. For we ourselves have differences of perception, and the vulgar who follow only their own taste usually err. Therefore Ido not advise any one to follow me, for I only do what I can, and thatis not enough even to satisfy myself. 

The extreme complexity of Dürer's ideas and their application was anatural result of their having been born of his experience. Forexcellence is extremely various, and widely scattered through the world. The simplicity of a true work of art results merely from some excellencehaving been singled out from all foreign circumstances, and presented asvividly as it was intensely apprehended. This excellence may be one ofproportion or one of many other kinds. Now, a figure conceived by anartist, whether he value it for its choicely assorted proportions or forpicturesque or dramatic effect, may need to be developed before it isserviceable in an elaborate work of art. 

Artists who work rapidly, and, whose pictures are dominated by passingmoods, have always been in the habit of taking great licences withproportion, and, indeed, with all matters of fact. Dürer's aim is toendow the artist who elaborates his work slowly with a similar freedom. This energy and power in rapid work it is the ever-renewed despair ofartists to feel themselves losing in the process of elaboration. And oneof the reasons for this is that in larger or more elaborate work, thestatement, being more ample, is expected to be also more comprehensiveand exhaustive; for the time required begets after-thoughts as to thereal nature of the object viewed apart from the mood, which is the onlyexcuse for the work; and so some of the artist's attention is drawn awayto facts and aspects which it would have been the success of his work tohave ignored. Dürer's object was to help a man to carry out hisessential intention, and that alone, in a carefully elaborated picture;the problems faced were precisely similar to those so successfully copedwith in Greek statues. In the first place, he would have pointed outthat all sketches will not bear elaboration if their merit depends onextreme licence, for instance. Next, that a man who had a standard ofproportion could see wherein the deviations of his sketched figure wereessential to the effect he wished it to produce, and wherein they wereunessential. Then, if he drew the normal figure large, he would be ableto deviate from it in exactly the right places and to the right degreeto reproduce the desired effect. But to do this he must also have ageneral notion of how deviations from a normal proportion could be madeconsistent throughout all the measurements involved not that he would inevery case want to make them consistent. Now, there is a class ofartists for whom all these suggestions of Dürer's must for ever remainuseless, for all science of production is impossible for those whoseonly success lies in improvisation; such improvisations, howeverdazzling or however delightful they may be, are, nevertheless, the classof art-works furthest removed in spirit and in method from Greekstatuary. I do not say that they need be inferior; I say that they areopposite in method. And, had circumstances permitted, or Dürer's dowryof great gifts been more complete than it was, and enabled him to becomeas great a creator of pictures as he is a great draughtsman andportrait-painter, no doubt his pictures would have resembled Greekstatues both in their effect and their method, however different theymight have been in subject and in range. To talk about "beauty" beingsacrificed to "truth, " with Prof. Thausing; or the ideal of the Northbeing "strength" in works of art as in life, with Sir Martin Conway;--isto confuse the issue and deceive oneself. To have mistaken the properend of art, beauty, by thinking it was "truth" or "strength, " is to havefailed to labour in the right direction; that is all-who-ever maycondone the failure. 

VI

Again, Sir Martin Conway tells us:

The laws of perspective can be deduced with certainty from mathematicalfirst principles, the canon of proportions' could only be constructedempirically as the result of repeated observations. Nevertheless, onceconstructed, it can certainly be used as Dürer suggested. Its use haspractically been superseded by the study of anatomy. 

This last phrase shows us in a flash how far the writer when he wrote itwas from apprehending Dürer's meaning. How could the study of anatomyever do for an artist what Dürer was trying to do? No doubt Sir Martinhad Michael Angelo in his mind's eye; and it is true that he studiedanatomy, and that his influence has been, on the whole, paramount withartists attempting subjects of this kind ever since. Whether MichaelAngelo studied proportion or not, his practice exemplifies Dürer'smeaning splendidly. No anatomical research could have led him toconstruct figures nine to twelve, or even fifteen to twenty, headshigh--to do which, as his work developed, more and more became hispractice, especially in designs and sketches for compositions. To arriveat such proportions he followed his imaginative instinct. He found thatthese monstrous deviations from the normal (which, of course, in ageneral sense he recognised, whether he gave any study to rendering itprecise or not) produced the effect on his mind that he wished toproduce on the minds of others--an effect that was emotional andpeculiar to his habitual moods. We know that his constitution gave himthe staying-power, while his fiery Titanic spirit gave him the energy, to carry out and perfect his mighty frescoes and statues at the sameheat that the creative hour yields other men for the production of asketch alone. This giant son of Time was able to live for days and weekstogether in a state of mind two or three consecutive hours of whichexhaust the average master even. Considering the rapidity and intensityof his mental process, it is a miracle that, in so many works and to sogreat a degree, he respected the too much and too little of humanreason, and allowed himself to be governed by what the Greeks called asense of measure, instead of yielding to his native impetuosity andbecoming an a-thousand-fold-greater-Blake; and illustrating, to thedelight of active and short-winded intelligences, and the stupefactionof slow and dull ones, the futility of eccentricity and the frivolity ofpassion when unseconded by constancy of character and labour. Forfutile, in the arts, is whatever the sense of beauty must condemn, however well-intentioned; and frivolous is the passion that forgets theend it would attain, and becomes merely a private rhapsody, howeverastonishing its developments; slowly but surely it will be seen thatsuch fireworks do not vitally concern us. The proportions of many ofMichael Angelo's figures are as far removed from any possible normalstandard as what Dürer calls "this my swiftness, " in the abnormally talland stout figures among the diagrams illustrating his book. 

And this is where Dürer's idea comes nearer to Greek practice. For byletting the striking rather than the subtle govern his departures fromthe mean, Michael Angelo found himself always bound to go beyondhimself; as the palate which once has entertained strong stimulantsdemands that the dose be continually strengthened. Now this is in entireconformity with the impatience which was perhaps his greatest weakness;just as Dürer's too methodical approach is in conformity with thatacquiescence in the insufficiency of his conditions which made him inhis weak moments swear never again to undertake those better classes ofwork which were less adequately paid, or made him content to displaymere manual dexterity rather than do nothing on his days of darkness, suffering and depression: we may add, which made him choose to live atNuremberg and refuse a better income and more suitable surroundingsat Venice. 

It is obviously the more hopeful way to create a beautiful figure firstand discover a mathematical way of reproducing its most essentialproportions afterwards; and no doubt this is what Dürer intended shouldbe done; and in consequence he felt a need, and sought to supply it, formechanical means to simplify, shorten and render more sure that part ofthe process which must necessarily partake something of the nature ofdrudgery, if great finish is to be combined with splendid design. Theromantic, impulsive _improvisatore_ does not feel this need, considersit bound to defeat its own aim; and, given his own gifts, he is right. But none the less, there are the Greek statues elaborated with athoroughness which, if it ever dims or veils the creative intention, does so in a degree so slight as to seem amply compensated by the senseof ease maintained in spite of the innumerable difficulties overcome;there are besides a score or more of Dürer's copper engravings withtheir imperturbable adequacy of minute painstaking, never for a momentsleepy or mechanical or lifeless. The one aim need not excommunicate theother even in the same individual; far less need this be so in differentartists, with diverse temperaments, diverse aptitudes. 

VII

The application of this idea does not end with the simple proportions ofmeasurement between the limbs and parts of the figure; it is alsoconcerned with what is called the modelling, and the treatment ofsurfaces such as the draperies, the hair, the fleshy portions and thosebeneath which the bony structure comes to prominence; in painting it maybe applied to the chiaroscuro and colour. Reynolds' remarks on theVenetians in his Eighth Discourse well illustrate this fact. He says:

It ought, in my opinion, to be indispensably observed that the masses oflight in a picture be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow, red, or ayellowish-white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green colours bekept _almost_ entirely out of these masses, and be used only to supportand set off these warm colours; and, for this purpose, a small_proportion_ of cold colours will be sufficient. 

