Albert Durer

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

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

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

The total impression produced by Duerer's life and work must help each to
decide for himself which sense he considers most likely. The truth, as
in most questions of history, remains for ever in the balance, and
cannot be ascertained.

XIII

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

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

The universe in which man finds himself may be evil, but not everything
it contains is so: then it must for ever remain our only wisdom to
labour to transform those parts which we judge to be evil into likeness
or conformity to those we judge to be good: and surely he who neglects
the forces of hope and adoration in that effort, neglects the better
half of his practical strength? The central proposition of Christianity,
that this end can only be attained by contemplation and imitation of an
example, is, we shall in another place (pp. [305-312]) find, maintained
as true in regard to art by Duerer, and by Reynolds, our greatest writer
on aesthetics. These great artists, so dissimilar in the outward aspects
of their creations, agree in considering that the only way of
advancement open to the aspirant is the attempt to form himself on the
example of others, by imitating them not slavishly or mechanically, but
in the same spirit in which they imitated their forerunners: even as the
Christian is bound to seek union with Christ in the same spirit or way
in which Jesus had achieved union with his Father--that is, by laying
down life to take it again, in meekness and lowliness of heart. Docility
is the sovran help to perfection for Duerer and Reynolds, and more or
less explicitly for all other great artists who have treated of these
questions.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

[Footnote 13: Wordsworth's Translation,]

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

PART II

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

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

DUeRER'S ORIGIN, YOUTH AND EDUCATION

I

Who was Duerer? He has told us himself very simply, and more fully than
men of his type generally do; for he was not, like Montaigne, one whose
chief study was himself. Yet, though he has done this, it is not easy
for us to fully understand him. It is perhaps impossible to place
oneself in the centre of that horizon which was of necessity his and
belonged to his day, a vast circle from which men could no more escape
than we from ours; this cage of iron ignorance in which every human soul
is trapped, and to widen and enlarge which every heroic soul lives and
dies. This cage appeared to his eyes very different from what it does to
ours; yet it has always been a cage, and is only lost sight of at times
when the light from within seems to flow forth, and with its radiant
sapphire heaven of buoyancy and desire to veil the eternal bars. It is
well to remind ourselves that ignorance was the most momentous, the most
cruel condition of his life, as of our own; and that the effort to
relieve himself of its pressure, either by the pursuit of knowledge, or
by giving spur and bridle to the imagination that it might course round
him dragging the great woof of illusion, and tent him in the ethereal
dream of the soul's desire, was the constant effort and resource of
his days.

II

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

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

Like his relatives, Albrecht Duerer the elder was born in the kingdom of
Hungary, in a little village named Eytas, situated not far from a little
town called Gyula, eight miles below Grosswardein; and his kindred made
their living from horses and cattle. My father's father was called Anton
Duerer; he came as a lad to a goldsmith in the said little town and
learnt the craft under him. He afterwards married a girl named
Elizabeth, who bare him a daughter, Katharina, and three sons. The first
son he named Albrecht; he was my dear father. He too became a goldsmith,
a pure and skilful man. The second son he called Ladislaus; he was a
saddler. His son is my cousin Niklas Duerer, called Niklas the Hungarian,
who is settled at Koeln. He also is a goldsmith, and learnt the craft
here in Nuernberg with my father. The third son he called John. Him he
set to study, and he afterwards became a parson at Grosswardein, and
continued there thirty years.

So Albrecht Duerer, my dear father, came to Germany. He had been a long
time with the great artists in the Netherlands. At last he came hither
to Nuernberg in the year, as reckoned from the birth of Christ, 1455, on
S. Elogius' day (June 25). And on the same day Philip Pirkheimer had his
marriage feast at the Veste, and there was a great dance under the big
lime tree. For a long time after that my dear father, Albrecht Duerer,
served my grandfather, old Hieronymus Holper, till the year reckoned
1467 after the birth of Christ. My grandfather then gave him his
daughter, a pretty upright girl, fifteen years old, named Barbara; and
he was wedded to her eight days before S. Vitus (June 8). It may also be
mentioned that my grandmother, my mother's mother, was the daughter of
Oellinger of Weissenburg, and her name was Kunigunde.

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

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

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

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

This Albrecht Duerer the elder passed his life in great toil and stern
hard labour, having nothing for his support save what he earned with his
hand for himself, his wife and his children, so that he had little
enough. He underwent moreover manifold afflictions, trials, and
adversities. But he won just praise from all who knew him, for he lived
an honourable, Christian life, was a man of patient spirit, mild and
peaceable to all, and very thankful towards God. For himself he had
little need of company and worldly pleasures; he was also of few words,
and was a God-fearing man.

