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DURER, ALBRECHT (1471-1528)
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See also:DURER, ALBRECHT (1471-1528) , See also:German painter, See also:draughts-See also:man and engraver, was See also:born at See also:Nuremberg on the 21st of May 1471. His See also:family was not of Nuremberg descent, but came from the See also:village of Eytas in See also:Hungary. The name, however, is German, and the family device—an open door—points to an See also:original See also:form Thurer, meaning a maker of doors or See also:carpenter. Albrecht Durer the See also:elder was a See also:goldsmith by See also:trade, and settled soon after the See also:middle of the 15th See also:century in Nuremberg. He served as assistant under a See also:master-goldsmith of the See also:city, Hieronymus Holper, and in 1468 married his master's daughter See also:Barbara, the bridegroom being See also:forty and the See also:bride fifteen years of See also:age. They had eighteen See also:children, of whom Albrecht was the second. The elder Durer was an esteemed craftsman and pious See also:citizen, sometimes, as was natural, straitened in means by the pressure of his numerous progeny. His famous son writes with reverence and See also:affection of both parents, and has See also:left a touching narrative of their See also:death-See also:bed See also:hours. He painted the portrait of his See also:father twice, first in 1490, next in 1497. The former of these is in the697 Uffizi at See also:Florence; of the latter, four versions exist, that in the See also:National See also:Gallery (formerly in the See also:Ashburton-See also:Northampton collections) having the best claim to originality. The See also:young Albrecht was his father's favourite son. " My father," he writes, " took See also:special delight in me. Seeing that I was industrious in working and learning, he put me to school; and when I had learned to read and write, he took me See also:home from school and taught me the goldsmith's trade." By and by the boy found himself See also:drawn by preference from goldsmith's See also:work to See also:painting; his father, after some hesitation on the See also:score of the See also:time already spent in learning the former trade, gave way and apprenticed him for three years, at the age of fifteen and a See also:half, to the See also:principal painter of the See also:town, See also:Michael Wolgemut. Wolgemut furnishes a See also:complete type of the German painter of that age. At the See also:head of a large See also:shop with many assistants, his business was to turn out, generally for a small See also:price, devotional pieces commissioned by See also:mercantile corporations or private persons to decorate their chapels in the churches—the preference being usually for scenes of the See also:Passion, or for tortures and martyrdoms of the See also:saints. In such work the painters of Upper See also:Germany at this time, working in the spirit of the See also:late See also:Gothic See also:style just before the See also:dawn of the See also:Renaissance, show considerable technical attainments, with a love of See also:quaint costumes and See also:rich draperies crumpled in complicated angular folds, some feeling for See also:romance in landscape backgrounds, none at all for clearness or See also:balance in' See also:composition, and in the attitudes and expressions of their over-crowded figures a degree of grotesqueness and exaggeration amounting often to undesigned See also:caricature. There were also produced in the workshop of Wolgemut, as in that of other artist-craftsmen of his town, a See also:great number of woodcuts for See also:book See also:illustration. We cannot with certainty identify any of these as being by the 'prentice See also:hand of the young Durer. See also:Authentic drawings done by him in boyhood, however, exist, including one in See also:silver-point of his own likeness at the age of thirteen in the Albertina at See also:Vienna, and others of two or three years later in the See also:print See also:room at See also:Berlin, at the See also:British Museum and at See also:Bremen.
In the school of Wolgemut Durer learned much, by his own See also:account, but suffered not a little from the roughness of his companions. At the end of his See also:apprenticeship in 1490 he entered upon the usual course of travels—the Wanderjahre—of a German youth. Their direction we cannot retrace with certainty. There had been no one at Nuremberg skilled enough in the See also:art of See also:metal-See also:engraving to See also:teach it him to much purpose, and it had at one time been his father's intention to apprentice him to See also: He was received kindly by three See also:brothers of the deceased master established there, and afterwards, still in 1492, by a See also:fourth See also:brother at See also:Basel. Under them he evidently had some practice both in metal-engraving and in furnishing designs for the woodcutter. There is in the museum at Basel a See also:wood-See also:block of St See also:Jerome executed by him and elaborately signed on the back with his name. This was used in an edition of Jerome's letters printed in the same city in the same year, 1492. Some critics also maintain that his hand is to be recognized in several See also:series of small blocks done about the same date or somewhat later for Bergmann and other printers of Basel, some of them being illustrations to See also:Terence (which were never printed), some to the romance of the See also:Ritter mm Turm, and some to the Narrenschiff of See also:Sebastian Brandt. But the prevailing See also:opinion is against this conjecture, and See also:sees in these designs the work not of a strenuous student and searcher such as Durer was, but of a riper and more facile hand working in a spirit of settled routine. Whether the young Durer's stay at Basel was See also:long or See also:short, or whether, as has been supposed, he travelled from there into the See also:Low Countries, it is certain that in the See also:early See also:part of 1494 he was working at See also:Strassburg, and returned to his home at Nuremberg immediately after Whitsuntide in that year. Of See also:works certainly executed by him during his years of travel there are extant, besides the Basel wood-block, only a much-injured portrait of himself, very finely dressed and in the first See also:bloom of his admirable manly beauty, dated 1493 and originally painted on vellum but. since transferred to See also:canvas (this is the portrait of the See also:Felix Goldschmid collection); a See also:miniature painting on vellum at Vienna (a small figure of the See also:Child-See