Albert Durer

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THAUSING'S "Albert Duerer," vol. ii., p. 318.

I

The idea of a canon for human proportions has proved a great
stumbling-block for so-called classical or academic artists. It is
usually taken to mean an absolutely right or harmonious proportion, any
deviation from which cannot fail to result in a diminution of beauty.
According to their thoroughness, the devotees of this idea seek to
arrive at such a scale of proportions for a varying number of different
ages in either sex; often even modifying this again for diverse types,
as tall or short, fat or lean, dark or blonde, but allowing no excessive
variation for these causes; so that abnormally tall people and dwarfs
are not considered. This is, I take it, what the great artist Albert
Duerer is generally taken to have been aiming at in his books on
proportion. It will not be difficult, I think, to show that Duerer had
quite a different idea of what a canon of proportion should be, and how
it should be applied. And certainly, had it been possible to study Greek
practice more closely, and in a larger number of examples, when this
idea (supposed to be drawn from that source) was chiefly mooted, a very
different notion of the canon of proportion would have been forced on
the most academical of theorists. Duerer's great superiority over such
academical masters is, that his idea of a canon of proportion and its
use agrees far better with what was apparently Greek practice.

Any one who has followed at all the interesting attempts made by
Professor Furtwaengler and others to group together, by attention to the
measurements of the different parts of the figure, works belonging to
the different masters, schools, and centres, will have perceived that he
is led to assume a traditional canon of proportion from which a master
deviates slightly in the direction of some bias of his own mind towards
closer knit or more slim figures; such variations being in the earlier
stages very slight. Again, it is supposed that from the canon followed
by a master, different pupils may branch off in opposite directions
according to the leanings of their personal sentiment for beauty. The
conception of these ramifications has at least created the hope that
critics may follow them through a great number of complications, since
a master may modify his canon--after certain pupils have already struck
out for themselves, and new pupils may start from his modified canon;
and so on into an infinite criss-cross of branches, as any sculptor may
be influenced to modify his canon by his fellows or by the masters of
other schools whose work he comes across later. In any case, this main
fact arises, that the canon appears as what the artist deviated from,
not what he abided by: and any one who has any feeling for the infinite
nicety of the results obtained by Greek sculptors will easily apprehend
that each masterpiece established a new and slightly different canon,
and was then in the position to be in its turn again deviated from, as
Flaubert says:

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

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

II

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

The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded stood,
before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the
spectator's mind; it stood in his memory as a group of statuary, faintly
seen, at the end of a long dark vista. Then came the poet, embodying
outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment
capriciously thrown in. Stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded; the
light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the
riveted gaze of the spectator; until at last, when the final words were
spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of
immortal beauty.

This passage from Matthew Arnold's deservedly famous preface well
emphasises one advantage that a tradition of subject and treatment gave
to the Greek poet as to the Greek sculptor: the economy of means it made
possible, "not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown
in,"--since every deviation from, every addition to, the traditional
story and treatment, was immediately appreciated by an audience
thoroughly conversant with that tradition, and often with several
previous masterpieces treating it. By merely leaving out an incident, or
omitting to appeal to a sentiment, a Greek tragedian could flood his
whole work with a new significance. So that the temptation to be
eccentric, the temptation to hit too hard or at random because he was
not sure of exactly where the mind stood that he would impress, did not
exist in anything like the same degree for him as it did for Shakespeare
and Michael Angelo as it does for romantic and origina natures to-day.
The absence of a sufficient body of traditional culture belonging to
every educated person tends always to force the artist to commence by
teaching the alphabet to his public. As Coleridge so justly remarked in
the case of Wordsworth: "He had, like all great artists, to create the
taste by which he was to be relished, to teach the art by which he was
to be seen and judged." All great artists no doubt have to do this, but
the modern artist is in the position of the Israelite who was bidden not
only to make bricks, but to find himself in stubble and straw, as
compared with a Greek who could appeal to traditional conceptions with
certainty. Dr. Verrall is no doubt right when he says:

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

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

"The story of an Athenian tragedy is never completely told; it is
implied, or, to repeat the expression used above, it is illustrated by a
selected scene or scenes. And the further we go back the truer this is,"
continues Dr. Verrall; and the same was doubtless true of sculpture and
painting. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance or advantage
of this fact to the artist. For religious art, for art that appeals to
the sum and total of a man's experience of beauty in life, a public
cultivated in this sense is a necessity. Giotto and Fra Angelico enjoyed
this almost to the same degree as AEschylus or Phidias; Michael Angelo
and the great artists of the Renascence generally enjoyed it in a very
great degree, and reaped an advantage comparable to that which Euripides
and his contemporaries and immediate successors enjoyed. The tradition
enabled such an artist to impress by means of subtleties, niceties, and
refinements, instead of forcing him to attempt always to more or less
seduce, astonish or overawe; strong measures which grow almost
necessarily into bad habits, and end by perverting the taste they
created. This, it has often been remarked, was the case even with
Michael Angelo, even with Shakespeare. Yet nowadays, to enable a man to
remark this, exceptional culture is required.

III

This idea of the use of a canon may be illustrated in many ways; for,
like all notions which resume actual experiences, it will be found
applicable in many spheres. Thus, on the subject of verse, the eternal
quarrel between the poet and the pedant is, that for the first the rules
of prosody and rhyme are only useful in so far as they make the licenses
he takes appreciable at their just value; while for the pedant such
licenses ever anew seem to imply ignorance of the rule or incapacity to
follow it,--an absurd mistake, since the power to create and impress has
little to do with the means employed; and if a man builds up for himself
a barrier of foregone conclusions about the exact manner in which alone
he will allow himself to be deeply impressed, it is very certain he will
have few save painful impressions. Or take another illustration--an
artist the other day told me that he had noticed that one could almost
always trace a faintly ruled vertical line on the paper which the
greatest of all modern draughtsmen used. Ingres, then, with all his
freedom, vivacity, and accuracy of control over the point he employed to
draw with, still found it useful to have a straight line ruled on his
paper as a student does, and may often even have resorted to the
plumb-line. It enabled his eye to test the subtlest deviations in the
other lines with which he was creating the balance, swing or stability
of a figure. Rules of art are, like this straight line, dead and
powerless in themselves: they help both creator and lover to follow and
appreciate the infinite freedom and subtlety of the living work. The
same thing might be illustrated with regard to manners; a fine standard
of social address and receptivity must be established before the
varieties and subtleties of those whose genius creates beautiful
relations can be appreciated at their full value in their full variety.
This dead law must be buried in everybody's mind and heart before they
can rise to that conscious freedom which is opposite to the freedom of
the wild animals, who never know why they do, nor appreciate how it is
done; neither are they able to rejoice in the address of others; much
less can they relish the infinite refinements of exhilarating
apprehension, which make of laughter, tears, speech, silence, nearness
and distance, a music which holds the enraptured soul in ecstasy; which
created and constantly renews the hope of Heaven. And what blacker
minister of a more sterile hell than the social pedant who only knows
the rule, and mistakes grace and delicacy, frankness and generosity, for
more or less grave infractions of it? But the happy critic, free from
any personal knowledge of what creation means, or what aids are likely
to forward it, is for ever in such a hurry to correct great creators
like Leonardo, Duerer, or Hokusai, that he fails to understand them; and
when he has caught them saying, "This is how anger or despair is
expressed," calmly smiles in his superiority and says,

"He had a scientific law for putting a battle on to canvas, one
condition of which was that 'there must not be a level spot which is
not trampled with gore.' But Leonardo did no harm; his canon was based
on literary rather than artistic interests."

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

IV

Now it will easily be seen that the causes which shape an art tradition
may often be independent of, and foreign to, the will that creates
beautiful objects. Religious superstition or formalism may often hem the
artist in, and hamper his will in every direction; though it is not
wholly accidental that the Greeks had a religion the spirit of which
tended always to defeat the conservatism and bigotry of its priests. So
that their formalism, instead of frustrating or warping the growth of
their art tradition, merely served as a check that may well seem to have
been exactly proportioned to its need; preventing the weakness or
rankness of over rapid growth such as detracts from the art of the
Renascence, and at the same time causing no vital injury. The spirit of
the race deserved and created and was again in turn recreated by
its religion.