If this conduct be reversed, let the light be cold, and the surroundingcolours warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentinepainters; and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands ofRubens or Titian, to make a picture splendid or harmonious. [86]

Here we see a great colourist attempting to establish a canon forcolour. Had he lived at an earlier period, before expression had becomegenerally a subject of criticism, he would have described his discoveryin less guarded and elastic language, such as is now applied toscientific laws. And then he might have been as excusably misunderstoodas Leonardo and Dürer have been; as it is, the misunderstanding dealtout to him is quite without excuse. 

Rembrandt, not only exemplifies the impressiveness of great deviationsin structural proportions in much the same degree as Michael Angelo, using what the Greeks and Dürer would doubtless have considered adangerous liberty, however much they might have felt bound to admire theresults obtained; not only does he do this when, for instance, herepresents Jesus now as a giant, now as almost a dwarf, according to theimaginative impression which he chooses to create; but he follows asimilar process in his black and white pattern. For among his worksthere are etchings, which, though often supposed to have been leftunfinished, are discerned by those with a sense for beauties of thisclass to be marvellously complete, stimulating, and satisfying, and inthe nicest harmony with the other impressions produced by the mentalpoint of view from which the subject is viewed, as also by the mainlines and proportions of the composition, and to yield the visualdelight most suitable to the occasion. Dürer and the Greeks are at onewith Michael Angelo and Rembrandt in condemning by their practice allpurely mechanical application of ideas or methods to the production ofworks of creative art, such as is exemplified by artists of more limitedaims and powers; by academical practitioners, by theoretical scientistscalling themselves impressionists, luminarists, naturalists, or anyother name. For artists whose temperaments are impeded by some unhappyslowness, or difficulty in concentrating themselves, methods ofprocedure similar to those elaborated by Dürer in his books onproportion, properly understood, must be a real aid and benefit; asthose who are essentially improvisors may help themselves and supplytheir deficiencies by methods similar to those which Reynolds describesas practised by Gainsborough. 

"He even framed a kind of model of landscapes on his table, composed ofbroken stones, dried herbs and pieces of broken glass, which hemagnified and improved into rocks, trees and water" (FourteenthDiscourse). 

This process resembles that of tracing faces or scenes from the life ofgnomes in glowing caverns among coals of fire on a winter's eve; it isresorted to in one form or another by all creative artists, but it ispeculiarly useful to men like Gainsborough, whose art tends always tobecome an improvisation, whatever strenuous discipline they may havesubjected themselves to in their days of ardent youth. 

VIII

Perhaps Dürer's actual standards for the normal, his actual methods forcreating self-consistent variations from it, are not likely to prove ofmuch use, even when artists shall be sufficiently educated to understandthem; nevertheless, the principle which informs them has been latent inthe work of all great creators; is marvellously fulfilled indeed, inGreek statuary. The work of Antoine Louis Barye, that great andlittle-understood master--as far as I am able to judge, the only modernartist who has made science serve him instead of being seduced byher--exemplifies this central idea of Dürer's almost as fully as theGreek masterpieces. The future of art appears to me to lie in the handsof those artists who shall be able to grapple with the new means offeredthem by the advance of science, as he did, and be as little or even lessseduced than he was by the foolish idea that art can become sciencewithout ceasing to be art, which has handicapped and defeated theefforts of so many industrious and talented men of late years. So trulyis this the case that the improvisor appears to many as the only trueartist, and his uncontrolled caprices as the farthest reach of humanconstructive power. 

In any case, no artist is unhappy if a docile and hopeful dispositionenables him to see in the masterpieces of Greek sculpture the reward ofan easy balance of both temperaments and methods, the improvisor's andthe elaborator's, under felicitous circumstances, by men better endowedthan himself. And this though never history and archaeology shall be ina position to give him information sufficient to determine that hisfaith is wholly warranted. 

 A golden age is a golden dream, that sheds A golden light on waking hours, on toil, On leisure, and on finished works. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 85: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " p. 166. ]

[Footnote 86: See also III Discourse where he defends Dürer againstBacon. ]

CHAPTER II

THE IMPORTANCE OF DOCILITY

I

I now intend to re-arrange what seem the most interesting of thesentences on the theory of art which are found in Dürer's MSS. And bookson proportion. He did not give them the final form or order which heintended, and it seems to me that to arrange the more importantaccording to the subjects they treat of will be the simplest way ofarriving at general conceptions as to their tendency and value. We shallthus bring together repetitions of the same thought and contradictoryanswers to the same question; and after each series of sentences, Imyself shall discuss the points raised, illustrating my remarks frommodern writers whose opinion in these matters seems to me deserving ofmost attention. I have heard it said by the late Mr. Arthur Strong thatDürer's art is always didactic; and Dürer as a writer on art certainlyhas ever before his mind this one object, to teach others, or, as Ishould prefer to phrase it, to help others to learn. For he himself iscontinually confessing that he cannot yet answer his own questions, andit seems to me that the best teacher is always he who most desires toincrease his knowledge, not indeed to hoard it as some do and make ofit a personal possession; intellectual misers, for ever gnashing theirteeth over the reputations or the pretensions of others. No, but one whodesires knowledge for its own sake and welcomes it in others with asmuch satisfaction as he gains it for himself. Docility, i. E. , teachableness, let me point out once more, seems to be the necessarymidwife of genius, without the aid of which it often labours in vain, orbrings forth strange incongruous and misshapen births. 

Sad is the condition of a brilliant and fiery spirit shut up in a man'sbrain without the humble assistance of this lively, meek and patientvirtue! What unrelieved and insupportable throes of agony must be borneby such a spirit, and how often does such labour end in misanthropy ormadness! The records of the lives of exceptionally-gifted men tell usonly too clearly what pains those are, and how frequently they have beenborne. So I fancy I cannot do better than choose out for my firstsection sentences which praise or advocate the effort to learn, orattempt to enlighten those who make such an effort on the choice ofteachers and disciplines. 

II

I shall not hesitate to transpose sentences even when they appear inconnected passages, in order, as I hope, to bring out more clearly theirconnection. For Dürer was not a writer by profession, and his thoughtswere often more abundant than he knew how to deal with. 

Before starting, however, I must prefix to my quotations some account ofthe four MS. Books in the British Museum from which they are principallytaken. Rough drafts in Pirkheimer's handwriting were found among them, but of Dürer's work Sir Martin Conway tells us:

The volumes contain upwards of seven hundred leaves and scraps of paperof various kinds, covered at different dates with more or less elaborateoutline drawings, and more or less corrected drafts for works publishedor planned by Dürer. Interspersed among them are geometrical andother sketches. 

He was in the habit of correcting and re-copying, again and again, whathe had written. Sometimes he would jot down a sentence alongside ofmatter to which it had no relation. This sentence he would afterwardsintroduce in its right connection. There are in these volumes no lessthan four drafts of the beginning of a Dedication to Pirkheimer of theBooks of Human Proportions. Two other drafts of this same dedication areamong the Dresden MSS. The opening sentences of the Introduction to thesame work were likewise, as will be seen, the subject offrequent revision. 

These drafts, notes and sketches date from 1508 to 1523. Some collectorhad had them cut out, gummed together, and bound without the slightestregard to order, or even to the sequence of consecutive passages. InJanuary 1890 the volumes were taken to pieces and rearranged by MissLina Eckenstein, who had previously made the admirable translations ofthem for Sir Martin Conway's "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " fromwhich my quotations are taken. 

The contents of the volumes as rearranged may be roughly described asfollows:

Volume 1. Drawings of whole figures and portions of the body, illustrating Dürer's theories of Proportion. Drawings of a solidoctogon. Six coloured drawings of crystals. The description of theIonic order of architecture. Drawings of columns with measurements. Ascale for Human Proportions. A table of contents for a work on Geometry. Notes on perspective, curves, folds, &c. The different kinds of templeafter Vitruvius. Mathematical diagrams, &c. 

Volume II. Draft of a dedicatory letter to King Ferdinand (see page180). Drafts and drawings for "The Art of Fortification. " Drawing of ashield with a rearing horse. Mantles of Netherlandish women and nuns. ALatin inscription for his own portrait. Notes on "Proportion, " and onthe feast of the Rosenkranz. Scale for Human Proportions. An alphabet. Draft of a dedication for the books on Proportion. Sketch of a skeleton. Studies of architecture. Venetian houses and roofs. Sketches of achurch, a house, a tower, a drapery, &c. 