also:Christ); and some half a dozen drawings, of which the most important are the characteristic See also:pen portrait of himself at See also:Erlangen, with a See also:Holy Family on the See also:reverse much in the manner of Schongauer; another Holy Family in nearly the same style at Berlin; a study from the See also:female nude in the See also:Bonnat collection; a man and woman on horseback in Berlin; a man on horseback, and an executioner about to behead a young man, at the British Museum, &c. These drawings all show Durer See also:intent above all things on the sternly accurate delineation of ungeneralized individual forms by means of strongly accented outline and shadings curved, some-what like the shadings of Martin Schongauer's engravings, so as to follow their modellings and roundness. Within a few See also:weeks of his return (See also:July 7th, 1494) Durer was married, according to an arrangement apparently made between the parents during his See also:absence, to See also:Agnes See also:Frey, the daughter of a well-to-do See also:merchant of the city. By the autumn of the same year, probably feeling the incompleteness of the See also:artistic training that could be obtained See also:north of the See also:Alps, he must have taken See also:advantage of some opportunity, we know not what, to make an excursion of some months to See also:Italy, leaving his lately married wife at Nuremberg. The evidences of this travel (which are really incontestable, though a small minority of critics still decline to admit them) consist of (1) some See also:fine drawings, three of them dated 1494 and others undated, but plainly of the same time, in which Durer has copied, or rather boldly translated into his own Gothic and German style, two famous engravings by See also:Mantegna, a number of the "Tarocchi" prints of single figures which pass erroneously under that master's name, and one by yet another See also:minor master of the North-See also:Italian school; with another See also:drawing dated 1495 and plainly copied from a lost original by See also:Antonio See also:Pollaiuolo, and yet another of an See also:infant Christ copied in 1495 from Lorenzo di See also:Credi, from whom also Durer took a See also:motive for the composition of one of his earliest Madonnas; (2) several landscape drawings done in the passes of See also:Tirol and the Trentino, which technically will not See also:fit in with any other See also:period of his work, and furnish a clear See also:record of his having crossed the Alps about this date; (3) two or three drawings of the costumes of Venetian courtesans, which he could not have made anywhere but in See also:Venice itself, and one of which is used in his great woodcut See also:Apocalypse series of 1498; (4) a See also:general preoccupation which he shows for some years from this date with the problems of the female nude, treated in a manner for which Italy only could have set him the example; and (5) the clear implication' contained in a See also:letter written from Venice in 15o6 that he had been there already eleven years before; when things, he says, pleased him much which at the time of See also:writing please him no more. Some time in 1495 Durer must have returned from this first Italian See also:journey to his home in Nuremberg, where he seems to have lived, without further See also:change or removal, in the active practice of his art for the next ten years. The See also:hour when Durer, the typical artist of the German nation, attained maturity was one of the most pregnant in the See also:history of his See also:race. It was the crisis, in See also:northern See also:Europe, of the transition between the middle ages and our own. The awakening of Germany at the Renaissance was not, like the awakening of Italy a See also:generation or two earlier, a See also:movement almost exclusively intellectual. It was indeed from Italy that the races of the north caught the impulse of intellectual freedom, the spirit of See also:science and curiosity, the eager retrospect towards the classic past; but joined with these in Germany was a moral impulse which was her own, a craving after truth and right, a See also:rebellion against spiritual tyranny and corruption—the Renaissance was big in the north, as it was not in the See also:south, with a See also:Reformation to come. The art of See also:printing had been invented in See also:good time to help and hasten the new movement of men's minds. Nor was it by the See also:diffusion of written ideas only that the new art suppliedthe means of popular enlightenment. Along with word-printing, or indeed in advance of it, there had sprung into use another See also:kind of printing, picture-printing, or what is commonly called engraving. Just .as books were the means of multiplying, cheapening and disseminating ideas, so engravings on See also:copper or wood were the means of multiplying, cheapening and disseminating images which gave vividness to the ideas, or served, for those ignorant of letters, in their See also:stead. Technically one of these arts, that of See also:line-engraving on copper, sprang from the See also:craft of the goldsmith and metal-chaser; while that of wood-engraving sprang from the craft of the printers of See also:pattern-blocks and playing See also:cards. The engraver on metal habitually cut his own designs, and between the arts of the goldsmith and the painter there had always been a See also:close See also:alliance, both being habitually exercised by persons of the same family and some-times by one and the same See also:person; so that there was no lack of hands ready-trained for the new craft which required of the man who practised it that he should See also:design like a painter and cut metal like a goldsmith. Designs intended to be cut on wood, on the other hand, were usually drawn by the artist on the block and handed over for cutting to a class of workmen—Formschneider or Brief miler—especially devoted to that See also:industry. Both kinds of engraving soon came to be in great demand. Independently of the illustration of written or printed books, for which purpose woodcuts were almost exclusively used, See also:separate engravings or sets of engravings in both kinds were produced, the more finely wrought and more expensive, appealing especially to the more educated classes, on copper, the bolder, simpler and cheaper on wood; and both . kinds found a ready See also:sale at all the markets, fairs and See also: She held not only a close commercial intercourse, but also a close intellectual intercourse, with Italy. Without being so forward as the See also:rival city of See also:Augsburg to embrace the architectural fashions of the Italian