III

We shall, I think, often do well, when considering the superb
ostentation of Duerer's workmanship, with its superabundance of curve and
flourish, its delight in its own ease and grace, to think of those young
men among his ancestors who made their living from horses on the
wind-swept plains of Hungary. The perfect control which it is the
delight of lads brought up and developing under such conditions to
obtain over the galloping steed, is similar to the control which it
gratified Duerer to perfect over the dashing stroke of pen or brush,
which, however swift and impulsive, is yet brought round and performs to
a nicety a predetermined evolution. And the way he puts a little
portrait of himself, finely dressed, into his most important pictures,
may also carry our thoughts away to the banks of the Danube where it
winds and straggles over the steppes, to picture some young
horse-breeder, whose costume and harness are his only wealth; who rides
out in the morning as the cock-bustard that, having preened himself,
paces before the hen birds on the plains that he can scour when his
wings, which are slow in the air, join with his strong legs to make
nothing of grassy leagues on leagues. And first, this life with its free
sweeping horizon, and the swallow-like curves of its gallops for the
sake of galloping, or those which the long lashes of its whips trace in
deploying, and which remind us of the lithe tendrils in which terminate
Duerer's ornamental flourishes; this life in which the eye is trained to
watch the lasso, as with well-calculated address it swirls out and drops
over the frighted head of an unbroken colt;--this life is first pent up
in a little goldsmith's shop, in a country even to-day famous for the
beauty and originality of its peasant jewelry: and here it is trained to
follow and answer the desire of the bright dark eyes of girls in
love;--in love, where love and the beauty that inspires it are the gifts
of nature most guarded and most honoured, from which are expected the
utmost that is conceived of delicacy in delight by a virile and healthy
race. "A pure and skilful man." Patient already has this life become,
for a jeweller can scarcely be made of impatient stuff; patient even
before the admixture of German blood when Albert the elder married his
Barbara Holper. The two eldest sons were made jewellers; but the third,
John, is set to study and becomes a parson, as if already learning and
piety stood next in the estimation of this life after thrift, skill and
the creation of ornament. And Germany boasts of this life beyond that of
any of her sons; but her blood was probably of small importance to the
efficiency that it attained to in the great Albert Duerer. The German
name of Duerer or Thuerer, a door, is quite as likely to be the
translation, correct or otherwise, of some Hungarian name, as it is an
indication that the family had originally emigrated from Germany. In any
case, a large admixture by intermarriage of Slavonic blood would
correspond to the unique distinction among Germans, attained in the
dignity, sweetness and fineness which signalised Duerer. Of course, in
such matters no sane man looks for proof; but neither will he reject a
probable suggestion which may help us to understand the nature of an
exceptional man.

IV

Duerer continues to speak of his childhood:

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

When I had finished my learning my father sent me off, and I stayed away
four years till he called me back again. As I had gone forth in the year
1490 after Easter (Easter Sunday was April 11), so now I came back again
in 1494 as it is reckoned after Whitsuntide (Whit Sunday was May 18).

Erasmus tells us that German disorders were "partly due to the natural
fierceness of the race, partly to the division into so many separate
States, and partly to the tendency of the people to serve as
mercenaries." That there were many swaggerers and bullies about, we
learn from Duerer's prints. In every crowd these gentlemen in leathern
tights, with other ostentatious additions to their costume, besides
poniards and daggers to emphasise the brutal male, strut straddle-legged
and self-assured; and of course raw lads and loutish prentices yielded
them the sincerest flattery. We can well understand that the model boy,
to whom "God had given diligence," with his long hair lovely as a
girl's, and his consciousness of being nearly always in the right, had
much to suffer from his fellow prentices. Besides, very likely, he
already consorted with Willibald Pirkheimer and his friends, who were
the aristocrats of the town. And though he may have been meek and
gentle, there must have appeared in everything he did and was an
assertion of superiority, all the more galling for its being difficult
to define and as ready to blush as the innocent truth herself.