Volume III. Drafts of a projected work on Painting and on the study ofProportion. Drafts for the dedication, the preface, and for a work onEsthetics. Drawings of a male body, a female body, and a piece ofdrapery. Notes and drawings for the proportions of heads, hands, feet, outline curves, a child, a woman, &c. 

Volume IV. Proportions of a man, a fat woman, the head of the averagewoman, the young woman, &c. Short Profession of Faith (see page 130). Scale for Human Proportions, &c. Fragments of the Preface of Essay onAesthetics, &c. Grimacing and distorted faces. Use of measurements. Onthe characters of faces, thick, thin, broad, narrow, &c. Sketches of adragon and of an angel for Maximilian's Triumphal Procession. List ofLuther's works (see page 130). Drawings of human bodies proportionedto squares. 

[Illustration: "UNA VILANA WENDISCH" Pen drawing with wash backgroundin the collection of Mrs. Seymour _face_ p. 304]

See the description in "Dürer's Schriftlicher Nachlass" (Lange undFuhse), page 263, from which the above abstract is made. 

Sir Martin Conway continues:

In these volumes Dürer is seen, sometimes writing under the influence ofimpetuous impulse, sometimes with leisurely care, allowing his pen toembroider the script with graceful marginal flourishes. 

At what period of his career Dürer first conceived the idea of writing acomprehensive work upon the theory and practice of art is unknown. Itwas certainly before the year 1512. The following list of chapters mayperhaps be an early sketch of the plan. 

Ten things are contained in the little book. The first, the proportions of a young child. The second, proportions of a grown man. The third, proportions of a woman. The fourth, proportions of a horse. The fifth, something about architecture. The sixth, about an apparatus through which it can be shown that 'all things may be traced. The seventh, about light and shade. The eighth, about colours, how to paint like nature. The ninth, about the ordering (composition) of the picture. The tenth, about free painting, which alone is made by Imagination without any other help. 

III

Glad enough should we be to attain unto great knowledge without toil, for nature has implanted in us the desire of knowing all things, thereby to discern a truth of all things. But our dull wit cannot comeunto such perfectness of all art, truth, and wisdom. Yet are we not, therefore, shut out altogether from all arts. If we want to sharpen ourreason by learning and to practise ourselves therein, having once foundthe right path we may, step by step, seek, learn, comprehend, andfinally reach and attain unto something true. Wherefore, he thatunderstandeth how to learn somewhat in his leisure time, whereby he maymost certainly be enabled to honour God, and to do what is useful bothfor himself and others, that man doeth well; and we know that in thiswise he will gain much experience in art and will be able to make knownits truth for our good. It is right, therefore, for one man to teachanother. He that joyfully doeth so, upon him shall much be bestowed byGod, from whom we receive all things. He hath highest praise. 

One finds some who know nothing and learn nothing. They despiselearning, and say that much evil cometh of the arts, and that some arewholly vile. I, on the contrary, hold that no art is evil, but that allare good. A sword is a sword which may be used either for murder or forjustice. Similarly the arts are in themselves good. What God hathformed, that is good, misuse it how ye will. 

Thou findest arts of all kinds; choose then for thyself that which islike to be of greatest service to thee. Learn it; let not the difficultythereof vex thee till thou hast accomplished somewhat wherewith thoumayest be satisfied. 

It is very necessary for a man to know some one thing by reason of theusefulness which ariseth therefrom. Wherefore we should all gladlylearn, for the more we know so much the more do we resemble the likenessof God, who verily knoweth all things. 

The more, therefore, a man learneth, so much the better doth he become, and so much the more love doth he win for the arts and for thingsexalted. Wherefore a man ought not to play the wanton, but should learnin season. 

Is the artistic man pious and by nature good? He escheweth the evil andchooseth the good; and hereunto serve the arts, for they give thediscernment of good and evil. 

Some may learn somewhat of all arts, but that is not given to every man. Nevertheless, there is no rational man so dull but that he may learn theone thing towards which his fancy draweth him most strongly. Hence noman is excused from learning something. 

Let no man put too much confidence in himself, for many (pairs of eyes)see better than one. Though it is possible for a man to comprehend morethan a thousand (men), still that cometh but rarely to pass. 

Many fall into error because they follow their own taste alone;therefore let each look to it that his inclination blind not hisjudgment. For every mother is well pleased with her own child, and thusalso it ariseth that many painters paint figures resembling themselves. 

He that worketh in ignorance worketh more painfully than he that workethwith understanding; therefore let all learn to understand aright. 

Now I know that in our German nation, at the present time, are manypainters who stand in need of instruction, for they lack all real art, yet they nevertheless have many large works to do. Forasmuch then asthey are so numerous, it is very needful for them to learn to bettertheir work. 

Willingly will I impart my teaching, hereafter written, to the man whoknoweth little and would gladly learn; but I will not be cumbered withthe proud, who, according to their own estimate of themselves, know allthings, and are best, and despise all else. From true artists, however, such as can show their meaning with the hand, I desire to learn humblyand with much thankfulness. 

A thing thou beholdest is easier of belief than that thou hearest, butwhatever is both heard and seen we grasp more firmly and lay hold onmore securely. I will therefore do the work in both ways, that thus Imay be better understood. 

Whosoever will, therefore, let him hear and see what I say, do, andteach, for I hope it may be of service and not for a hindrance to thebetter arts, nor lead thee to neglect better things. 

I hear moreover of no writer in modern times by whom aught hath beenwritten and made known which I might read for my improvement. For somehide their art in great secrecy, and others write about things whereofthey know nothing, so that their words are nowise better than merenoise, as he that knoweth somewhat is swift to discover. I thereforewill write down with God's help the little that I know. Though many willscorn it I am not troubled, for I well know that it is easier to castblame on a thing than to make anything better. Moreover, I will expoundmy meaning as clearly and plainly as I can; and, were it possible, Iwould gladly give everything I know to the light, for the good ofcunning students who prize such art more highly than silver or gold. Ifurther admonish all who have any knowledge in these matters that theywrite it down. Do it truly and plainly, not toilsomely and at greatlength, for the sake of those who seek and are glad to learn, to thegreat honour of God and your own praise. If I then set something burningand ye all add to it with skilful furthering, a blaze may in time arisetherefrom which shall shine throughout the whole world. 

I shall here apply to what is to be called beautiful the sametouchstone as that by which we decide what is right. For as what all theworld prizeth as right we hold to be right, so what all the worldesteemeth beautiful that will we also hold for beautiful, and ourselvesstrive to produce the like. 

No one need blindly follow this theory of mine as though it were quiteperfect, for human nature has not yet so far degenerated that anotherman cannot discover something better. So each may use my teaching aslong as it seems good to him, or until he finds something better. Wherehe is not willing to accept it, he may well hold that this doctrine isnot written for him, but for others who are willing. 

That must be a strangely dull head which never trusts itself to find outanything fresh, but only travels along the old path, simply followingothers and not daring to reflect for itself. For it beseems eachunderstanding, in following another, not to despair of itselfdiscovering something better. If that is done, there remaineth no doubtbut that in time this art will again reach the perfection it attainedamongst the ancients. 

Much will hereafter be written about subjects and refinements ofpainting. Sure am I that many notable men will arise, all of whom willwrite both well and better about this art, and will teach it better thanI; for I myself hold my art at a very mean value, for I know what myfaults are. Let every man therefore strive to better these my errorsaccording to his powers. Would to God it were possible for me to see thework and art of the mighty masters to come, who are yet unborn, for Iknow that I might be improved upon. Ah! how often in my sleep do Ibehold great works of art and beautiful things, the like whereof neverappear to me awake, but so soon as I awake, even the remembrance ofthem leaveth me. 

Compare also the passages already quoted, (pp. 15, 16, 26). 

