Dürer / Artist-Biographies

Late in 1505 Dürer made a journey to Venice, probably with a view to recover his health, enlarge his circle of friends and patrons, and study the famous Venetian paintings. He was worn down by continuous hard work, and weary of the dull uneventfulness of his life, and hailed an opportunity to rest in sunny Italy. He borrowed money from Pirkheimer for his journey, and left a small sum for family expenses during his absence. Between Nuremberg and her rich Southern rival there was a large commerce, with a weekly post; and many German merchants and artists were then residing in Venice. Dürer rode down on horseback; and suffered an attack of illness at Stein, near Laibach, where he rewarded the artist who had nursed him by painting a picture on the wall of his house. On arriving at Venice, the master was cordially received, and highly honored by the chief artists and literati of the city. The heads of Venetian art at that time were Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio, both of whom were advanced in years; and Giorgione and Titian, who were not mentioned by our traveller, though they were both at work for the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi at the same time as himself.

During his residence in Venice he wrote nine long letters to “the honorable and wise Herr Willibald Pirkheimer, Burgher of Nuremberg,” which were walled up in the Imhoff mansion during the Thirty Years’ War, and discovered at a later age. Much of these letters is taken up with details about Pirkheimer’s commissions for precious stones and books, or with badinage about the burgher’s private life, with frequent allusions to the support of the Dürers at home. Of greater interest are the accounts of the writer’s successes in art, and the friends whom he met in Venetian society. The letters were embellished with rude caricatures and grotesques, matching the broad humor of the jovial allusions in the text. Either Pirkheimer was a man of most riotous life, or Dürer was a bold and pertinacious jester, unwearying in mock-earnest reproofs. These letters were sealed with the Dürer crest, composed of a pair of open doors above three steps on a shield, which was a punning allusion to the name Dürer, or Thürer, Thür being the German word for door. In the second letter he says,—

These sentences show the artist’s pleasure at the kindly way in which the Italians received him, and also reveal the danger in which he stood of being poisoned by jealous rivals. Another ambiguous sentence has given rise to the belief that Dürer had visited Venice eleven years previously, during his Wander-jahre.

Camerarius says that Bellini was so amazed and delighted at the exquisite fineness of Dürer’s painting, especially of hair, that he begged him to give him the brush with which he had done such delicate work. The Nuremberger offered him any or all of his brushes, but Bellini asked again for the one with which he had painted the hair; upon which Dürer took one of his common brushes, and painted a long tress of woman’s hair. Bellini reported that he would not have believed such marvellous work possible, if he had not seen it himself.

The third letter describes the adventures of the inexpert artist in securing certain sapphires, amethysts, and emeralds for his “dear Herr Pirkheimer,” and complains that the money earned by painting was all swallowed up by living expenses. The jealous Venetian painters had also forced him, by process of law, to pay money to their art-schools.

His brother Hans was now sixteen years old, and had become a source of responsibility, for Dürer adds: “With regard to my brother, tell my mother to speak to Wohlgemuth, and see whether he wants him, or will give him work till I return, or to others, so that he may help himself. I would willingly have brought him with me to Venice, which would have been useful to him and to me, and also on account of his learning the language; but my mother was afraid that the heavens would fall upon him and upon me too. I pray you, have an eye to him yourself: he is lost with the women-folk. Speak to the boy as you well know how to do, and bid him behave well and learn diligently until I return, and not be a burden to the mother; for I cannot do every thing, although I will do my best.”

In the fourth letter he speaks of having traded his pictures for jewels, and sends greetings to his friend Baumgärtner, saying also: “Know that by the grace of God I am well, and that I am working diligently.... I wish that it suited you to be here. I know you would find the time pass quickly, for there are many agreeable people here, very good amateurs; and I have sometimes such a press of strangers to visit me, that I am obliged to hide myself; and all the gentlemen wish me well, but very few of the painters.”

The fifth letter opens with a long complimentary flourish in a barbarous mixture of Italian and Spanish, and then chaffs Pirkheimer unmercifully for his increasing intrigues. It also thanks Pirkheimer for trying to placate Agnes Frey, who is evidently much disappointed because her husband lingers so long at Venice. The Prior Eucharius is besought to pray that Dürer might be delivered from the new and terrible “French disease,” then fatally prevalent in Italy. Mention is made of Andreas, the goldsmith, Dürer’s brother, meeting him at Venice, and borrowing money to relieve his distress.