renaissance—continuing, indeed, to be profoundly imbued with the old and homely German burgher spirit, and to See also:wear, in a degree which time has not very much impaired even yet, the quaintness of the old German civic aspect—she had imported before the close of the 15th century a See also:fair See also:share of the new learning of Italy, and numbered among her citizens distinguished humanists like See also:Hartmann Schedel, Sebald Schreier, Willibald Pirkheimer and See also:Conrad See also:Celtes. From associates like these Durer could imbibe the spirit of Renaissance culture and See also:research; but the See also:external aspects and artistic traditions which surrounded him were purely Gothic, and he had to work out for himself the style and form-See also:language fit to See also:express what was in him. During the first seven or eight years of his settled life in his native city from 1495, he betrays a conflict of artistic tendencies as well as no small sense of spiritual See also:strain and strife. His finest work in this period was that which he provided for the woodcutter. After some half - dozen See also:miscellaneous single prints—" See also:Samson and the See also:Lion," the "See also:Annunciation," the " Ten Thousand Martyrs," the "See also:Knight and Men-at-arms," the "Men's See also:Bath," &c.—he undertook and by 1498 completed his famous series of sixteen great designs for the Apocalypse. The northern mind had long dwelt with eagerness on these phantasmagoric mysteries of things to come, and among the earliest block-books printed in Germany is an edition of the Apocalypse with See also:rude figures. See also:Founding himself to some extent on the traditional motives, Durer conceived and carried out a set of designs in which the qualities of the German late Gothic style, its rugged strength and restless vehemence, its love of gnarled forms, writhing actions and agitated lines, are fused by the See also:fire of the young master's spirit into vital See also:combination with something of the majestic See also:power and classic severity which he had seen and admired in the works of Mantegna. Of a little later date, and of almost as fine a quality, are the first seven of a large series of woodcuts known as the Great Passion; and a little later again (probably after 1500), a series of eleven subjects of the Holy Family and of saints singly or in See also:groups: then, towards 1504-1505, come the first seventeen of a set illustrating the life of the Virgin: neither these nor the Great Passion were published till several years later. In copper-engraving Durer was at the same time diligently training himself to develop the methods practised by Martin Schongauer and earlier masters into one suitable for his own self-expression. He attempted no subjects at all commensurate with those of his great woodcuts, but contented himself for the most part with Madonnas, single figures of scripture or of the saints, some nude mythologies of a kind wholly new in northern art and founded upon the impressions received in Italy, and groups, sometimes bordering on the satirical, of humble folk and peasants. In the earliest of the Madonnas, the " Virgin with the See also:Dragon-See also:fly" (1495-1496), Durer has thrown something of his own rugged See also:energy into a design of the traditional Schongauer type. In examples of a few years later, like the "Virgin with the See also:Monkey," the design of See also:Mother and Child clearly betrays the See also:influence of Italy and specifically of Lorenzo di Credi. The subjects of the "Prodigal Son" and "St Jerome in the See also:Wilderness " he on the other hand treats in an almost purely northern spirit. In the nudes of the next four or five years, which included a "St Sebastian," the so-called "Four Witches" (1497), the "See also:Dream" or "Temptation," the "See also:Rape of Amymome," and the " See also:Jealousy" or "Great See also:Hercules," Venetian, Paduan and Florentine memories are found, in the treatment of the human form, competing somewhat uncomfortably with his own inherited Gothic and northern instincts. In these early engravings the highly-wrought landscape backgrounds, when-ever they occur, are generally the most satisfying feature. This feature reaches a See also:climax of beauty and elaboration in the large print of " St Eustace and the See also:Stag," while the figures and animals remain still somewhat cramped and immature. In the first three or four years of the 16th century, we find Durer in his graver-work still contending with the problems of the nude, but now with added power, though by methods which in different subjects contrast curiously with one another. Thus the "See also:Nemesis," belonging probably to 1503, is a marvellously wrought piece of quite unflinching See also:realism in the rendering of a See also:common type of mature, See also:muscular, unshapely German womanhood. The conception and attributes of the figure are taken, as has lately been recognized, from a description in the "Manto" of See also:Politian: the goddess, to whose shoulders are appended a 'pair of huge wings, stands like See also:Fortune on a revolving See also:ball, holding the emblems of the See also:cup and bridle, and below her feet is spread a rich landscape of See also: The See also:drama of the subject has in this instance not interested him at all, but only the forms and designs of the figures, the realization of the quality of flesh surfaces by the subtlest use of the graving-See also:tool known to him, and the rendering, by methods of which he had become the greatest of all masters, of the richness and intricacy of the See also:forest background. Two or three other technical masterpieces of the engraver's art, the " Coat-of-Arms with the See also:Skull," the "Nativity," with its exquisite background of ruined buildings, the "Little See also:Horse" and the "Great Horse," both of 1505, complete the See also:list of the master's chief productions in this kind before he started in the last-named year for a second visit to Italy.