Since it is generally recognised that too much freedom is not good for
growing life, I think that almost everybody must at this stage have
become aware of how immensely stupid the academical idea of a canon
appears besides this idea. How suitable both to life and the desire for
perfection the Greek practice was! How theologically dense the
unprogressive inflexibility of the academical practitioner! And now let
us hear Duerer.

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

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

Or, as Duerer says in another place, "difference such as maketh a thing
fair or foul."

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

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

It is not to be wondered at that a skilful master beholdeth manifold
differences of figure, all of which he might make if he had time enough,
but which, for lack of time, he is forced to pass by. For such chances
come very often to artists, and their imaginations also are full of
figures which it were possible for them to make. Wherefore, if to live
many hundred years were granted unto a man who had skill in the use of
such art and were thereto accustomed, he would (through the power which
God hath granted unto men) have wherewith daily to mould and make many
new figures of men and other creatures, which none had before seen nor
imagined. God, therefore, in such and other ways granteth great power
unto artistic men.

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

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

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

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

Any one who leads this carefully cannot fail to see that it is not only
that Duerer is not "desirous of laying down rules applicable to all
cases," or even of "proposing a definite canon for the relative
proportions of the human body," as Thausing indeed points out (p. 305,
v. 11): but that he does not conceive the proportions he gives as even
approximately capable of these functions; and considers it indeed the
very nature and special use of a canon of proportions to be wilfully
deviated from, pointing out that, though the deviations of which he is
speaking are slight and subtle, they are not to be confused with the
accidental ones that can but appear even in work done by mechanical
processes. Rather they are such variation as a man "specially intendeth,
and which standeth in his will;" and again, "such a difference as maketh
a thing fair or foul;" for the use of these normal proportions is that
they may enable an artist to deviate from the normal without the
proportions he chooses having the air of monstrosities or mistakes or
negligences. He does not insist that either of the scales he gives is
the best that could be, even for this purpose, but that they are
sufficiently good to be used; and he would have marvelled at the wonder
that has been caused in innocent critical minds that in his own work he
adhered to them so little. He never intended them to be adhered to.

V

It may be objected that Duerer certainly sometimes thought of a Canon of
Proportion as a perfect rule, because he wrote on a MS. page as
follows:--

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

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

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

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

The beauty of form which he held had been Adam's, and which was now
parcelled out among his vast progeny in various amounts as a consequence
of his fall--this beauty of form doubtless Duerer considered it part of
an artist's business to recollect and reveal in his work. This beauty is
an ideal, and his canon (or rather canons) were intended as means to
help the artist to approach towards the realisation of that ideal. It is
obvious also that a man occupied in comparing the proportions of those
whom he considers to be exceptionally beautiful will develop and feed
his power of imagining beautifully proportioned figures. It would be
futile to deny that this is very much what took place in the evolution
of Greek statues, or that such works are perhaps of all others the most
central and satisfying to the human spirit. The sentences that precede
that quoted by Sir Martin are Greek in tendency.

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

And then follows the passage quoted by Sir Martin Conway (see p. 289).
It is obvious that, joined with the two preceding sentences, this
passage can in no way be made to serve the academical practitioner, as
it seems to when taken alone. In the same way, the sentence printed in
italics in the above quotation, if isolated, would certainly seem to
serve the scientific practitioners and their slavish realism, though in
connection with those that follow this is no longer possible. Duerer
regards nature as providing raw material for a creation which may not
tally exactly with any individual natural object. This was the Greek
artists' idea of the serviceableness of nature, as revealed both by
their practice and by such traditions as that concerning Zeuxis and his
five beautiful models for the figure of Venus. But Duerer does not
confine the use of his canons even to this aim, but clearly perceived
their utility in regard to quite other aims, as is shown by the passage
beginning, "It is not to be wondered at," &c. (see p. 286), in which the
imagination of figures not merely intended to embody beautiful or newly
assorted proportions is clearly considered; and if we review Duerer's
actual work we shall see how much oftener he created figures for
picturesque or dramatic effect than he did to embody beautiful
proportions in them, though he evidently also considered the last
purpose as of the first importance, as we see when he goes on to say:

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

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

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