V

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

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

Before we accept any of these statements it is well to remember how
easily quite intimate friends make mistakes as to where one has been and
when; even about journeys that in one's own mind either have been or
should have been turning-points in one's life. For they will attribute
to the past experiences which were never ours, or forget those which we
consider most unforgettable. No one who has paid attention to these
facts will consider that historians prove so much or so well as they
often fancy themselves to do. In the present case what is really
remarkable is, that none of these sojournings of the young artist in
foreign art centres seem to have produced such a change in his art as
can now be traced with assurance. At Colmar he saw the masterpieces and
the brothers of the "admirable Martin," as he always calls Schongauer.
At Basle there is still preserved a cut wood-block representing St.
Jerome, on the back of which is an authentic signature; there is besides
a series of uncut wood-blocks, the designs on which it is easy to
imagine to have been produced by the travelling journeyman that Duerer
then seemed to the printers and painters of the towns he passed through.
By those processes by which anything can be made of anything, much has
been done to give substantiality to the implied first visit to Venice.
There are drawings which were probably made there, representing ladies
resembling those in pictures by Carpaccio as to their garments, the
dressing of their hair, and the type of their faces. Of course it is not
impossible that such a lady or ladies may have visited Nuremberg, or
been seen by the young wanderer at Basle or elsewhere. And the
resemblance between a certain drawing in the Albertina and one of the
carved lions in red marble now on the Piazzetta de' Leoni does not count
for much, when we consider that there is nothing in the workmanship of
these heads to suggest that they were done after sculptured
originals;--the manes, &c., being represented by an easy penman's
convention, as they might have been whether the models were living or
merely imagined. Nor is there any good reason for dating the drawings of
sites in the Tyrol, supposed to have been sketched on the road, rather
this year than another. Lastly, the famous sentence in a letter written
from Venice during Duerer's authenticated visit there, in 1506, may be
construed in more than one sense. The passage is generally rather
curtailed when quoted.

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

If "the thing that pleased so well eleven years before" was a picture or
pictures by Master Jacob or by Andrea Mantegna, as is usually supposed,
the phrase, "If I had not seen it for myself I should never have
believed any one who told me" is extremely strange. It is not usual to
expect to change one's opinion of a work of art by hearsay, or to
imagine others, when they have not done so, predicting with assurance
that we shall change a decided opinion upon the merits of a work of art;
yet one of these two suppositions seems certainly to be implied. I do
not say that it is impossible to conceive of either, only that such
cursory reference to such conceptions is extremely strange. Again, if
work by Jacopo de' Barbari is referred to, it might very well have been
seen elsewhere than at Venice eleven years ago; and indeed the last
sentence in the passage might be taken to imply as much. To me at least
the truth appears to be that these hints, which we may well have
misunderstood, point to something which the imagination is only too
delighted to entertain. It is a charming dream--the young Duerer, just of
age, trudging from town to town, designing wood-blocks for a printer
here, questioning the brothers of the "admirable Martin" there, or again
painting a sign in yet another place, such as Holbein painted for the
schoolmaster at Basle; and at last arriving in Venice--Venice untouched
as yet by the conflicting ideals that were even then being brought to
birth anew: Mediaeval Venice, such as we see her in the pictures of
Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio. One painting of real importance in the
work of Duerer remains to us from this period: the greatest of modern
critics has described it and its effect on him in a way which would make
any second attempt impertinent.

I consider as invaluable Albrecht Duerer's portrait of himself painted in
1493, when he was in his twenty-second year. It is a bust half
life-size, showing the two hands and the forearms. Crimson cap with
short narrow strings, the throat bare to below the collar bone, an
embroidered shirt, the folds of the sleeves tied underneath with
peach-coloured ribbons, and a blue-grey, fur-edged cloak with yellow
laces, compose a dainty dress befitting a well-bred youth. In his hand
he significantly carries a blue _eryngo_, called in German "Mannstreu."
He has a serious, youthful face, the mouth and chin covered with an
incipient beard. The whole splendidly drawn, the composition simple,
grand and harmonious; the execution perfect and in every way worthy of
Duerer, though the colour is very thin, and has cracked in some places.

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

VI

It may be that to this period belongs the meeting with Jacopo de'
Barbari to which a passage in his MS. books (now in the British Museum)
refers: and that already he began to be exercised on the subject of a
canon of proportions for the human figure. In the chapter which I devote
to his studies on this subject it will be seen how the determination to
work the problem out by experiment, since Jacopo refused to reveal, and
Vitruvius only hinted at the secret, led to his discovering something of
far more value than it is probable that either could have given him. And
yet the belief that there was a hidden secret probably hindered him from
fully realising the importance of his discovery, or reaping such benefit
from it as he otherwise might have done. How often has not the belief
that those of old time knew what is ignored to-day, prevented men from
taking full advantage of the conquests over ignorance that they have
made themselves! Because what they know is not so much as they suppose
might be or has been known, they fail to recognise the most that has yet
been known--the best foundation for a new building that has yet been
discovered--and search for what they possess, and fail to rival those
whose superiority over themselves is a delusion of their own hearts. So
early Duerer may have begun this life-long labour which, though not
wholly vain, was never really crowned to the degree it merited: while
others living in more fertile lands reaped what they had not sown, he
could only plough and scatter seed. As Raphael is supposed to have said,
all that was lacking to him was knowledge of the antique.

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