The pictures of this earlier Nuremberg period are not many in number and not very admirable. Dijrer's powers of hand and See also:eye are already extraordinary and in their way almost unparalleled, but they are often applied to the too insistent, too glittering, too emphatic rendering of particular details and individual forms, without due regard to subordination or the See also:harmony of the whole. Among the earliest seem to be two examples of a method practised in Italy especially by the school of Mantegna, but almost without precedent in Germany, that of See also:tempera-painting on See also:linen. One of these is the portrait of See also:Frederick the See also:Wise of See also:Saxony, formerly in the See also: In an altarpiece at Ober St See also:Veit and in the scattered wings of the Jabach altarpiece severally preserved at Munich, Frankfort and See also:Cologne, the workmanship seems to be exclusively that of journeymen working from his drawings. The period is closed, so far as paintings are concerned, by two examples of far higher value than those above named, that is to say the Paumgartner altarpiece at Munich, with its romantically attractive composition of the Nativity with angels and donors in the central panel, and the fine armed figures of St See also:George and St Eustace (lately freed from the over-paintings which disfigured them) on the wings; and the happily conceived and harmoniously finished "See also:Adoration of the Magi" in the Uffizi at Florence. In the autumn of 1505 Durer journeyed for a second time to Venice, and stayed there until the See also:spring of 1507. The occasion of this journey has been erroneously stated by See also:Vasari. Diirer's engravings, both on copper and wood, had by this time attained great popularity both north and south of the Alps, and had begun to be copied by various hands, among others by the celebrated See also:Marcantonio of See also:Bologna, then in his youth. According to Vasari, Marcantonio, in copying Diirer's series of the Little Passion on wood, had imitated the original See also:monogram, and Durer, indignant at this See also:fraud, set out for Italy in See also:order to protect his rights, and having lodged a complaint against Marcantonio before the signory of Venice, carried his point so far that Marcantonio was forbidden in future to add the monogram of Durer to copies taken after his works. This account will not See also:bear examination. See also:Chronological and other proofs show that if such a suit was fought at all, it must have been in connexion with another set of Diirer's woodcuts, the first seventeen of the Life of the Virgin. Durer himself, a number of whose See also:familiar letters written from Venice to his friend Pirkheimer at Nuremberg are preserved, makes no mention of anything of the kind. Nevertheless some such grievance may possibly have been among the causes which determined his journey. Other causes, of which we have explicit record, were an outbreak of sickness at Nuremberg; Durer's See also:desire, which in fact was realized, of finding a good market for the proceeds of his art; and the prospect, also realized, of a See also:commission for an important picture from the German community settled at Venice, who had lately caused an See also:exchange and warehouse—the Fondaco de' Tedeschi—to be built on the See also:Grand See also:Canal, and who were now desirous to dedicate a picture in the church of St See also:Bartholomew. The picture painted by Durer on this commission was the "Adoration of the Virgin," better known as the "Feast of See also:Rose Garlands"; it was subsequently acquired by the See also:emperor See also:Rudolf II., and carried as a thing beyond price upon men's shoulders to Vienna; it now exists in a greatly injured See also:state in the monastery of Strahow at See also:Prague. It shows the See also:pope and emperor, with a See also:lute-playing See also:angel between them, kneeling to right and left of the enthroned Virgin and Child, who See also:crown them with rose garlands, with a multitude of other kneeling saints disposed with free symmetry in the background, and farther in the background portraits of the donor and the painter, and a flutter of See also:wreath-carrying cherubs in the See also:air. Of all Durer's works, it is the one in which he most deliberately rivalled the combined splendour and playfulness of certain phases of Italian art. The Venetian painters assured him, he says, that they had never seen finer See also:colours. They were doubtless too courteous to add that fine colours do not make fine colouring. Even in its See also:present ruined state, it is apparent that in spite of the masterly treatment of particular passages, such as the robe of the pope, Diirer still lacked a true sense of harmony and See also:tone-relations, and that the effect of his work must have been restless and garish beside that of a master like the aged See also:Bellini. That See also:veteran showed the German visitor the most generous See also:courtesy, and Durer still speaks of him as the best in painting (" der pest See also:im gemell ") in spite of his advanced years. A similar festal intention in design and colouring, with similar mastery in passages and even less sense of harmonious relations in the whole, is apparent in a second important picture painted by Durer at Venice, "The Virgin and Child with the See also:Goldfinch, " formerly in the collection of See also:Lord See also:Lothian and now at Berlin. A "Christ disputing with the Doctors" of the same period, in the See also:Barberini Gallery at See also:Rome, is recorded to have cost the painter only five days' labour, and is an unsatisfying and See also:ill-composed congeries of heads and hands, both of such strenuous See also:character and. individuality as here and there to pass into caricature. The most satisfying of Durer's paintings done in Venice are the admirable portrait of a young man at See also:Hampton Court (the same sitter reappears in the "Feast of Rose Garlands"), and two small pieces, one the head of a See also: He tells of the high position he holds among the Venetians; of the jealousy shown him by some of the meaner sort of native artist; of the See also:honour and See also:wealth in which he might live if he would consent to abandon home for Italy; of the northern See also:winter, and how he knows that after his return it will set him shivering for the south. Yet he resisted all seductions and was in Nuremberg again before the summer of 1507. First, it seems, he had made an excursion to Bologna, having intended to take See also:Mantua on the way, in order to do See also:homage to the old age of that Italian master, See also:Andrea Mantegna, from whose work he had himself in youth learned the most. But the death of Mantegna prevented his purpose. From the spring of 1507 until the summer of 1520, Durer was again a settled See also:resident in his native town. Except the brilliant existences of See also:Raphael at Rome and of See also:Rubens at See also:Antwerp and Madrid, the See also:annals of art present the spectacle of few more honoured or more fortunate careers. His reputation had spread all over Europe. From See also:Flanders to Rome his distinction was acknowledged, and artists of less invention, among them some of the foremost on both sides of the Alps, were not ashamed to See