IV

"What an admirable temper!" is the exclamation which expresses our firstfeeling on reading the foregoing sentences. It renews the spirit of aman merely to peruse such things. Scales fall from our eyes, and we seewhat we most essentially are, with pleasure, as good children gleefullyrecognise their goodness: and at the same time we are filled withcontrition that we should have ever forgotten it. And this that we mostessentially are rational beings, lovers of goodness, children ofhope, --how directly Dürer appeals to it: "Nature has implanted in us thedesire of knowing all things. " It reminds one of Ben Jonson's:--

It is a false quarrel against nature, that she helps understanding butin a few, when the most part of mankind are inclined by her thither, ifthey would take the pains; no less than birds to fly, horses to run, &c. , which, if they lose it, is through their own sluggishness, and bythat means they become her prodigies, not her children. 

There is something refreshing and inspiriting in the mere conviction ofour teachableness; and when the same author, referring to Plato'stravels in search of knowledge, says, "He laboured, so must we, " we donot find the comparison humiliating either to Plato or ourselves. For"without a way there is no going, " and every man of superior mould saysto us with more or less of benignity, "I am the way: follow me. " Suchmeans or ways of attainment have been followed by all whose success isknown to us, and are followed now by all "finely touched and giftedmen. " I might quote in illustration of these assertions the whole ofReynolds' Sixth Discourse, so marvellous for its acute and delicatediscrimination; but I will content myself with a few leading passages:

We cannot suppose that any one can really mean to exclude all imitationof others. 

It is a common observation that no art was ever invented and carried toperfection at the same time. 

The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he whoresolves never to ransack any mind but his own will soon be reduced tothe poorest of all imitations, he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has often before repeated. 

The truth is, he whose feebleness is such as to make other men'sthoughts an encumbrance to him, can have no very great strength of mindor genius of his own to be destroyed: so that not much harm will be doneat the worst. 

Of course, this last phrase will not apply universally; we must rememberthat the man who sets out to become an artist, or claims to be one bynative gift, has made apparent that he is the possessor of no meanambition. The humblest may see a way of improvement in their betters, and obey the command, "Follow me. " Every man is not called to followgreat artists, but only those who are peculiarly fitted to tread thedifficult paths that climb Olympus-hill. Yet to all men alike the greatartist in life, he who wedded failure to divinity, says, "Learn of methat I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest toyour souls. "

He who confines himself to the imitation of an individual, as he neverproposes to surpass, so he is not likely to equal, the object of hisimitation. He professes only to follow; and he that follows mustnecessarily be behind. 

It is of course impossible to surpass perfection, but it is possible tobe made one with it. 

To find excellences, however dispersed, to discover beauties, howeverconcealed by the multitude of defects with which they are surrounded, can be the work only of him who, having a mind always alive to his art, has extended his views to all ages and to all schools; and has acquiredfrom that comprehensive mass which he has thus gathered to himself awell-digested and perfect idea of his art, to which everything isreferred. Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of art, he is possessed ofthat presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence fromevery school; selects both from what is great and what is little; bringshome knowledge from the east and from the west; making the universetributary towards furnishing his mind, and enriching his works withoriginality and variety of inventions. 

In this tine passage we get back to our central idea in regard to thesense of proportion "making the universe tributary towards furnishinghis mind"; while in the "discovery of beauties" the complete artist"selects both from what is great and what is little, " from the clouds ofheaven and from the dunghills of the farmyard. 

Study, therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever. Study, as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, and on the principleson which they studied. Study nature attentively, but always with thosemasters in your company; consider them as models which you are toimitate, and at the same time as rivals with whom you are to contend. For "no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon anyother terms. "

Yes, an artist is a child who chooses his parents, nor is he limited toonly two. Religion tells all men they have a Father, who is God;philosophy and tradition repeat, "man has a mother, who is Nature. "These sayings are platitudes; their application is so obvious that it isnow generally forgotten. If God is a Father, it is the soul that choosesHim; if Nature is a mother, it is the man who chooses to regard her assuch, since to the greater number it is well known she seems but astepmother, and a cruel one at that. Elective affinities, chosenkindred!--"tell me what company you keep, and I will tell you who youare" (what you are worth). How many artist waifs one sees nowadays! lostsouls, who choose to be nobody's children, and think they can teachthemselves all they need to know. 

I think the very striking agreement between artists so totally differentin every respect except eminence, docility and anxiety to further art, as Dürer and Reynolds, ought to impress our minds very deeply: eventhough, as is certainly the case, the way they point out has been verygreatly abandoned of late years, and public institutions in this andother countries proceed to further art on quite other lines; even thoughcritics are almost unanimous in knowing better both the end and the waythan the great masters who had not the advantage of a dash of science intheir hydromel to make it sparkle, but instead made it yet richer andthicker by stirring up with it piety and religion. I think this"cock-tail and sherry-cobbler" art criticism of to-day is verydeleterious to the digestion, and that the piety and enthusiasm whichDürer and Reynolds worked into their art were more wholesome, and bettersupplied the needs and deficiencies of artistic temperaments. 

CHAPTER III

THE LOST TRADITION

I

Many centuries ago the great art of painting was held in high honour bymighty kings, and they made excellent artists rich and held them worthy, accounting such inventiveness a creating power like God's. For theimagination of a good painter is full of figures, and were it possiblefor him to live for ever, he would always have from his inward ideas, whereof Plato speaks, something new to set forth by the work ofhis hand. 

Many hundred years ago there were still some famous painters, such asthose named Phidias, Praxiteles, Apelles, Polycleitus, Parrhasius, Lysippus, Protogenes, and the rest, some of whom wrote about their artand very artfully described it and gave it plainly to light: but theirpraise-worthy books are, so far, unknown to us, and perhaps have beenaltogether lost by war, driving forth of the peoples, and alterations oflaws and beliefs--a loss much to be regretted by every wise man. Itoften came to pass that noble "Ingenia" were destroyed by barbarousoppressors of art; for if they saw figures traced in a few lines theythought it nought but vain, devilish sorcery. And in destroying themthey attempted to honour God by something displeasing to Him; and to usethe language of men, God was angry with all destroyers of the works ofgreat mastership, which is only attained by much toil, labour, andexpenditure of time, and is bestowed by God alone. Often do I sorrowbecause I must be robbed of the aforesaid masters' books of art; but theenemies of art despise these things. 

Pliny writeth that the old painters and sculptors--such as Apelles, Protogenes, and the rest--told very artistically in writing how awell-built man's figure might be measured out. Now it may well have cometo pass that these noble books were misunderstood and destroyed asidolatrous in the early days of the Church. For they would have saidJupiter should have such proportions, Apollo such others; Venus shall bethus, Hercules thus; and so with all the rest. Had it, however, been myfate to be there at the time, I would have said: "Oh dear, holy lordsand fathers, do not so lamentably destroy the nobly discovered arts, which have been gotten by great toil and labour, only because of theabuses made of them. For art is very hard, and we might and would use itfor the great honour and glory of God. For, even as the ancients usedthe fairest figure of a man to represent their false god Apollo, we willemploy the same for Christ the Lord, who is fairest of all the earth;and as they figured Venus as the loveliest of women, so will we in likemanner set down the same beauteous form for the most pure Virgin Mary, the mother of God; and of Hercules will we make Samson, and thus will wedo with all the rest, for such books shall we get never more. "Wherefore, though that which is lost ariseth not again, yet a man maystrive after new lore; and for these reasons I have been moved to makeknown my ideas here following, in order that others may ponder thematter further, and may thus come to a new and better way andfoundation. 

I certainly do not deny that, if the books of the ancients who wroteabout the art of painting still lay before our eyes, my design might beopen to the false interpretation that I thought to find out somethingbetter than what was known unto them. These books, however, have beentotally lost in the lapse of time; so I cannot be justly blamed forpublishing my opinions and discoveries in writing, for that is exactlywhat the ancients did. If other competent men are thereby induced to dothe like, our descendants have something which they may add to andimprove upon, and thus the art of painting may in time advance and reachits perfection. 

