Louis Joseph Vance - "The Brass Bowl"

William Lyon Phelps - "Robert Browning: How To Know Him"

Herman Gastrell Seely - "A Son of the City"

Sir Edwin Durning Lawrence - "Bacon is Shake Speare"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Albert Durer

T >> T. Sturge Moore >> Albert Durer




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




CHAPTER II

DUeRER'S PORTRAITS


I

If Duerer's pictures are as a whole the least satisfactory section of his
work, in his portraits he makes us abundant amends for the time he might
otherwise have been reproached for wasting to obtain a vain mastery over
brushes and pigment.

Unfortunately it is probable that many even of these have been lost or
destroyed, while of his most interesting sitters we have nothing but
drawings. He did not paint his friend, the boisterous and learned
Pirkheimer; and what would we not give for a painted portrait of
Erasmus, or a portrait of Kratzer, the astronomer royal, to compare with
the two masterpieces by Holbein in the Louvre? Even the posthumous
portrait of his Imperial patron Maximilian is less interesting than the
drawings from which it was done, the eccentric sitter not having the
time to spare for so sensible a monument.

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


II

However, Duerer had one sitter who was perhaps the most beautiful of all
the sons of men, whose features combined in an equal measure nobleness
of character, intellectual intensity and physical beauty; and, finding
him also most patient and accessible, he painted him frequently. The two
earliest portraits of himself are the drawings which show him at the
ages of thirteen and nineteen(?) respectively (see illustration). Then,
as a young man with a sprouting chin, we have the picture till recently
at Leipzig of which Goethe's enthusiastic description has already been
quoted (p. 62). It is probable that neither Titian nor Holbein could
have shown at so early an age a portrait so admirably conceived and
executed. It is a masterpiece, even now that the inevitable improvements
which those who lack all relish of genius rarely lack the opportunity,
never the inclination, to add to a masterpiece, have confused the
drawing of the eyes, and reduced the bloom and delicacy that the
features traced by a master hand, even when they become an almost
complete wreck, often retain; for time and fortune are not so
conscientiously destructive as the imbecility of the incapable. Next we
have a portrait of Duerer when only five years older, in perfect
preservation,--that in the Prado at Madrid. This charming picture must
certainly have drawn a sonnet from the Shakespeare who wrote _Love's
Labour Lost_, could he have seen it. For it presents a young dandy, the
delicacy and sensitiveness of whose features seem to demand and warrant
the butterfly-like display of the white and black costume hemmed with
gold, 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 a
congregation of self-painted artists, it does all but justice to the
most beautiful of them all. For fineness of touch the original has never
been surpassed by any hand of European or even Chinese master. Next
there are the dapper little full-length portraits which Duerer inserted
in his chief paintings. He stands beside his friend Pirkheimer at the
back of the adoring crowd in the _Feast of the Roses_, and again in the
midst of the mountain slope, where on all sides of them the ten thousand
saints suffer martyrdom. Duerer stands alone beside an inscription in a
gentle pastoral landscape beneath the vision of the Virgin's Assumption
seen over the heads of the Apostles, who gaze up in rapture; and again
he is alone beside a broad peaceful river beneath the vision of the Holy
Trinity and All Saints. I know of no parallel to these little portraits.
Rembrandt and Botticelli and many others have introduced portraits of
themselves into religious pictures, but always in disguise, as a
personage in the crowd or an actor in the scene. Only the master who was
really most exceptional for his good looks, has had the kindness, in
spite of every incongruity, to present himself before us on all
important occasions, like the court beauty in whom it is charity rather
than vanity to appear in public. It is expected that the very beautiful
be gracious thus. Emerson tells us that two centuries ago the Town
Council of Montpelier passed a law to constrain two beautiful sisters to
sit for a certain time on their balcony every other day, that all might
enjoy the sight of what was most beautiful in their town. It was one of
the most gracious traits of Jeanne d'Arc's character that she liked to
wear beautiful clothes, because it pleased the poor people to see her
thus. And Palm Sunday commemorates another historical example of such
grace and truth. Duerer's face had a striking resemblance to the
traditional type for Jesus, adding to it just that element of individual
peculiarity, the absence of which makes it ever liable to appear a
little vacant and unconvincing. The perception of this would seem to
have dictated the general arrangement of Duerer's crowning portrait of
himself, that at Munich dated 1500 (see illus.), "Before which" (Mr.
Ricketts writes in his recently published volume on the Prado) "one
forgets all other portraits whatsoever, in the sense that this perfect
realisation of one of the world's greatest men is equal to the
occasion." The most exhaustive visual power and executive capacity meet
in this picture, which would seem to have traversed the many perils to
which it has been exposed without really suffering so much as their
enumeration makes one expect. Thausing tells us:

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

[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl_ "I, Albert Duerer of Nuremberg, painted my
own 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 by
varnish and glazes it has been reduced to its present harmonious
condition. The hair is certainly much darker than the other portraits
would have led one to expect, and the almost walnut brown of the general
colour scheme is unique in Duerer's work. However, if some such
transmogrification has been effected, it is marvellous that it should
have obliterated so little of the inimitable handiwork of the master.
Thausing considered the date (1500), monogram and inscription on the
back to be forgeries, and it certainly looks as if it ought to come
nearer to the portrait in the _Feast of the Rose Garlands_ (1506) than
to that at Madrid (1498). A genuine scalloped tablet is faintly visible
under the dark glazes which cover the background; and this, no doubt,
bears the original inscription and date. What may not have happened to a
picture after or before it left the artist's studio? Critics are too
quick to determine that such changes have been introduced by others. In
this case we must remember how experimental Duerer was, even with regard
to his engravings on metal. He tries iron plates and etching, and
finally settles on a method of commencing with etching and finishing
with the burin; and this was in a medium in which he soon found himself
at home. But with painting he was vastly more experimental, and never
satisfied with his results, as he told Melanchthon (see p. 187). Then we
must remember that this picture probably was during Duerer's lifetime, if
not in his own possession, at least never out of his reach; and no doubt
he was aware that it was the grandest and most perfectly finished of all
his portraits--therefore, as he came more and more, especially after his
visit to the Netherlands, to desire and seek after simplicity, he may
himself have added the dark glazes. If the original inscription
contained a dedication to Pirkheimer or some other notable Nuremberger,
there was every reason for the artist who stole the picture to
obliterate this and add a new one: or this may have been done when it
became the property of the town, for those who sold it may have wished
that it should not be known that it might have been an heirloom in their
family. Infinite are the possibilities, those only decide in such cases
who have a personal motive for doing so; "la rage de conclure" (as
Flaubert 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" ALBERT
DUeRER THE ELDER, 1497 National Gallery]


III

Though fearing that it will appear but tedious, I will now attempt
briefly to describe in succession the remaining master portraits which
we owe to Duerer, and the effect that each produces. It is by these works
and not by his creative pictures that his ranks among the greatest names
of painting. These might be compared with the very finest portraits by
Raphael and Holbein, and the precedence would remain a question of
personal predilection; since nothing reasoned, no distinguishable
superiority over Duerer in vision or execution could be urged for either.
Rather, if mere capacity were regarded, he must have the palm; nor did
either of his compeers light upon a happier subject than was Duerer's
when he represented himself; nor did they achieve nobler designs. In
effect upon our emotions and sensations, these portraits may compete
with the masterpieces of Titian and Rembrandt, though the method of
expression is in their case too different to render comparison possible.
Whatever in the glow of light, in the power of shadow, to envelop and
enhance the features portrayed, is theirs and not his, his superiority
of searching insight, united with its equivalent of unique facility in
definition, seems more than to outweigh. Before he left for Venice,
besides the renderings of himself already mentioned, Duerer had painted
his father twice, in 1494 and in 1497. The latter was the pair to and
compeer of his own portrait at Madrid,; and, hitherto unknown, was lent
last year by Lord Northampton to the Royal Academy, and has since
been bought for the National Gallery. This beautiful work is unique even
among the works of the master, and is not so much the worse for
repainting as some make out. The majority of Duerer's portraits stand
alone. In each the Esthetic problem has been approached and solved in a
strikingly different manner. This picture and its fellow, the portrait
of the painter at Madrid, the _Oswolt Krel_, the portrait of a lady seen
against the sea at Berlin, the _Wolgemut_, and Duerer's own portrait at
Munich, though seen by the same absorbing eyes, are rendered each in
quite a different manner. No man has ever been better gifted for
portraying a likeness than Duerer; but the absence of a native
comprehension of pigment made him ever restless, and it might be
possible to maintain that each of these pictures presented us with a
differing strategy to enforce pigment, to subserve the purposes of a
draughtsman. Still this would seem to imply a greater sacrifice of ease
and 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, Duerer
has developed a shaken brushline, admirably adapted to suggest the
wrinkled features of an old man, but in complete contrast to the rapid
sweep of the caligraphic work in the _Oswolt Krel_; and it is to be
noticed how in both pictures the touch seems to have been invented to
facilitate the rendering of the peculiar curves and lines of the
sitter's features, and further variations of it developed to express the
draperies and other component parts of the picture. It is this
inventiveness in handling which most distinguishes Duerer from painters
like Raphael and Holbein, and makes his work comparable with the
masterpieces of Rembrandt and Titian, in spite of the extreme
opposition in aspect between their work and his.