also:borrow from his work this or that striking combination or expressive type. He was on terms of friendship or friendly communication with all the first masters of the age, and Raphael held himself honoured in exchanging drawings with Durer. In his own See also:country, all orders of men, from the emperor See also:Maximilian down, delighted to honour him; and he was the familiar See also:companion of chosen See also:spirits among the statesmen, humanists and reformers of the new age. The burgher life of even Nuremberg, the noblest German city, seems narrow, quaint and harsh beside the See also:grace and opulence and poetical surroundings of Italian life in the same and the preceding generation. The great cities of Flanders also, with their See also:world-wide commerce and long-established See also:eminence in the arts, presented aspects of more splendid civic pomp and luxury. But among its native surroundings the career of Durer stands out with an aspect of ideal See also:elevation and decorum which is its own. His See also:temper and life seem to have been remarkably free from all that was jarring, jealous and fretful; unless, indeed, we are to accept as true the account of his wife's character which represents her as having been no fit See also:mate for him, but an incorrigible See also:shrew and skinflint. The name of Agnes Durer was for centuries used to point a moral, and among the unworthy wives of great men the wife of Durer became almost as notorious as the wife of See also:Socrates. The source of the traditions to her discredit is to be found in a letter written a few years after Darer's death by his life-long intimate, Willibald Pirkheimer, who accuses her of having plagued her See also:husband to death by her meanness, made him overwork himself for See also:money's See also:sake, and given his latter days no See also:peace. No doubt there must have been some kind of See also:foundation for Pirkheimer's charges; and it is to be noted that neither in Dtirer's early correspondence with this intimate friend, nor anywhere in his See also:journals, does he use any expressions of tenderness or affection for his wife, only speaking of her as his housemate and of her helping in the sale of his prints,&c. That he took her with him on his journey to the See also:Netherlands shows at any rate that there can have been no acute estrangement. And it is fair to remember in her See also:defence that Pirkheimer when he denounced her was old, gouty and peevish, and that the immediate occasion of his outbreak against his friend's widow was a fit of anger because she had not let him have a pair of antlers—a See also:household See also:ornament much prized in those days—to which he fancied himself entitled out of the See also:property left by Durer. We have See also:evidence that after her husband's death Agnes Durer behaved with generosity to his brothers. The thirteen or fourteen years of Diirer's life between his return from Venice and his journey to the Netherlands (spring 1507–midsummer 1520) can best be divided according to the classes of work with which, during successive divisions of the period, he was principally occupied. The first five years, 1507-1511, are pre-eminently the painting years of his life. In them, working with See also:infinite preliminary pains, as a vast number of extant drawings and studies testify, he produced what have been accounted his four See also:capital works in painting, besides several others of minor importance. The first is the "Adam and Eve" dated 1507, in which both attitudes and proportions are as carefully calculated, though on a somewhat different scheme, as in the engraving of 1504. Two versions of the picture exist, one in Florence at the Pitti See also:palace, the other, which is generally allowed to be the original, at Madrid. To 15o8 belongs the life-sized " Virgin with the See also:Iris," a piece remarkable for the fine romantic invention of its background, but plainly showing the hand of an assistant, perhaps Hans Baldung, in its See also:execution: the best version is in the See also:Cook collection at See also:Richmond, an inferior one in the Rudolphinum at Prague. In 15o8 Durer returned to a subject which he had already treated in an early woodcut, the " See also:Massacre of the Ten Thousand Martyrs of See also:Nicomedia." The picture, painted for the elector Frederick of Saxony, is now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna; the overcrowded canvas (into which Durer has again introduced his own portrait as a spectator alongside of the elector) is full of striking and animated detail, but fails to make any great impression on the whole, and does not do See also:justice to the improved sense of breadth and balance in design, of clearness and dignity in composition, which the master had undoubtedly brought back with him from his second visit to Italy. In 1509 followed the "See also:Assumption of the Virgin" with the Apostles gathered about her See also:tomb, a rich altarpiece with figures of saints and portraits of the donor and his wife in the folding wings, executed for See also:Jacob See also:Heller, a merchant of Frankfort, in 1509. This altarpiece was afterwards replaced at Frankfort (all except the pro traits of the donors, which remained behind) by a copy, while the original was transported to Munich, where it perished by fire in 1674. The copy, together with the many careful and highly finished preparatory studies for the heads, limbs and draperies which have been preserved, shows that this must have been the one of Dtirer's pictures in which he best combined the broader See also:vision and simpler habits of design which had impressed him in the works of Italian art with his own inherited and ingrained love of unflinchingly grasped fact and rugged, accentuated character. In 1511 was completed another famous painting, multitudinous in the number of its figures though of very moderate dimensions, the "Adoration of the Trinity by all the Saints," a subject commissioned for a See also:chapel dedicated to All Saints in an See also:almshouse for decayed tradesmen at Nuremberg, and now at the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. Nothing can exceed the fulness and variety of invention, or the searching force and precision of detail in this picture; nor does it leave so much to desire as several of the master's other paintings in point of See also:colour-harmony and pleasurable general effect. In the meantime Durer had added a few to the number of his line-engravings and had completed the two woodcut series of the Great Passion, begun about 1498-1499, and the Life of the Virgin. The new subjects compared with the old show some falling off in dramatic