The next letter starts off with quaint mock-deference, and alludes to the splendid Venetian soldiery, and their contempt of the Emperor. Farther on are unintelligible allusions, and passages too vulgar for translation. He says that the Doge and Patriarch had visited his studio to inspect the new picture, and that he had effectually silenced the artists who claimed that he was only good at engraving, and could not use colors. Soon afterwards he writes about the completion of his great painting of the Rose Garlands; and says, “There is no better picture of the Virgin Mary in the land, because all the artists praise it, as well as the nobility. They say they have never seen a more sublime, a more charming painting.” He adds that he had declined orders to the amount of over 2,000 ducats, in order to return home, and was then engaged in finishing a few portraits.

The last letter congratulates Pirkheimer on his political successes, but expresses a fear lest “so great a man will never go about the streets again talking with the poor painter Dürer,—with a poltroon of a painter.” In response to Pirkheimer’s threat of making love to his wife if he remained away longer, he said that if such was done, he might keep Agnes until her death. He also tells how he had been attending a dancing-school, but could not learn the art, and retired in disgust after two lessons.

The picture which Dürer painted for the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi was until recently supposed to be a “St. Bartholomew;” but it is now believed that it was the renowned “Feast of Rose Garlands,” which is now at the Bohemian Monastery of Strahow. He worked hard on this picture for seven months, and was proud of its beauty and popularity. The Emperor Rudolph II. bought it from the church in which it was set up, and had it carried on men’s shoulders all the way from Venice to Prague, to avoid the dangers attending other modes of conveyance. When Joseph II. sold his pictures, in 1782, this one was bought by the Abbey of Strahow, and remained buried in oblivion for three-quarters of a century. The picture shows the Virgin sitting under a canopy and a star-strewn crown held by flying cherubs, with the graceful Child in her lap. She is placing a crown of roses on the head of the Emperor Maximilian, while Jesus places another on the head of the Pope; and a monk on one side is similarly honored by St. Dominic, the founder of the Feast of the Rose Garlands. A multitude of kneeling men and women on either side are being crowned with roses by merry little child-angels, flying through the air; while on the extreme right, Dürer and Pirkheimer are seen standing by a tree.

Pirkheimer and Agnes had both been urging the master to return; but he seemed reluctant to exchange the radiance of Italy for the quietness of his home-circle, and mournfully exclaims, “Oh, how I shall freeze after this sunshine! Here I am a gentleman, at home only a parasite!” A brilliant career was open before him at Venice, whose Government offered him a pension of 200 ducats; but his sense of duty compelled him to return to Germany, though in bitterness of spirit. Before turning Northward he rode to Bologna, “because some one there will teach me the secret art of perspective” (Francesco Francia); and met Christopher Scheurl, who greatly admired him. A year later Raphael also came to Bologna, and saw some works left there by Dürer, from which arose an intimate correspondence and exchanges of pictures between the artists. The master had been invited to visit the venerable Mantegna, at Mantua; but that Nestor of North-Italian art died before the plan was carried out. Dürer afterwards told Camerarius that this death “caused him more grief than any mischance that had befallen him during his life.”

Art-critics agree in rejoicing that Dürer conquered the temptations which were held out to him from the gorgeous Italian city, and returned to his plain life in the cold North. He escaped the danger of sacrificing his individualism to the glowing and sensuous Venetian school of art, and preserved the quaintness and vigor of his own Gothic inspirations for the joy of future ages.

The marine backgrounds in many of Dürer’s later pictures are referred by Ruskin to the artist’s pleasant memories of Venice, “where he received the rarest of all rewards granted to a good workman; and, for once in his life, was understood.” Other and wilder landscapes in his woodcuts were reminiscences of the pastoral regions of the Franconian Switzerland.

The personal history of Dürer between 1507 and 1520 was barren of details, but evidently full of earnest work, as existing pictures bear witness. It was the golden period of his art-life, abounding in productiveness. His workshop was the seat of the chief art-school in Nuremberg, and contained many excellent young painters and engravers, to whom the master delivered his wise axioms and earnest thoughts in rich profusion.

During this period, also, he probably executed certain of his best works in carving, which are hereinafter described. Dr. Thausing denies that Dürer used the chisel of the sculptor to any extent, and refuses to accept the genuineness of the carvings which the earlier biographers have attributed to him. Scott is of the opinion that in most cases these rich and delicate works were executed by other persons, either from his drawings or under his inspection.