II

Whether we should exercise our intellects or logical sense alone uponthe records and remains of past ages, or whether they may not be betteremployed for the exercise and edification of the imaginative faculties, would seem to be a question which, though they did not perhaps in setterms put to themselves, modern historians have very summarily answered;and I think answered wrongly. The records of the past, the records evenof yesterday, are necessarily extremely incomplete; to make them at allsignificant something must be added by the historian. The 'perception'of probability is never exact; it varies with the mind between man andman; in the same man even before and after different experiences, &c. But even if the perception of the highest probability were practicallyexact, it would never suffice; for, as Aristotle says, "it is probablethat many things should happen contrary to probability. " From thesefacts it follows that the man who has the most exhaustive knowledge ofwhat has actually survived, and what has been recorded, will notnecessarily form the truest judgment on a question of history; it mightalways happen that the intuition of some unscholarly person was nearerthe truth; still no man could ever decide between the two, nor would anysane man think it worth his while to take sides with either of them;such questions are most useful when they are left open. This is the casebecause the imagination is thus left freer to use such knowledge as ithas for the edification of the character; and that model for our exampleor warning which the imagination constructs may always possibly be thetruth. According to the balance in it of apparent probability, withedifying power it will beget conviction. Such a conviction may be doomedto be superseded sooner or later; its value lies in its potency while itlasts. The temper in which we look at our historical heritage is of moreimportance to us now than the exactitude of our vision; for this lattercan never be proved, while the former approves itself by the fruit itbears within us. It is better, more fruitful, to feel with Dürer aboutthe art of Ancient Greece than to know all that can be known of itto-day and feel a great deal less. "Character calls forth character, "said Goethe; we may add, "even from the grave. " Now that the physicalmiracle of the Resurrection has come to seem so unimportant anduninteresting to educated men, it might be a wise economy to connect itspoetry with this experience, that great and creative characters canraise men better worth knowing than Lazarus from the dead. Nietschethought that Shakespeare had brought Brutus back to life, (though heknew very little of Roman history), and that Brutus was the Roman bestworth knowing. "Of all peoples, the Greeks dreamt the dream of life thebest, " Goethe said; and again, "For all other arts we have to make someallowance; to Greek art alone we are for ever debtors. " To feel thetruth of these sayings with a passion similar to that shown in thepassages quoted above from Dürer, must surely be a great help to anartist. Such a passion is an end in itself, or rather is the only meansby which we can win spiritual freedom from some of the heavier fettersthat modern life lays upon us. It freed Goethe even from Germany. 

CHAPTER IV

BEAUTY

I

How is beauty to be judged?--upon that we have to deliberate. 

A man by skill may bring it into every single thing, for in some thingswe recognise that as beautiful which elsewhere would lack beauty. 

Good and better in respect of beauty are not easy to discern; for itwould be quite possible to make two different figures, one stout, theother thin, which should differ one from the other in every proportion, and yet we scarce might be able to judge which of the two excelled inbeauty. What beauty is I know not, though it dependeth upon many things. 

I shall here apply to what is to be called beautiful the same touchstoneas that by which we decide what is right. For as what all the worldprizeth as right we hold to be right, so what all the world esteemethbeautiful that we will also hold for beautiful, and ourselves strive toproduce the like. 

There are many causes and varieties of beauty; he that can prove them isso much the more to be trusted. 

The accord of one thing with another is beautiful, therefore want ofharmony is not beautiful. A real harmony linketh together things unlike. 

Use is a part of beauty, whatever therefore is useless unto men iswithout beauty. 

The more imperfection is excluded so much the more doth beauty abide inthe work. 

Guard thyself from superfluity. 

But beauty is so put together in men and so uncertain is our judgmentabout it, that we may perhaps find two men both beautiful and fair tolook upon, and yet neither resembleth the other, in measure or kind, inany single point or part; and so blind is our perception that we shallnot understand whether of the two is the more beautiful, and if we givean opinion on the matter it shall lack certainty. 

Negro faces are seldom beautiful because of their very flat noses andthick lips; moreover, their shinbone is too prominent, and the knee andfoot too long, not so good to look upon as those of the whites; and soalso is it with their hand. Howbeit, I have seen some amongst them whosewhole bodies have been so well-built and handsome that I never beheldfiner figures, nor can I conceive how they might be bettered, soexcellent were their arms and all their limbs. 

Seeing that man is the worthiest of all creatures, it follows that, inall pictures, the human figure is most frequently employed as a centreof interest. Every animal in the world regards nothing but his own kind, and the same nature is also in men, as every man may perceivein himself. 

[Illustration: Charcoal-drawing heightened with white on a greenprepared ground, in the Berlin Print Room _Face p_. 320]

Further, in order that he may arrive at a good canon whereby to bringsomewhat of beauty into our work, there-unto it were best for thee, itbethinks me, to form thy canon from many living men. Howbeit seek onlysuch men as are held beautiful, and from such draw with all diligence. For one who hath understanding may, from men of many different kinds, gather something good together through all the limbs of the body. Butseldom is a man found who hath all his limbs good, for every man lackssomething. 

No single man can be taken as a model of a perfect figure, for no manliveth on earth who uniteth in himself all manner of beauties.... Thereliveth also no man upon earth who could give a final judgment upon whatthe perfect figure of a man is; God only knoweth that. 

And although we cannot speak of the greatest beauty of a livingcreature, yet we find in the visible creation a beauty so far surpassingour understanding that no one of us can fully bring it into his work. 

If we were to ask how we are to make a beautiful figure, some would giveanswer: According to human judgment (i. E. , common taste). Others wouldnot agree thereto, neither should I without a good reason. Who will giveus certainty in this matter?[87]

II

I have already given what I believe to be the best answer to thesequestions as to what beauty is and how it is to be judged. Beauty isbeauty as good is good (_see_ pp. 7, 8), or yellow, yellow; indeed, tothe second question, Matthew Arnold has given the only possibleanswer--the relative value of beauties is "as the judicious woulddetermine, " and the judicious are, in matters of art "finely touched andgifted men. " This criterion obviously cannot be easily or hastilyapplied, nor could one ever be quite sure that in any given case it hadbeen applied to any given effect. But for practical needs we see that itsuffices to cast a slur on facile popularity, and vindicate over andover again those who had been despised and rejected. What the trueartist desires to bring into his pictures is the power to movefinely-touched and gifted men. Not only are such by very much theminority, but the more part of them being, by their capacity to be movedand touched, easily wounded, have developed a natural armour of reserve, of moroseness, of prejudice, of combativeness, of pedantry, which makesthem as difficult to address as wombats, or bears, or tortoises, orporcupines, or polecats, or elephants. It is interesting to witness howDürer's self-contradictions show him to be aware of the great complexityof these difficulties, as also to see how very near he comes to the trueanswer. At one time he tells us:

"When men demand a work of a master, he is to be praised in so far as hesucceeds in satisfying their likings ... "[88]

At another he tells us:

"The art of painting cannot be truly judged save by such as arethemselves good painters; from others verily is it hidden even as astrange tongue. "[89]

Every "finely touched and gifted man" is not an artist; but every trueartist must, in some measure, be a finely touched and gifted man. Thereis no necessity to limit the public addressed to those who themselvesproduce: yet those who "can prove what they say with their hand" bringcredentials superior to those offered by any others, --although eventheir judgment is not sure, as they may well represent a minority ofthe true court of appeal which can never be brought together. 

No doubt there is a judgment and a scale of values accepted as final byeach generation that gives any considerable attention to thesequestions. Æsthetic appear to be exactly similar to religiousconvictions. Those who are subject to them probably pass through manysuccessively, even though they all their lives hold to a certain fashionwhich enables them to assert some obvious unity, like those who, inreligion, belong always to one sect. Yet if they were in a position toanalyse their emotions and leanings, no doubt very fundamentalcontradictions would be discovered to disconcert them. Conviction andenthusiasm in the arts and religion would seem to be the frame of mindnatural to those who assimilate, and are rendered productive by whatthey study and admire. Convictions may never be wholly justifiable intheory, but in practice when results are considered, it would seem thatno other frame of mind should escape censure. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 87: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " p. 244. ]

[Footnote 88: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, " p. 245. ]

[Footnote 89: _Idem_. P. 177. ]

CHAPTER V

NATURE

I

We regard a form and figure out of nature with more pleasure thananother, though the thing in itself is not necessarily altogetherbetter or worse. 