stress and intensity of expression, but on the other hand a marked gain in largeness of design and clearness of composition. In 1511 these two works were brought out for the first time, and the Apocalypse series in a second edition; and for the next three years, 1511-1514, engraving both on wood and copper, but especially the latter, took the first place among Durer's activities. Besides such fine single woodcuts as the " See also:Mass of St See also:Gregory," the " St See also:Christopher," the " St Jerome," and two Holy Families of 1511, Durer published in the same year the most numerous and popularly conceived of all his woodcut series, that known from the dimensions of its See also:thirty-seven subjects as the "Little Passion" on wood; and in the next year, 1512, a set of fifteen smallcopper-engravings on the same theme, the "Little Passion" on copper. Both of these must represent the labour of several preceding years: one or two of the "Little Passion" plates, dating back as far as 1507, prove that this series at least had been as long as five years in his mind. In thus repeating over and over on wood and copper nearly the same incidents of the Passion, or again in rehandling them in yet another See also:medium, as in the highly finished series of drawings known as the "See also:Green Passion" in the Albertina at Vienna, Diirer shows an inexhaustible variety of dramatic and graphic invention, and is never betrayed into repeating an identical See also:action or motive. In 1513 and 1514 appeared the three most famous of Durer's works in copper-engraving, "The Knight and Death" (or simply "The Knight," as he himself calls it, 1513), the "Melancolia " and the " St Jerome in his Study " (both 1514). These are the masterpieces of the greatest mind which ever expressed itself in this form of art. Like other masterpieces, they suggest much more than they clearly express, and endless meanings have been, rightly or wrongly, read into them by posterity. Taken together as a See also:group, they have been supposed to be three out of an uncompleted series designed to illustrate the four "temperaments " and complexions of men. Again, more See also:reason-ably, they have been taken as types severally of the moral, the intellectual and the theological virtues. The See also:idea at the bottom of the "Knight and Death " seems to be a combination of the See also:Christian knight of See also:Erasmus's Enchiridion militis Christiani with the type, traditional in See also:medieval imagery, of the See also:pilgrim on his way through the world. The imaginative force of the presentation, coming from a man of Durer's powers, is intense; but what consciously occupied him most may well have been the problem how to draw accurately the proportions and action of a horse in See also:motion. This problem he here solves for the first time, with the help of an Italian example: at least his design so closely repeats that of Leonardo da See also:Vinci's famous and early destroyed equestrian statue of See also:Francesco See also:Sforza that we must certainly suppose him to have seen either the model itself or such a drawing of it as is still preserved byLeonardo's own hand. The See also:face of the rider seems to recall that of the statue of Bartolommeo See also:Colleoni at Venice; for the See also:armour Durer had recourse to an old drawing of his own, signed and dated in 1498. The " Melancolia," numbered "1" as though intended to be the first of a series, with its brooding winged genius sitting dejectedly amidst a See also:litter of scientific See also:instruments and symbols, is hard to interpret in detail, but impossible not to recognize in general terms as an embodiment of the spirit of intellectual research (the student's "temperament" was supposed to be one with the melancholic), resting sadly from its labours in a See also:mood of lassitude and defeat. Comparatively cheerful beside these two is the remaining subject of the student See also:saint See also:reading in his chamber, with his See also:dog and domestic lion resting near him, and a marvellous See also:play of varied See also:surface and chequered See also:light on the See also:floor and See also:ceiling of his apartment and on all the See also:objects which it contains. Besides these three masterpieces of line-engraving, the same years, 1512–1515, found Durer occupied with his most important experiments in See also:etching, both in dry-point (" The Holy Family and Saints " and the " St Jerome in the Wilderness ") and with the See also:acid bath. At the same time he was more taken up than ever, as is proved by the contents of a See also:sketch-book at Dresden, with mathematical and anatomical studies cn the proportions and structure of the human See also:frame. A quite different kind of study, that of the postures of wrestlers in action, is illustrated by a little-known series of drawings, still of the same period, at Vienna. Almost the only well-authenticated painting of the time is a "Virgin and Child" in the Imperial Museum at Vienna. The portraits of the emperors See also: Diirer's designs, drawn with the pen in See also:pale See also:lilac, pink and green, show an inexhaustible richness of invention and an See also:airy freedom and playfulness of hand beyond what could be surmised from the sternness of those studies which he made See also:direct from life and nature. They range from subjects of the homeliest and most mirthful realism to others serious and devout, and from literal or almost literal transcripts of natural form to the most whimsically abstract combinations of linear pattern and tendril and flourish. All these undertakings for his imperial friend and See also:patron were stopped by the emperor's death in 1519. A portrait-drawing by the master done at Augsburg a few months previously, one of his finest works, served him as the basis both of a commemorative picture and a woodcut. Other paintings of this and the succeeding year we may seek for in vain; but in line engravings we have four more Madonnas, two St Christophers, one or two more See also:peasant subjects, the well-known St Anthony with the view of Nuremberg in the background, and the smaller of the two portraits of the See also:Cardinal-Elector of See also:Mainz; and in wood-engraving several fine heraldic pieces, including the arms of Nuremberg. In the summer of 1520 the desire of Durer to secure from Maximilian's successors a continuance of the patronage and privileges granted during his lifetime, together with an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg, gave occasion to the master's fourth and last journey from home. Together with his wife and her maid he set out in July for the Netherlands