On his return from Venice, Dürer painted life-sized nude figures of Adam and Eve, representing them with the fatal apple in their hands, at the moment of the Fall. They are well designed in outline, but possess a certain anatomical hardness, lacking in grace and mobility. They were greatly admired by the Nurembergers, in whose Rath-haus they were placed; but were at length presented to the Emperor Rudolph II. He replaced them with copies, which Napoleon, in 1796, supposed to be Dürer’s original works, and removed to Paris. He afterwards presented them to the town of Mayence, where they are still exhibited as Dürer’s. The true originals passed into Spain, where they were first redeemed from oblivion by Passavant, about the year 1853. A copy of the Adam and Eve, which was executed in Dürer’s studio and under his care, is now at the Pitti Palace.

In the spring of 1507 Dürer met at the house of his brother-in-law Jacob Frey, the rich Frankfort merchant Jacob Heller, who commissioned him to paint an altar-piece. He was delayed by a prolonged attack of fever in the summer, and by the closing works on the Elector’s picture.

Between 1507 and 1514 (inclusive) Dürer made forty-eight engravings and etchings, and over a hundred woodcuts, bespeaking an iron diligence and a remarkable power of application. The rapid sale of these works in frequent new editions gave a large income to their author, and placed him in a comfortable position among the burghers of Nuremberg. The religious excitement then prevailing throughout Europe, on the eve of the Reformation, increased the demand for his engravings of the Virgin, the saints, and the great Passion series.

In 1508 Dürer finished the painting of “The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians,” to which he professed to have given all his time for a year. It was ordered by Frederick of Saxony, the patron of Lucas Cranach, who had seen the master’s woodcut of the same subject, and desired it reproduced in an oil-painting. It is a painful and unpleasant scene, full of brutality and horror; and the picture is devoid of unity, though conspicuous for clear and brilliant coloring. Dürer and Pirkheimer stand in the middle of the foreground.

On the completion of this work the master wrote to Heller, “No one shall persuade me to work according to what I am paid.” He then began Heller’s altar-piece, under unnecessary exhortation “to paint his picture well,” and made a great number of careful studies for the new composition. When fairly under way, he demanded 200 florins for his work instead of the 130 florins of the contract-price, which drew an angry answer from the frugal merchant, with accusations of dishonesty. The artist rejoined sharply, dwelling upon the great cost of the colors and the length of the task, yet offering to carry out his contract in order to save his good faith. Throughout the next year Heller stimulated the painter to hasten his work, until Dürer became angry, and threw up the commission. He was soon induced to resume it, and completed the picture in the summer of 1509, upon which the delighted merchant paid him gladly, and sent handsome presents to his wife and brother. Dürer wrote to Heller, “It will last fresh and clean for five hundred years, for it is not done as ordinary paintings are.... But no one shall ever again persuade me to undertake a painting with so much work in it. Herr Jorg Tauss offered himself to pay me 400 florins for a Virgin in a landscape, but I declined positively, for I should become a beggar by this means. Henceforward I will stick to my engraving; and, if I had done so before, I should be richer by a thousand florins than I am to-day.”

The picture which caused so much argument and toil was “The Coronation of the Virgin,” which was set up over the bronze monument of the Heller family in the Dominican Church at Frankfort. Its exquisite delicacy of execution attracted great crowds to the church, and quickly enriched the monastery. Singularly enough, the most famous part of the picture was the sole of the foot of one of the kneeling Apostles, which was esteemed such a marvellous work that great sums were offered to have it cut out of the canvas. The Emperor Rudolph II. offered the immense amount of 10,000 florins for the painting, in vain; but in 1613 it passed into the possession of Maximilian of Bavaria, and was destroyed in the burning of the palace at Munich, sixty years later. So the renowned picture, which Dürer said gave him “more joy and satisfaction than any other he ever undertook,” passed away, leaving no engraving or other memorial, save a copy by Paul Juvenal. This excellent reproduction is now at Nuremberg, and is provided with the original wings, beautifully painted by Dürer, showing on one the portrait of Jacob Heller and the death of St. James, and on the other Heller’s wife, and the martyrdom of St. Catherine.

