Albert Durer

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

Me. AL. DU.

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

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

Luther wrote to Eoban Hesse:

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

Erasmus had some months before written and printed in a treatise on the
right pronunciation of Latin and Greek an eulogy of Duerer. It is not
known whether a copy had reached him before his death; in any case to
most people it came like a funeral oration from the greatest scholar on
the greatest artist north of the Alps. Thausing quotes the following
passage from it:

I have known Duerer's name for a long time as that of the first celebrity
in the art of painting. Some call him the Apelles of our time. But I
think that did Apelles live now, he, as an honourable man, would give
the palm to Duerer. Apelles, it is true, made use of few and unobtrusive
colours, but still he used colours; while Duerer,--admirable as he is,
too, in other respects,--what can he not express with a single
colour--that is to say, with black lines? He can give the effect of
light and shade, brightness, foreground and background. Moreover, he
reproduces _not merely the natural aspect of a thing, but also observes
the laws of perfect symmetry and harmony with regard to the position of
it_. 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 the
whole soul of a man shining through his outward form; nay, even make us
hear his very speech. All this he brings so happily before the eye with
those black lines, that the picture would lose by being clothed in
colour. Is it not more worthy of admiration to achieve without the
winning 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 a
man."

And we learn from his son-in-law, Caspar Penker, that he often spoke of
Duerer 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 and
schools at Nuernberg; and Duerer, the painter, used _also_ to be invited
to dinner with them. Duerer was a man of great shrewdness, and
Melanchthon used to say of him that though he excelled in the art of
painting, it was the least of his accomplishments. Disputes often arose
between Pirkheimer and Duerer on these occasions about the matters
recently discussed, and Pirkheimer used vehemently to oppose Duerer.
Duerer was an excessively subtle disputant, and refuted his adversary's
arguments, just as if he had come fully prepared for the discussion.
Thereupon Pirkheimer, who was rather a choleric man and liable to very
severe attacks of the gout, fired up and burst forth again and again
into such words as these, "What you say cannot be painted." "Nay!"
rejoined Duerer, "but what you advance cannot be put into words or even
figured to the mind." I remember hearing Melanchthon often tell this
story, and in relating it he confessed his astonishment at the ingenuity
and power manifested by a painter in arguing with a man of
Pirkheimer's renown.

Such scenes no doubt took place during the years after Duerer's return
from the Netherlands. Melanchthon also wrote in a letter to George
von Anhalt:

I remember how that great man, distinguished alike by his intellect and
his virtue, Albrecht Duerer the painter, said that as a youth he had
loved bright pictures full of figures, and when considering his own
productions had always admired those with the greatest variety in them.
But as an older man, he had begun to observe nature and reproduce it in
its native forms, and had learned that this simplicity was the greatest
ornament of art. Being unable completely to attain to this ideal, he
said that he was no longer an admirer of his works as heretofore, but
often sighed when he looked at his pictures and thought over his want
of power.

And in another letter he remembers that Duerer would say that in his
youth he had found great pleasure in representing monstrous and unusual
figures, but that in his later years he endeavoured to observe nature,
and to imitate her as closely as possible; experience, however, had
taught him how difficult it was not to err. And Thausing continues:
"Melanchthon speaks even more frequently of how Duerer was pleased with
pictures he had just finished, but when he saw them after a time, was
ashamed of them; and those he had painted with the greatest care
displeased him so much at the end of three years that he could scarcely
look at them without great pain."

And this on his appreciation of Luther's writings:

Albrecht Duerer, painter of Nuernberg, a shrewd man, once said that there
was this difference between the writings of Luther and other
theologians. After reading three or four paragraphs of the first page of
one of Luther's works he could grasp the problem to be worked out in the
whole. This clearness and order of arrangement was, he observed, the
glory of Luther's writings. He used, on the contrary, to say of other
writers that, after reading a whole book through, he had to consider
attentively what idea it was that the author intended to convey.

Lastly, Camerarius, the professor of Greek and Latin in the new school
of Nuremberg, in his Latin translation of Duerer's book on "Human
Proportions," writes thus:

It is not my present purpose to talk about art. My purpose was to speak
somewhat, 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 to
his own country, but to foreign nations also. Full well I know that his
praises need not our trumpetings to the world, since by his excellent
works he is exalted and honoured with undying glory. Yet, as we were
publishing his writings, and an opportunity arose of committing to print
the 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 of
information, learnt partly from the conversations of others and partly
from our own intercourse with him. This will give some indication of his
singular skill and genius as artist and man, and cannot fail of
affording pleasure to the reader. We have heard that our Albrecht was of
Hungarian extraction, but that his forefathers emigrated to Germany. We
can, therefore, have but little to say of his origin and birth. Though
they were honourable, there can be no question but that they gained more
glory from him than he from them.