in order to be present at the See also:coronation of the young emperor Charles V., and if possible' to conciliate the good See also:graces of the all-powerful See also:regent See also:Margaret. In the latter part of his aim Durer was but partially successful. His See also:diary of his travels enables us to follow his movements almost See also:day by day. He journeyed by the See also:Rhine, Cologne, and thence by road to Antwerp, where he was handsomely received, and lived in whatever society was most distinguished, including that of Erasmus of See also:Rotterdam. Besides his written notes, interesting traces of his travels exist in the shape of the scattered leaves of a sketch-book filled with delicate drawings in silver-point, chiefly views of places and studies of portrait and See also:costume. Several of his finest portrait-drawings in See also:chalk or See also:charcoal, including those of his brother artists See also:Lucas See also:Van See also:Leyden and See also:Bernard Van See also:Orley, as well as one of two fine portrait paintings of men, belong to the period of this journey. So does a magnificent drawing of a head of a nonagenarian with a flowing See also:beard who sat to him at Antwerp, together with a picture from the same head in the character of St Jerome; the drawing is now at Vienna, the picture at See also:Lisbon. Diirer's See also:interest and curiosity, both artistic and See also:personal, were evidently stimulated by his travels in the highest degree. Besides going to Aachen for the coronation, he made excursions down the Rhine from Cologne to See also:Nijmwegen, and back overland by 's Hertogenbosch; to See also:Brussels; to See also:Bruges and See also:Ghent; and to See also:Zealand with the See also:object of seeing a natural curiosity, a See also:whale reported ashore. The vivid account of this last expedition given in his diary contrastswith the usual dry entries of interviews and disbursements. A still more striking contrast is the passionate outburst of sympathy and indignation with which, in the same diary, he comments on the supposed See also:kidnapping of See also:Luther by foul play on his return from the See also:diet of See also:Worms. Without being one of those who in his city took an avowed part against the old ecclesiastical See also:system, and probably without seeing clearly whither the religious ferment of the time was tending—without, that is, being properly speaking a Reformer—Dtirer in his art and his thoughts was the incarnation of those qualities of the German character and See also:conscience which resulted in the Reformation; and, personally, with the fathers of the Reformation he lived in the warmest sympathy. On the 12th of July 1521 Durer reached home again. Drawings of this and the immediately following years prove that on his return his mind was full of schemes for religious pictures. For a great group of the Madonna surrounded with saints there are extant two varying sketches of the whole composition and a number of finished studies for individual heads and figures. Less abundant, but still sufficient to prove the artist's intention, are the preliminary studies to a picture of the Crucifixion. There exist also fine drawings for a " Lamentation over the body of Christ," an "Adoration of the See also:Kings," and a "March to See also:Calvary"; of the last-named composition, besides the beautiful and elaborate pen-and-See also:ink drawing at Florence, three still more highly-wrought versions in green monochrome exist; whether any of them are certainly by the artist's own hand is See also:matter of debate. But no religious paintings on the grand See also:scale, corresponding to these drawings of 1521-1524, were ever carried out; perhaps partly because of the declining state of the artist's See also:health, but more because of the degree to which he allowed his time and thoughts to be absorbed in the preparation of his theoretical works on See also:geometry and perspective, proportion and fortification. Like Leonardo, but with much less than Leonardo's genius for scientific See also:speculation and See also:divination, Durer was a confirmed reasoner and theorist on the See also:laws of nature and natural appearances. He himself attached great importance to his studies in this kind; his learned See also:friends expected him to give their results to the world; which accordingly, though having little natural See also:gift or felicity in verbal expression, he laboured strenuously to do. The consequence was that in the last and ripest years of his life he produced as an artist comparatively little. In painting there is the famous portrait of Hieronymus Holtzschuher at Berlin, in which the See also:personality and general aspect of the sitter assert themselves with surprising power. This and the Antwerp head of Jerome are perhaps the most striking examples of Diirer's power of forcing into subordination to a general impression such a multiplicity of insistent detail as would have smothered any weaker conception than his. No other hand could have ventured to render the See also:hair and beard of a sitter, as it was the See also:habit of this inveterate linearist to do, not by indication of masses, but by means of an infinity of single lines swept, with a miraculous certainty and fineness of See also:touch, in the richest amd most intricate of decorative curves. To the same period belong a pleasing but somewhat weak " Madonna and Child " at Florence; and finally, still in the same year 1526, the two famous panels at Munich embodying the only one of the great religious conceptions of the master's later years which he lived to finish. These are the two pairs of saints, St See also: His labours, whether artistic or theoretic, had for some time been carried on in the face of failing health. In the canals of the Low Countries he had caught a See also:fever, of which he never shook off the effects. We have the evidence of this in his own written words, as well as in a sketch which he See also:drew to indicate the seat of his suffering to some physician with whom he was in correspondence, and again in the record of his See also:physical aspect which is preserved by a portrait engraved on wood just after his death, from a drawing made no doubt not long before: in this portrait we see his shoulders already See also:bent, the features somewhat gaunt, the old See also:pride of the abundant locks shorn away. The end came on the night of the 6th of See also:April 1528, so suddenly that there was no time to See also:call his dearest friends to his bedside. He was buried in a vault which belonged to his wife's family, but was afterwards disturbed, in the See also:cemetery of St John at Nuremberg. An