Life in nature showeth forth the truth of these things (the words ofdifference--i. E. , the character of bodily habit to which they refer), wherefore regard it well, order thyself thereby and depart not fromnature in thine opinions, neither imagine of thyself to invent aughtbetter, else shalt thou be led astray, for art standeth firmly fixed innature, and whoso can rend her forth thence he only possesseth her. Ifthou acquirest her, she will remove many faults for thee from thy work. 

Neither must the figure be made youthful before and old behind, orcontrariwise; for that unto which nature is opposed is bad. Hence itfolloweth that each figure should be of one kind alone throughout, either young or old, or middle-aged, or lean or fat, or soft or hard. 

The more closely thy work abideth by life in its form, so much thebetter will it appear; and this is true. Wherefore never more imaginethat thou either canst or shalt make anything better than God hath givenpower to His creatures to do. For thy power is weakness compared toGod's creating hand. (_See_ continuation of passage, p. 10. )

Compare also passages quoted (pp. 289-291). 

II

In these and other passages Dürer speaks about "nature, " and enjoins onthe artist respect for and conformity to "nature" in a manner whichreminds us of that still current in dictums about art. Indeed, it seemsprobable that Dürer's use of this term was almost as confused as that ofa modern art-critic. There are two senses in which the word nature isemployed, the confusion of which is ten times more confounded than anyof the others, and deserves, indeed, utter damnation, so prolific ofevil is it. We call the objects of sensory perception "nature"--whateveris seen, heard, felt, smelt or tasted is a part of nature. And yet weconstantly speak of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tastingmonstrous and unnatural things. And a monstrous and unnatural thing isnot merely one which is rare, but even more decidedly one of which wedisapprove. So that the second use of the term conveys some sense ofexceptionality, but far more of lack of conformity to human desires andexpectations. Now, many things which do not exist are perfectly naturalin this second sense: fairy-lands, heavens, &c. We perfectly understandwhat is meant by a natural and an unnatural imagination, we perceivereadily all kind of degrees between the monstrous and the natural inpure fiction. Now, this second use of the term nature is the only onewhich is of any vital importance to our judgments upon works of art; yetcurrent judgments are more often than not based wholly on the firstsense, which means merely all objects perceived by the senses; and this, draped in the authority and phrases belonging to judgments based on thesecond and really pertinent sense. 

Whole schools of painting and criticism have arisen and flourish whoseonly reason for existence is the extreme facility with which thisconfusion is made in European languages. It sounds so plausible thatsome have censured Michael Angelo for bad drawing because men are notfrom 9 to 15 or 16 heads high, and have not muscles so developed as thegods and Titans of his creation. And others have objected to the angels, the anatomical ambiguity of their wing articulations. To say that asketch or picture is out of tone or drawing damns, in many circlesto-day; in spite of the fact that the most famous masterpieces, ifjudged by the same standard, would be equally offensive. This absurdity, even where its grosser developments are avoided, breeds abundantcontradictions and confusion in the mouths of those who plume themselveson culture and discernment. I hope not to have been too saucy, therefore, in pointing out this pitfall to my readers in regard to thesesentences which I thought it worth while to quote from Dürer, merelybecause if I did not do so I foresaw that they would be quotedagainst me. 

CHAPTER VI

THE CHOICE OF AN ARTIST

I

In the great earnestness with which the difficulties that beset art andthe artist impressed him, Dürer intended to write a _Vade Mecum_ forthose who should come after him. He has left among his MS. Papers manyplans, rough drafts, and notes for some such work, the form of which nodoubt changed from time to time. The one which gives us the mostcomprehensive idea of his intentions is perhaps the following. 

II

Ihs. Maria

By the grace and help of God I have here set down all that I have learntin practice, which is likely to be of use in painting, for the serviceof all students who would gladly learn. That, perchance, by my help theymay advance still further in the higher understanding of such art, as hewho seeketh may well do, if he is inclined thereto; for my reasonsufficeth not to lay the foundations of this great, far-reaching, infinite art of true painting. 

Item. --In order that thou mayest thoroughly and rightly comprehend whatis, or is called, an "artistic painter, " I will inform thee and recountto thee. If the world often goeth without an "artistic painter, " whilstfor two or three hundred years none such appeareth, it is because thosewho might have become such devote not themselves to art. Observe thenthe three essential qualities following, which belong to the true artistin painting. These are the three main points in the whole book. 

I. The First Division of the book is the Prologue, and it compriseththree parts (A, B, and C). 

 A. The first part of the Prologue telleth us how the lad should be taught, and how attention should be paid to the tendency of his temperament. It falleth into six parts:

 1. That note should be taken of the birth of the child, in what Sign it occurreth; with some explanations. (Pray God for a lucky hour!)

 2. That his form and stature should be considered; with some explanations. 

 3. How he ought to be nurtured in learning from the first; with some explanations. 

 4. That the child should be observed, whether he learneth best when kindly praised or when chidden; with explanations. 

 5. That the child be kept eager to learn and be not vexed. 

 6. If the child worketh too hard, so that he might fall under the hand of melancholy, that he be enticed therefrom by merry music to the pleasuring of his blood. 

 B. The second part of the Preface showeth how the lad should be brought up in the fear of God and in reverence, that so he may attain grace, whereby he may be much strengthened in intelligent art. It falleth into six parts:

 1. That the lad be brought up in the fear of God and be taught to pray to God for the grace of quick perception (_ubtilitet_) and to honour God. 

 2. That he be kept moderate in eating and drinking, and also in sleeping. 

 3. That he dwell in a pleasant house, so that he be distracted by no manner of hindrance. 

 4. That he be kept from women and live not loosely with them; that he not so much as see or touch one; and that he guard himself from all impurity. Nothing weakens the understanding more than impurity. 

 5. That he know how to read and write well, and be also instructed in Latin, so far as to understand certain writings. 

 6. That such an one have sufficient means to devote himself without anxiety (to his art), and that his health be attended to with medicines when needful. 

 C. The third part of the Prologue teacheth us of the great usefulness, joy, and delight which spring from painting. It falleth into six parts:

 1. It is a useful art when it is of godly sort, and is employed for holy edification. 

 2. It is useful, and much evil is thereby avoided, if a man devote himself thereto who else had wasted his time. 

 3. It is useful when no one thinks so, for a man will have great joy if he occupy himself with that which is so rich in joys. 

 4. It is useful because a man gaineth great and lasting memory thereby if he applieth it aright. 

 5. It is useful because God is thereby honoured when it is seen that He hath bestowed such genius upon one of His creatures in whom is such art. All men will be gracious unto thee by reason of thine art. 

 6. The sixth use is that if thou art poor thou mayest by such art come unto great wealth and riches. 

II. The Second Division of the book treateth of Painting itself; it alsois threefold. 

 A. The first part is of the freedom of painting; in six ways. 

 B. The second part is of the proportions of men and buildings, and what is needful for painting; in six ways. [90]

 1. Of the proportions of men. 2. Of the proportions of horses. 3. Of the proportions of buildings. 4. Of perspective. 5. Of light and shade. 6. Of colours, how they are to be made to resemble nature. 

 C. The third part is of all that a man conceives as subject for painting. 

III. The Third Division of the book is the Conclusion; it also haththree parts. 

 A. The first part shows in what place such an artist should dwell to practise his art; in six ways. 

 B. The second part shows how such a wonderful artist should charge highly for his art, and that no money is too much for it, seeing that it is divine and true; in six ways. 

The third part speaks of praise and thanksgiving which he should renderunto God for His grace, and which others should render on his behalf;in six ways. 

III

It is in the variety and completeness of his intentions that we perceiveDürer's kinship with the Renascence; he comprehends the whole of life inhis idea of art training. 

In his persuasion of the fundamental necessity of morality he is akin tothe best of the Reformation. It is in the union of these two perceptionsthat his resemblance to Michael Angelo lies. There is a rigour, anausterity which emanates from their work, such as is not found in thework of Titian or Rembrandt or Leonardo or Rubens or any other mightyartist of ripe epochs. Yet we find both of them illustrating thelicentious legends of antiquity, turning from the Virgin to Amymone andLeda, from Christ to Apollo and Hercules. By their action and exampleneither joins either the Reformation or the Renascence in so far asthese movements may be considered antagonistic; nor did they find itinconsistent to acknowledge their debt to Greece and Rome, even whileaccepting the gift of Jesus' example as freely as it was offered. 