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

His conversation was marked by so much sweetness and wit, that nothing
displeased his hearers so much as the end of it. Letters, it is true, he
had not cultivated, but the great sciences of Physics and Mathematics,
which are perpetuated by letters, he had almost entirely mastered. He
not 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 his
geometrical treatises, wherein I see nothing omitted, except what he
judged to be beyond the scope of his work. An ardent zeal impelled him
towards the attainment of all virtue in conduct and life, the display of
which caused him to be deservedly held a most excellent man. Yet he was
not of a melancholy severity nor of a repulsive gravity; nay, whatever
conduced to pleasantness and cheerfulness, and was not inconsistent
with honour and rectitude, he cultivated all his life and approved even
in his old age. The works he has left on Gymnastic and Music are of such
character.

But Nature had specially designed him for a painter, and therefore he
embraced the study of that art with all his energies, and was ever
desirous of observing the works and principles of the famous painters of
every land, and of imitating whatever he approved in them. Moreover,
with respect to those studies, he experienced the generosity and won the
favour of the greatest kings and princes, and even of Maximilian himself
and his grandson the Emperor Charles; and he was rewarded by them with
no contemptible salary. But after his hand had, so to speak, attained
its maturity, his sublime and virtue-loving genius became best
discoverable in his works, for his subjects were fine and his treatment
of them noble. You may judge the truth of these statements from his
extant prints in honour of Maximilian, and his memorable astronomical
diagrams, not to mention other works, not one of which but a painter of
any nation or day would be proud to call his own. The nature of a man is
never more certainly and definitely shown than in the works he produces
as the fruit of his art.... What single painter has there ever been who
did not reveal his character in his works? Instead of instances from
ancient history, I shall content myself with examples from our own time.
No one can fail to see that many painters have sought a vulgar celebrity
by immodest pictures. It is not credible that those artists can be
virtuous, whose minds and fingers composed such works. We have also seen
pictures minutely finished and fairly well coloured, wherein, it is
true, the master showed a certain talent and industry; but art was
wanting. Albrecht, therefore, shall we most justly admire as an earnest
guardian of piety and modesty, and as one who showed, by the magnitude
of his pictures, that he was conscious of his own powers, although none
even of his lesser works is to be despised. You will not find in them a
single line carelessly or wrongly drawn, not a single superfluous dot.

What shall I say of the steadiness and exactitude of his hand? You might
swear that rule, square, or compasses had been employed to draw lines,
which he, in fact, drew with the brush, or very often with pencil or
pen, unaided by artificial means, to the great marvel of those who
watched him. Why should I tell how his hand so closely followed the
ideas of his mind that, in a moment, he often dashed upon paper, or, as
painters say, composed, sketches of every kind of thing with pencil or
pen? I see I shall not be believed by my readers when I relate, that
sometimes he would draw separately, not only the different parts of a
composition, but even the different parts of bodies, which, when joined
together, agreed with one another so well that nothing could have fitted
better. In fact this consummate artist's mind endowed with all knowledge
and understanding of the truth and of the agreement of the parts one
with another, governed and guided his hand and bade it trust to itself
without any other aids. With like accuracy he held the brush, wherewith
he drew the smallest things on canvas or wood without sketching them in
beforehand, so that, far from giving ground for blame, they always won
the highest praise. And this was a subject of greatest wonder to most
distinguished painters, who, from their own great experience, could
understand the difficulty of the thing.