appropriate Requiescat is contained in the words of Luther, in a letter written to their common friend Eoban Hesse:—" As for Durer, assuredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the best of men, yet you may well hold him happy that he has made so good an end, and that Christ has taken him from the midst of this time of trouble and from greater troubles in See also:store, lest he, that deserved to behold nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold the worst. Therefore may he See also:rest in peace with his fathers: See also:Amen." The principal extant paintings of Durer, with the places where they are to be found, have been mentioned above. Of his drawings, which for students are the most vitally interesting part of his works, the richest collections are in the Albertina at Vienna, the Berlin Museum and the British Museum. The Louvre also possesses some good examples, and many others are dispersed in various public collections, as in the Musee Bonnat at See also:Bayonne, at Munich, See also:Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Dresden, Basel, See also:Milan, Florence and See also:Oxford, as well as in private hands all over Europe. The principal See also:editions of Durer's theoretical writings are these: Geometry and Perspective.—Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt, in Linien, Ebnen und ganzen Corporen (Nuremberg, 1525, 1533, 1538). A Latin See also:translation of the same, with a long See also:title (Paris, Weichel, 1532) and another ed. in 1535• Again in Latin, with the title Institutionum geometricarum libri quatuor (Arnheim, 1605). Fortification.—Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloss und Flecken (Nuremberg, 1527), and other editions in 1530, 1538 and 1603 (Arnheim). A Latin translation, with the title De urbibus, arcibus, castellisque muniendis ac condendis (Paris, Weichel, 1535)• See the See also:article FORTIFICATION. Human Proportion.—Hierinnen See also:sind begriffen vier See also:Bucher von menschlicher Proportion (Nuremberg, 1582, and Arnheim, 1603). Latin translation: De symetria partium in rectis fermis humanorum corporum libri in latinum conversi, de varietate figurarum, &c. libri ii. (Nuremberg, 1528, 1532 and 1534); (Paris, 1535, 1537, 1557)• See also:French translation (Paris, 1557, Arnheim, 1613, 1614) . Italian translation (Venice, 1591, 1594) ; Portuguese translation (1599) ; Dutch translation (Arnheim, 1622, 1662). The private See also:literary remains of Durer, his diary, letters, &c., were first published, partially in Von Murr's See also:Journal zur Kunstgeschichte (Nuremberg, 1785–1787) ; afterwards in See also:Campe's Reliquien von A. Durer (Nuremberg, 1827) ; again, edited by Thausing, in the Quellenschriften See also:fur Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik (Vienna, 1872), but most completely in See also:Lange and Fuhse's Durers schriftlicher Nachlass (See also:Halle, 1893) ; W. M. See also:Conway's Literary Remains of A. Durer (See also:London, 1889) contains extensive transcripts from the See also:MSS. in the British Museum. The principal remaining literature of the subject will be found in the following books and treatises—Johann Neudorfer, Schreib-und Rechenmeister zu Nurnberg, Nachrichten fiber Kiinstlern und Werkleuten daselbst (Nuremberg, 1547) ; republished in the Vienna Quellenschrift (1875); C. Scheurl, Vita Antonii Kressen (1515, re-printed in the collection of Pirkheimer's works, Frankfort, 161o) ; Wimpheling, See also:Epitome rerum Germanicarum, ch. 68 (Strassburg, 1565) ; See also:Joachim von See also:Sandrart, Deutsche Academie (Nuremberg, 1675) ; Doppelmayr, Historische Nachricht von den niirnbergischen Mathematicis und Kiinstlern (Nuremberg, 1730); C. G. von Murr, Journal our Kunstgeschichte, as above; Adam Bartsch, Le Peintre-Grateur,703 vol. vii. (Vienna, 1808) ; J. P. Passavant, Le Peintre-Graveur, vol. iii. (See also:Leipzig, 1842); J. F. See also:Roth, Leben Albrecht Durers (Leipzig, 1791); Heller, Das Leben und See also:die Werke Albrecht Durers, vol. ii. (See also:Bamberg, 1827—1831); B. See also:Hausmann, Durers Kupferstiche, Radirungen, Holzschnitte und Zeichnungen (See also:Hanover, 1861); R. von Rettberg, Durers Kupferstiche un4 Holzschnitte (Munich, 1876) ; M. Thausing, Durer, Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Kunst (Leipzig, 1876, 2nd ed., 1884), See also:English translation (from the 1st ed. by F. A. See also:Eaton, London, 1882) ; W. See also:Schmidt in Dohme's Kunst und Kiinstler See also:des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Leipzig, 1877) ; 1Euvre de See also:Albert Diirer reproduit et publii See also:par Amand-See also:Durand, texte par Georges Duplessis (Paris, 1877) ; C. Ephrussi, A. Durer et ses dessins (Paris, 1882) ; F. Lippmann, Zeichnungen von A. Durer in Nachbildungen (5 vols. Berlin, 1883–1905) ; A. See also:Springer, Albrecht Durer (Berlin, 1892) ; D. See also:Burckhardt, Durers Aufenthalt in Basel, 1492–1494 (Munich, 1892) ; G. von Terey, A Durers venezianischer Aufenthalt, 1494–1495 (Strassburg, 1892); S. R. Koehler, A Chronological See also:Catalogue of the Engravings, Dry Points and Etchings of A. Durer (New See also:York, 1894) ; L. Cust, A. Durer, a Study of his Life and Works (London, 1897) ; Durer Society's Publications (io vols., 1898–1907), edited by C. See also:Dodgson and S. M. Peartree; H. Knackfuss, Durer (See also:Bielefeld and Leipzig, 6th ed., 1899), English translation, 1900; B. Haendcke, Die Chronologie der Landschaften A. Durers (Strassburg, 1899) ; M. Zucker, Albrecht Durer (Halle, 1899–1900) ; L. Justi, Konstruierte Figuren und Kopfe unter den Werken Albrecht Durers (Leipzig, 1902); A. Pelzer, A. Durer und See also:Friedrich II. von der Pfalz (Strassburg, 1905) ; H. Wolfflin, Die Kunst A. Durers (Munich, 1905); W. Weisbach, Der junge Durer (Leipzig, 1906) ; V. See also:Scherer, A. Diirer (Klassiker der Kunst, iv.), (2nd ed., See also:Stuttgart, 1906). Apart from books, a large and important amount of the literature on Durer is contained in articles scattered through the leading art See also:periodicals of Germany, such as the Jahrbiicher of the Berlin and Vienna museums, Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft, Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst, &c. A comprehensive survey of this literature is afforded by Prof. H. W. See also:Singer's Versuch einer Durer-Bibliographie (Strassburg, 1903) ; articles published more recently will be found completely enumerated in A. See also:Jellinek's Internationale Bibliographie der Kunstwissenschaft (Berlin). (S. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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