Not only does Dürer insist on the necessity of a certain consonancybetween the surrounding influences and the artist's capacity, whichshould be both called forth and relieved by the interchange of rivalrywith instruction, of seclusion with music or society, but the processwhich Jesus made the central one of his religion is put forward asessential; he must form himself on a precedent example. I have alreadyquoted from Reynolds at length on this point. 

I will merely add here some notes from another MS. Fragment of Dürer'sbearing on the same points. 

He that would be a painter must have a natural turn thereto. 

Love and delight therein are better teachers of the Art of Painting thancompulsion is. 

If a man is to become a really great painter he must be educated theretofrom his very earliest years. He must copy much of the work of goodartists until he attain a free hand. 

To paint is to be able to portray upon a flat surface any visible thingwhatsoever that may be chosen. 

It is well for any one first to learn how to divide and reduce, tomeasure the human figure, before learning anything else. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 90: The following list comes from another sheet of the MS. (in. 70), but was dearly intended for this place. It is jotted down on athick piece of paper, on which there are also geometrical designs. ]

CHAPTER VII

TECHNICAL PRECEPTS

I

If thou wishest to model well in painting, so as to deceive theeyesight, thou must be right cunning in thy colours, and must know howto keep them distinct, in painting, one from another. For example, thoupaintest two coats of mantles, one white the other red; thou must dealdifferently with them in shading. There is light and shadow on allthings, wherever the surface foldeth or bendeth away from the eye. Ifthis were not so, everything would look flat, and then one coulddistinguish nothing save only a chequerwork of colours. 

If then thou art shading the white mantle, it must not be shaded with sodark a colour as the red, for it would be impossible for a white thingto yield so dark a shadow as a red. Neither could they be compared onewith another, save that in total absence of daylight everything isblack, seeing that colour cannot be recognised in darkness. Though, therefore, in such a case, the theory allows one, without blame, to usepure black for the shadows of a white object, yet this can seldomcome to pass. 

Moreover, when thou paintest anything in one colour--be it red, blue, brown, or any mixed colour--beware lest thou make it so bright in thelights that it departs from its own kind. For example, an uneducated manregardeth thy picture wherein is a red coat. "Look, good friend, " saithhe, "in one part the coat is of a fair red and in another it is whiteor pale in colour. " That same is to be blamed, neither hast thou done itaright. In such a case a red object must be painted red all over and yetpreserve the appearance of solidity; and so with all colours. The samemust be done with the shadows, lest it be said that a fair red is soiledwith black Wherefore be careful that thou shade each colour with asimilar colour. Thus I hold that a yellow, to retain its kind, must beshaded with a yellow, darker toned than the principal colour. If thoushade it with green or blue, it remaineth no longer in keeping, and isno longer yellow, but becometh thereby a shot colour, like the colour ofsilk stuffs woven of threads of two colours, as brown and blue, brownand green, dark yellow and green, chestnut-brown and dark yellow, blueand seal red, seal red and brown, and the many other colours one sees. If a man hath such as these to paint, where the surface breaketh andbendeth away the colours divide themselves so that they can bedistinguished one from another, and thus must thou paint them. But wherethe surface lieth flat one colour alone appeareth. Howbeit, if thou artpainting such a silk and shadest it with one colour (as a brown with ablue) thou must none the less shade the blue with a deeper blue where itis needful. If often cometh to pass that such silks appear brown in theshadows, as if one colour stood before the other. If thy model bearethsuch a garment, thou must shade the brown with a deeper brown and notwith blue. Howbeit, happen what may, every colour must in shading keepto its own class. 

II

The great genius Hokusai, who has obtained for popular art in Japan asuccess comparable to that of the best classic masterpieces of thatcountry and to the drawings and etchings of Rembrandt, a master of analtogether kindred nature, wrote a little treatise on the difference ofaim noticeable in European and Japanese art. From the few Dutch pictureswhich he had been able to examine, he concluded that European artattempted to deceive the eye, whereas Japanese art laboured to expresslife, to suggest movement, and to harmonise colour. What is meant iseasily grasped when we set before the mind's eye a picture, by Teniersand a page of Hokusai's "Mangwa. " On the other hand, if one chose asketch by Rembrandt to represent Dutch art, the difference could nolonger be apparent. If the aim of European art had ever in seriousexamples been to deceive the eye, our painting would rank withlegerdemain and Maskelyne's famous box trick; for it is to be doubted ifit could ever so well have attained its end as even a second-rateconjurer can. I have cited a passage in which Reynolds confronts thework of great artists with the illusions of the camera obscura (see p. 237). The adept musical performer who reproduces the noises of afarmyard is the true parallel to the lesser Dutch artists; he deceivesthe ear far better than they deceive the eye. For every picture has asurface which, unless very carefully lighted, must immediately destroythe illusion, even if it were otherwise perfect. Nevertheless, Dürer inthe foregoing passage seems to accept Hokusai's verdict that the aim ofhis painting is to deceive the eye; forgetful of all that he haselsewhere written about the necessity of beauty, the necessity ofcomposition, the superiority of rough sketches over finished works. 

When a painter has conceived in his heart a vision of beauty, whether hesuggests it with a few strokes of the pen or elaborates it as thoroughlyas Jan Van Eyck did, he wishes it to be taken as a report of somethingseen. This is as different from wishing to deceive the eye as for someone to say "and then a dog barked, " instead of imitating the barking ofa dog. A circumstantial description in words and a picture by Van Eyckor Veronese are equally intended to pass as reports of somethingvisually conceived or actually seen. Pictures would have to be madepeep-shows of before they could veritably deceive; and Jan Van Beers, amodern Dutchman, actually turned some of his paintings into peep-shows. Dürer in the following passage is speaking of the separate details orobjects which go to make up a picture, not of the picture as a whole; henever tried to make peep-shows; his signature or an inscription is oftenused to give the very surface that must destroy the peep-show illusion adefinite decorative value. The rest of his remarks have becomecommonplaces; nor has he written at such length as to give them theirtrue limitations and intersubordination. They will be easily understoodby those who remember that art is concerned with producing the illusionof a true report of something seen, not that of an actual vision. Such areport may be slight and brief; it may be stammered by emotion; it mayhave been confused or tortured to any degree by the mental condition ofhim who delivers it: if it produces the conviction of his sincerity, itachieves the only illusion with which art is concerned, and its valuewill depend on its beauty and the beauty of the means employed todeliver it. 

CHAPTER VIII

IN CONCLUSION

After turning over Dürer prints and drawings, after meditating on hiswritings, we feel that we are in the presence of one of those forceswhich are constant and equal, which continue and remain like the growthof the body, the return of seasons, the succession of moods. This isalways among the greatest charms of central characters: they are mildand even, their action is like that of the tides, not that of storms. "If only you had my meekness, " Dürer wrote to Pirkheimer (set: p. 85), half in jest doubtless, but with profound truth:--though the wordmeekness does not indeed cover the whole of what we feel made Dürer'smost radical advantage over his friend; at other times we might call itnaïvety, that sincerity of great and simple natures which can never beoutflanked or surprised. Sometimes it might be called pride, for it hascertainly a great deal of self-assurance behind it, the self-assuranceof trees, of flowers, of dumb animals and little children, who neverdream that an apology for being where and what they are can be expectedof them. Such natures when they come home to us come to stop; we may goout, we may pay no heed to them, we may forget them, but they abide inthe memory, and some day they take hold of us with all the more forcebecause this new impression will exactly tally with the former one; weshall blush for our inconstancy, our indifference, our imbecility, whichhave led us to neglect such a pregnant communion. Not only persons butworks of art produce this effect, and they are those with whom it is thegreatest benefit to live. 