I cannot forbear to tell, in this place, the story of what happened
between him and Giovanni Bellini. Bellini had the highest reputation as
a painter at Venice, and indeed throughout all Italy. When Albrecht was
there he easily became intimate with him, and both artists naturally
began to show one another specimens of their skill. Albrecht frankly
admired and made much of all Bellini's works. Bellini also candidly
expressed his admiration of various features of Albrecht's skill, and
particularly the fineness and delicacy with which he drew hairs. It
chanced one day that they were talking about art, and when their
conversation was done Bellini said: "Will you be so kind, Albrecht, as
to gratify a friend in a small matter?" "You shall soon see," says
Albrecht, "if you will ask of me anything I can do for you." Then says
Bellini: "I want you to make me a present of one of the brushes with
which you draw hairs." Duerer at once produced several, just like other
brushes, and, in fact, of the kind Bellini himself used, and told him to
choose those he liked best, or to take them all if he would. But
Bellini, thinking he was misunderstood, said: "No, I don't mean these,
but the ones with which you draw several hairs with one stroke; they
must be rather spread out and more divided, otherwise in a long sweep
such regularity of curvature and distance could not be preserved." "I
use no other than these," says Albrecht, "and to prove it, you may watch
me." Then, taking up one of the same brushes, he drew some very long
wavy tresses, such as women generally wear, in the most regular order
and symmetry. Bellini looked on wondering, and afterwards confessed to
many that no human being could have convinced him by report of the truth
of that which he had seen with his own eyes.

A similar tribute was given him, with conspicuous candour, by Andrea
Mantegna, who became famous at Mantua by reducing painting to some
severity of law--a fame which he was the first to merit, by digging up
broken and scattered statues, and setting them up as examples of art. It
is true all his work is hard and stiff, inasmuch as his hand was not
trained to follow the perception and nimbleness of his mind; still it is
held that there is nothing better or more perfect in art. While Andrea
was lying ill at Mantua he heard that Albrecht was in Italy, and had him
summoned to his side at once, in order that he might fortify his
(Albrecht's) facility and certainty of hand with scientific knowledge
and principles. For Andrea often lamented in conversation with his
friends that Albrecht's facility in drawing had not been granted to him
nor his learning to Albrecht. On receiving the message Albrecht, leaving
all other engagements, prepared for the journey without delay. But
before he could reach Mantua Andrea was dead, and Duerer used to say that
this was the saddest event in all his life; for, high as Albrecht stood,
his great and lofty mind was ever striving after something yet
above him.

Almost with awe have we gazed upon the bearded face of the man, drawn by
himself, in the manner we have described, with the brush on the canvas
and without any previous sketch. The locks of the beard are almost a
cubit long, and so exquisitely and cleverly drawn, at such regular
distances and in so exact a manner, that the better any one understands
art, the more he would admire it, and the more certain would he deem it
that in fashioning these locks the hand had employed artificial aid.

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

All these perfections he attained by reducing mere practice to art and
method, in a way new at least to German painters. With Albrecht all was
ready, certain, and at hand, because he had brought painting into the
fixed track of rule and recalled it to scientific principles; without
which, as Cicero said, though some things may be well done by help of
nature, yet they cannot always be ready to hand, because they are done
by chance. He first worked his principles out for his own use;
afterwards with his generous and open nature he attempted to explain
them in books, written to the illustrious and most learned Wilibald
Pirkheimer. And he dedicated them to him in a most elegant letter which
we have not translated, because we felt it to be beyond our power to
render it into Latin without, so to speak, disfiguring its natural
countenance. But before he could complete and publish the books, as he
had hoped, he was carried off by death--a death, calm indeed and
enviable, but in our view premature. If there was anything at all in
that 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 work
which he had begun, but his friends completed the task from his own
manuscript. About this, in the next place, and about our own version, we
shall say a few words. The work, being founded on a sort of geometrical
system, is unpolished and devoid of literary style; so it seems rather
rugged. But that is easily forgiven in consideration of the excellence
of the matter. He requested me himself, only a few days before his
death, to translate it into Latin while he should correct it; and I
willingly turned my attention and studies to the work. But death, which
takes everything, took from him his power of supervision and correction.
His friends subsequently, after publishing the work, prevailed on me, by
their claims rather than their requests, to undertake the Latin
translation, and to complete after his death the task Duerer had laid
upon me in his life.