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

The vivid _Oswolt Krel_ at Munich shows the peculiarity of Duerer's
caligraphic touch better than perhaps any other of his portraits. The
finish is not carried so far as in the Madrid portrait of himself, where
even the texture of the gloves has been softened by touches of the
thumb, and the absence of these extra refinements leaves it the most
spontaneous and vigorously bold of all Duerer's paintings. The
concentrated energy of the sitter's features demanded such a treatment;
he seems to burn with the inconsiderate atheism of a Marlowe. Young, and
less surprised than indignant to be alone awake in a sleepy and bigoted
world, he seems convinced of a mission to chastise, _even_ to scandalise
his easy-going neighbours. Let us hope he met with better luck than the
Marlowes, Shelleys, and Rimbauds, whose tragedies we have read; for one
can 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 Berlin
Gallery]

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

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


IV

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

Not improbably Duerer may have painted separate portraits of nearly all
the members of the German Guild at Venice who appear in the _Rose
Garlands_. In any case much of his work during his stay there has
disappeared. It was here that he painted that beautiful head of a woman
(No. 557 G in the Berlin Gallery) with soft, almost Leonardesque
shadows, seen against the luminous hazy sea and sky, which remains
absolutely unique in method and effect among his works, and makes one
ask oneself unanswerable questions as to what might not have been the
result if he could but have brought himself to accept the offered
citizenship and salary, and stop on at Venice. A Duerer, not only
secluded from Luther and his troubling denunciations, but living to see
Titian and Giorgione's early masterpieces, perhaps forming friendships
with them, and later visiting Rome, standing in the Sistine Chapel,
seated in the Stanze between the School of Athens and the Disputa! I at
least cannot console myself for these missed opportunities, as so many
of his critics and biographers have done, by saying that doubtless had
he stayed he would have been spoiled like those second-class German and
Dutch painters, for whom the siren art of Italy proved a baneful
influence. One could almost weep to think of what has been probably lost
to the world because Duerer could not bring himself to stay on at Venice.
It _was_ here he painted the tiny panel representing the head of a girl
in 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 triumphs
that were reserved for Italians in the treatment of similar subjects.

After his return the influence of Venetian methods gradually waned, till
we find in the masterly and refined portrait of _Wolgemut_ (1516) (see
illustration); something of a return to the caligraphic method so
noticeable in the _Oswolt Krel_. About the same time Duerer recommenced
painting in tempera in a manner resembling the early Dresden _Madonna_
and the _Hercules_, as we see by the rather unpleasant heads of Apostles
in the Uffizi and the tine one of an old man in a vermilion cap in the
Louvre, &c. &c.

[Illustration: _Bruckmann_--"Albrecht Duerer took this likeness of his
master, 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 Gallery
at Madrid--(By permission _of Messrs. Braun, Clement & Co., Dornach
(Alsace), Paris and New York_)]


V

On his arrival at Antwerp in 1521 Duerer commenced the third and last
group of master-portraits; foremost is the superb head and bust at
Madrid, supposed to represent Hans Imhof, a patrician of Duerer's native
town and his banker while at Antwerp; of the same date are the
triumphant renderings of the grave and youthful Bernard van Orley (at
Dresden) and that of a middle-aged man--lost for the National Gallery,
and now in the possession of Mrs. Gardner, of Boston. All three were
probably painted at Antwerp.