It is true that, compared with Giotto, Rembrandt, or Michael Angelo, Dürer does not appear comprehensive enough. It is with him as withMilton; we wish to add others to his great gifts, above all to take himout from his surroundings, to free him from the accidents of place andtime. In one sense he is poorer than Milton: we cannot go to him as to asource of emotional exhilaration. If he ever proves himself able so tostir us, it is too occasionally to be a reason why we frequent him as itmay be one why we frequent Milton. Nevertheless, the greater charactersof control which are his in an unmatched degree, his constancy, hisresource and deliberate effectiveness, joined to that blandness, thatsunshine, which seems so often to replace emotion and thought in worksof image-shaping art, are of priceless beneficence, and with them wewould abide. Intellectual passion may seem indeed sometimes to dissipatethis sunshine and control without making good their loss. Such casesenable us to feel that the latter are more essential: and it is theselatter qualities which Dürer possessed in such fulness. In return forour contemplation, they build up within us the dignity of man and renderit radiant and serene. Those who have felt their influence longest andmost constantly will believe that they may well warrant the modernprophet who wrote:

The idea of beauty and of human nature perfect on all its sides, whichis the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though ithas not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obviousfaults of our animality and of a human nature perfect on the moralside--which is the dominant idea of religion--has been enabled to have;and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a devoutenergy, to transform and govern the other. 

INDEX

Aachen

Adam (Melchor)

Aeschylus

Albertina

Altdorfer (Albrecht)

Anabaptists

Andreae (Hieronymus)

Angelico (Fra Beato)

Antwerpo

Apelles

Aristotle

Arnold (Matthew)

Augsburg

Balccarres (Lord)

Bamberg (Library)

Barbari (Jacopo dei)

Barberini (Gallery)

Barye (Antoine Louis)

Basle

Baudelaire (Charles)

Bavaria

Beers (Jan van)

Beham (Barthel and Sebald)

Behaim

Bellini (Gentile)

Bellini (Giovanni)

Berlin

Blake (William)

Bologna

Bonnat (Léon)

Borgia (Cesare)

Borgia (Alexander), see Pope

Botticelli

Bremen

Breslau (Bishop of)

Breughel (Peter)

British Museum. 

Browning (Robert)

Brussels

Brutus

Burgkmair (Hans)

Butler (Bishop)

Caietan (Cardinal)

Calvin

Camerarius (Kunz Kamerer)

Carpaccio

Celtes (Conrad)

Charles V. (Emperor)

Cicero

Coleridge

Colet (Dean)

Colmar

Cologne (Köln)

Conway (Sir Martin)

Cook (Sir Francis)

Correggio

Cranach (Lucas)

Dante

Danube

Dodgson (Campbell)

Dolce (Ludovico)

Dresden

Dürer (Albert the Elder)

Dürer (Agnes, nee Frey)

Dürer, Andreas Brothers and Sisters Father-in-law, Hans Frey Forefathers

Dürer, Hans

Dürer's House, Mother (Barbara Helper)

Dürer (Quotations from), Dürer's Books: Art of Fortification, Human Proportions, Measurement with Compass. 

 Drawings: Adam's hand, Christ bearing His Cross, Dance of monkeys, Himself, Lion, Lucas van Leyden, Memento Mei, Mein Angnes, Mount of Olives, Nepotis (Florent), Pfaffroth (Hans), Plankfelt (Jobst), Sea-monsters, Women's Bath, Walrus. 

 Engravings on Metal: Agony in the Garden, Great Fortune, Jerome (St. ), Knight (The), Melancholy, Passion. 

 Pictures: Adam and Eve, Adoration of Magi, Avarice, Christ among Doctors, Coronation of Virgin, Crucifixion, Dresden Altar Piece, Feast of Bose Garlands, Hercules, Lucretia, Madonna with Iris, Martyrdom of Ten Thousand, Paumgartner, Altar Piece, Preachers (The Pour), Road to Calvary, Trinity and All Saints. 

 Portraits: Of himself, Leipzig, Madrid, Munich, Holzschuher (Hieronymus), Imhof, Hans (?), Kleeberger (Johannes) Krel (Oswolt), Maximilian, Muffel (Jacob), Orley (Bernard van), Unknown (Vienna), Unknown (Hampton Court), Unknown (Boston) Unknown Woman (Berlin), Unknown Girl (Berlin), Wolgemut. 

 Woodcuts: Apocalypse, Assumption of Magdalen, St. Christopher, Gate of Honour, Jerome (St. ), Life of the Virgin, Last Supper, Little Passion. 

Ebner

Eck (Dr. )

Eckenstein (Miss)

Emerson

Erasmus

Euclid

Euripides

Eusebius

Eyck (Jan van)

FLAUBERT (Gustave)

Florentine

Frankfort

Frederick the Wise (Elector of Saxony)

Frey (Hans)

Frey (Felix), Fronde, Fugger, Furtwängler, Gainsborough, Ghent, Giehlom (Dr. Carl), Giorgjone, Giotto, Goes (Hugo vander)

Goethe, Gospel of St. Luke, St. Matthew, St. John, Grapheus (Cornelius), Greece, Greeks, Greek, Grien (Baldung), Heaton (Mrs. ), _Heller (Jacob)_. 

Henry VIII, Hess (Eoban), Hess (Martin), Hippocrates, Hokusai, Holbein, Holzselraher, Homer, Humanists, Hungary, Hutten (Ulrich von), Imhof (Hans), Innsbruck, Jeanne D'Arc, Jesus, John (St. ), Jonson (Ben), Juggernaut, Keats (John), Kolb (Anton), Kratzer (Nicholas), Kress (Christopher), Lady Margaret (Governess of the Netherlands), Landauer (Matthew), Leipzig, Leonardo da Vinci, Link (Wenzel), Lippmann, London, Longfellow, Lotto (Lorenzo), Louvre, Lucas van Leyden, Luther, Lutzelburger, Mabuse (Jan de), Macbeth, Machiavelli. 

Madrid, Mantegna (Andrea), Mantua, Manuel, Marcantonio, Mark (St. ), Marlowe, Maximilian I. , Melanchthon, Mexico, Michael Angelo, Miller (A. W. , Esq. ), Millet (Jean Francois), Miltitz, Milton, Montaigne, _Monthly Review_, Montpelier (Town Council), More, Morley (Lord and Lady), Moses, Muffel (Jacob), Munich, Nassau, Neudörffer, Nietzsche, Nützel (Caspar), Orley (Bernard van)

Ostendorfer (Michael)

Pacioli (Luca)

Padua

Parrhasius

Paul (St. )

Paumgartner (Stephan)

Peasants' War

Penz (Georg)

Peter (St, )

Phidias

Pirkheimer (Charitas) (Philip) (Willibald)

Pitti (Gallery)

Plato

Pleydenwurf

Pliny

Polizemo

Polycleitus

Pope Adrian IV. (Alexander VI. ) (Julius II. ) (Leo X. )

Porto Venere

Portugal

Prague

Praxiteles

Protogenes

Psalms

Rabelais

Raphael

Reformation, Reformers

Rembrandt

Renascence

Reuohlin (Dr. )

Reynolds

Ricketts (C. S. )

Rochefoucauld (La)

Roger van der Weyden

Rome

Rossetti (Dante Gabriel)

Rubens (Peter Paul)

Savonarola

Scheurl (Christopher)

Schongauer (Martin)

Schönsperger

Shannon (C. H. )

Shakespeare

Sistine (Chapel)

Spalatin (George)

Spengler (Lazarus)

Stabius (Johannes)

Städel Institut

Stromer (Wolf)

Strong (S. A)

Swift (Dean)

Teniers (David)

Thawing (Dr. Moritz)

Titian

Tschertte (Johannes)

Uffizi (Gallery)

Ulm

Van Dyck

Varnbüler (Ulrioh)

Vasari

Velasquez

Venice

Veronese (Paul)

Verona

Verrall (Dr. )

Vienna

Virgil

Vitruvius

Warham (Archbishop)

Watteail (Antoine)

Watts (G. F. )

Weimar (Grand Ducal Museum)

Whistler (James McNeil)

Wittenberg

Wolfenbüttel

Wolgemut

Wordsworth

Würzburg (Bishop of)

Zeeland

Zeuxis