If I find that my industry and devotion in this matter meet with my
readers' approval, I shall be encouraged to translate into Latin the
rest of Albrecht's treatise on painting, a work at once more finished
and more laborious than the present. Moreover, his writings on other
subjects will also be looked for, his Geometries and Tichismatics, in
which he explained the fortification of towns according to the system of
the present day. These, however, appear to be all the subjects on which
he wrote books. As to the promise, which I hear certain persons are
making in conversation or in writing, to publish a book by Duerer on the
symmetry of the parts of the horse, I cannot but wonder from what
source they will obtain after his death what he never completed during
his life. Although I am well aware that Albrecht had begun to
investigate the law of truth in this matter too, and had made a certain
number of measurements, I also know that he lost all he had done through
the treachery of certain persons, by whose means it came about that the
author's notes were stolen, so that he never cared to begin the work
afresh. He had a suspicion, or rather a certainty, as to the source
whence came the drones who had invaded his store; but the great man
preferred to hide his knowledge, to his own loss and pain, rather than
to lose sight of generosity and kindness in the pursuit of his enemies.
We shall not, therefore, suffer anything that may appear to be
attributed to Albrecht's authorship, unworthy as it must evidently be of
so 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 I
do not care now to waste words, though the author, unless I am much
mistaken, has not once repented of his publication. But these rules
above-mentioned, which are easily proved to be Albrecht's, not only
because he prepared them himself for publication, but also because of
their own excellence, you will, I think, obtain considerably better here
than from other sources. Not that they are more finished in point of
erudition and learning in the present book than elsewhere, but because
those who interpret them in the author's own workshop, among the
expansions and corrections of his autograph manuscripts and the
variations of his different copies, stand in the light about many
points, which must of necessity seem obscure to others, however learned
they may be.

This will be seen in the case of the book on Geometry, which a learned
man has in hand and will shortly publish in a more elaborate form, and
with more explanation of certain points than it possesses at present.
For it will be increased by no less than twenty-six [Greek: schemata]
(figures) and countless corrections or improvements of earlier editions.
The author himself on rereading had thus improved and amplified what had
already 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 the
letterpress and figures; and we shall take care that it is published at
the earliest possible date in the German language, in which the author
wrote it. It is only to be expected that this will be welcome to the
public, who will thus return thanks for the author's burning desire to
do something by his discoveries for the public good, and for our own
labour and eagerness in publishing to all nations what appears to be
written only for one.

Though these testimonies may often seem either trifling, or obscured by
the pedantic affectation of the writers, they, like the signatures of
well-respected men, endorse the impression produced by Duerer's works and
writings. As we study the character of Duerer's creative gift in relation
to his works, several of the phrases used by Erasmus, Camerarius, and
Melanchthon should take added significance, being probably remembered
from conversations with the great artist himself.[72] Duerer, like
Luther, was depressed and distressed at the course the Reformation had
run; 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 human
effort in his own exhaustion.

FOOTNOTES:

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

[Footnote 71: "_Caput argutum_". The phrase is from Virgil's description
of the thorough-bred horse (_Georg. iii_). The above passage is
introduced (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 me
most reminiscent of Duerer's ideas are printed in italics.]

PART III

DUeRER AS A CREATOR

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

DUeRER'S PICTURES

I

Duerer's paintings have suffered more by the malignity of fortune than
any of his other works. Several have disappeared entirely, and several
are 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 no
one would believe it possible for one man to do in the time," and are
perhaps more the work of assistants than of the master. Others, again,
have since been repainted, more or less disastrously. Yet enough remain
to show us that Duerer was not a painter born, in the sense that Titian
and Correggio or Rembrandt and Rubens are; nay, not even in the sense
that a Jan Van Eyck or a Mantegna is. Mantegna is certainly the painter
with whom Duerer has most affinity, and whose method of employing pigment
is least removed from his; but Mantegna is a born colourist--a man whose
eye for colour is like a musician's ear for melody--while Duerer is at
best with difficulty able to avoid glaring discords, and, if we are to
judge by the "ordinary pictures," did not avoid them. Again, Mantegna is
not so dependent on line as Duerer--nearly the whole of whose surface is
produced by hatching with the brush point. These facts may, perhaps,
account for the large portion of Duerer's time devoted to engraving. As
an engraver he early found a style for himself, which he continued to
develop to the end of his life. As a painter he was for ever
experimenting, influenced now by Jacopo de' Barbari, again by Bellini
and the pictures he saw at Venice, and yet again by those he saw in the
Netherlands. As Velasquez, after each of his journeys to Italy, returns
to attempt a mythological picture in the grand style, so Duerer turns to
painting after his return from Venice or from the Netherlands; and his
pictures divide themselves into three groups: those painted after or
during his _Wanderjahre_ and before he went to Venice in 1505, those
painted there and during the next five years after his return, and those
painted in the Netherlands or commenced immediately on his
return thence.

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