It may be that the portrait of Imhof and the report of the honours and
commissions showered on their painter while in the Netherlands, woke the
Nuremberg Councillors up, for we have portraits of three of them dated
1526--Jacob Muffel, Hieronymus Holzschuher, (both in the Royal Gallery,
Berlin,) and the eccentric and unpleasing medallion representing
Johannes Kleeberger, at Vienna. With the exception of this last, this
group is composed of masterpieces absolutely unrivalled for intensity
and dignity of power. Van Eyck painted with inhuman indifference a few
ugly grotesque but otherwise uninteresting people. All but a very few of
Holbein's best portraits pale before these instances of searching
insight; and, north of the Alps at least, there are no others which can
be compared to them. The _Hans Imhof_ shows a shrewd and forbidding
schemer for gain on a large scale--a face which produces the impression
of a trap or closed strong box, but, being so alert and intelligent,
seems to demand some sort of commiseration for the constraint put upon
its humanity in the creation of a master, a tyrant over himself first
and afterwards over an ever-widening circle of others. The unknown
master who is represented in Mrs. Gardner's beautiful picture is less
forbidding, though not less patently a moulder of destiny. _Jacob
Muffel_ has a more open face, a more serene gaze; but his mouth too has
the firmness acquired by those who live always in the presence of
enemies, or are at least aware that "a little folding of the hands" may
be fatal to all their most cherished purposes. The last of these masters
of themselves and of their fortunes in hazardous and change-fraught
times is _Hieronymus Holzschuher_, Duerer's friend. Only less felicitous
because less harmonious in colour than the three former, this vivacious
portrait of a ruddy, jovial, and white-haired patrician seen against a
bright blue background might produce the effect of a Father Christmas,
were it not for the resolute mouth and the puissant side-glance of the
eyes. Bernard van Orley, the only youthful person immortalised in this
group, has a gentle, responsible air which his features are a little too
heavy to enhance.

I have now mentioned the chief of his portraits, which are the best of
his painting, and by which he ranks for the directness and power of his
workmanship and of his visual analysis in the company of the very
greatest. Raphael and Holbein have alone produced portraits which, as
they can be compared to Duerer's, might also be held to rival them;
Titian, Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Reynolds have done as
splendidly, but the material they used and the aims they set themselves
were too different to make a comparison serviceable. These men are
pre-eminent among those who have produced portraits which, while
unsurpassed for technical excellences, present to us individuals whose
beauty or the character it expresses are equally exceptional.

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




CHAPTER III

DUeRER'S DRAWINGS


I

Perhaps Duerer is more felicitous as a draughtsman than in any other
branch of art. The power of nearly all first-rate artists is more wholly
live and effective in their drawings than in elaborated works. Duerer
himself says:

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

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

In the first chapter of this work I said that the standard in works of
art is not truth but sincerity; that if the artist tells us what he
feels to be beautiful, it does not matter how much or how little
comparison it will bear with the actual objects represented. And from
this fact, that sincerity not truth is of prime importance in matters of
expression, results the strange truth that Duerer says will be
recognised by powerful artists alone (see page 227). Any one who
recognises how often the sketches and roughs of artists, especially of
those who are in a peculiar degree creators, excel their finished works
in those points which are the distinctive excellences of such men, will
grant this at once. Only to turn to the sketch (inscribed _Memento Mei
1505_) of _Death_ on horseback with a scythe, or the pen-portrait of
Duerer leaning on his hand, will be enough to convince those who alone
can be convinced on these points. For any who need to explain to
themselves the character of such sketches--as the authoress of a recent
little book on Duerer does that of the pen drawing "in which the boy's
chin rests on his hand" by telling us that "it is unfinished and was
evidently discarded as a failure,"--any who must be at such pains in a
case of this sort is one of those who can never understand wherein the
great power of a work of art resides. Such people may get great pleasure
from works of art; only I am content to remain convinced that the
pleasure they get has no kind of kinship with that which I myself
obtain, or that which the greatest artists most constantly seek to give.
This marvellous portrait of himself as a lad of from seventeen to
nineteen years of age is just one of those things "roughly and rudely
done," of which Duerer speaks. There is probably no parallel to it for
mastery 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 than
slower and longer labours, from which it is difficult to ward all
duplicity 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 avoidance
of certain sensual subjects and seductive intentions.) It is only
poverty of imagination which taboos subject-matter, and lack of charity
that believes there are themes which cannot be treated with any but
ignoble intentions. But the virtue in a spontaneous drawing is akin to
that single devotion to whatever is best, which true purity is; as the
refinement of economy which results in the finished work is akin to that
delicate repugnance to all waste, which is true chastity. A sketch by
Rembrandt of a naked servant girl on a bed is as "simple as the infancy
of truth"--as single in intention. A Greek statue of a raimentless
Apollo is pre-eminently chaste. But it does not follow that Rembrandt
was in his life eminently pure, or the Greek sculptor signal for
chastity. Drawings rapidly executed have often a lyrical, rapturous,
exultant purity, and are for that reason, to those whose eyes are
blinded neither by prejudice nor by misfortune, as captivating as are
healthy, gleeful children to those whose hearts are free. And while the
joy that a child's glee gives is for a time, that which a drawing gives
may well be for ever.

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