In 1501 the burgher Schiltkrot and the pious copper-smith Matthäus Landäuer founded the House of the Twelve Brothers, an alms-house for poor old men of Nuremberg; and eight years later, Landäuer ordered Dürer to paint an altar-piece of “The Adoration of the Trinity,” for its chapel. Much of the master’s time for the next two years was devoted to this great work.

CHAPTER IV.

Some time after his marriage with Agnes Frey, Dürer moved into the new house near the Thiergärtner Gate, which had perhaps been bought with the dowry of his bride. Here he labored until his death, and executed his most famous works. It is a spacious house, with a lower story of stone, wide portals, a paved interior court, and pleasant upper rooms between thick half-timber walls, whose mullioned windows look out on lines of quaint Gothic buildings and towers, and on the broad paved square at the foot of the Zisselgasse (now Albrecht-Dürer-Strasse). Just across the square was the so-called “Pilate’s House,” whose owner, Martin Koetzel, had made two pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and brought back measurements of the Dolorous Way. The artist’s house is now carefully preserved as public property, and contains the gallery of the Dürer Art-Union. In 1828, on the third centennial of his death, the people erected a bronze statue of the master, designed by Rauch, on the square before the house.

In 1509-10 Dürer derived pleasure and furnished much amusement to his friends from verse-making, in which he suffered a worse failure even than Raphael had done. It seems that Pirkheimer ridiculed a long-drawn couplet which he had made, upon which the master composed a neat bit of proverbial philosophy, of which the following is a translation:—

But Pirkheimer was not more pleased with this; and the witty Secretary Spengler sent Dürer a satirical poem, applying the moral of the fable of the shoemaker who criticised a picture by Apelles. He answered this in a song of sixty lines, closing with,—

“1510, this have I made on Good and Bad Friends.” Thus the master prefaces a platitudinous poem of thirty lines; which was soon followed by “The Teacher,” of sixty lines. Later in the year he wrote the long Passion-Song, which was appended to the print of Christus am Kreuz. It is composed of eight sections, of ten lines each, and is full of quaint mediæval tenderness and reverence, and the intense prayerfulness of the old German faith. The sections are named Matins, the First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Hours, Vespers, Compline, and Let Us Pray, the latter of which is redolent with earnest devotion:—

The marvellous high-relief of “The Birth of St. John the Baptist” was executed in 1510, and shows Dürer’s remarkable powers as a sculptor. It is cut in a block of cream-colored lithographic stone, 7½ × 5½ inches in size, and is full of rich and minute pictorial details. Elizabeth is rising in bed, aided by two attendants; and the old nurse brings the infant to Zacharias, who writes its name on a tablet, while two men are entering at the doorway. The room is furnished with the usual utensils and properties of a German bedroom. This wonderful and well-preserved work of art was bought in the Netherlands about eighty years ago, for $2,500, and is now in the British Museum. The companion-piece, “St. John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness,” is now in the Brunswick Museum, and is carved with a similar rich effect. This museum also contains a carving in wood, representing the “Ecce Homo.”

Space would fail to tell of the many beautiful little pieces of sculpture which Dürer executed in ivory, boxwood, and stone, or of the numerous excellently designed medals ascribed to him. Chief among these was the exquisite “Birth of Christ,” and the altar of agate, formerly at Vienna; Adam and Eve, in wood, at Gotha; reliefs of the Birth and the Agony of Christ, in ivory; the Four Evangelists, in boxwood, lately at Baireuth; several carvings on ivory, of religious scenes, at Munich; a woman with padlocked mouth, sitting in the stocks, cut in soapstone; a delicate relief of the Flight into Egypt; busts of the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy; and the Love-Fountain, now at Dresden, with figures of six persons drinking the water.

The famous painting of “The Adoration of the Trinity” was finished in 1511, and represents God the Father holding up His crucified Son for the worship of an immense congregation of saints, while overhead is the mystic Dove, surrounded by a circle of winged cherubs’ heads. The kneeling multitude includes princes, prelates, warriors, burghers, and peasants, equally accepting the Athanasian dogma. On the left is a great group of female saints, led by the sweet and stately Virgin Mary; and on the right are the kneeling prophets and apostles, Moses with the tables of the Law, and David with his harp. On the broad terrestrial landscape, far below, Dürer stands alone, by a tall tablet bearing the Latin inscription of his name and the date of the picture. The whole scene is full of light and splendor, delicate beauty of angels, and exquisite minuteness of finish. A century later the Rath of Nuremberg removed this picture from the sepulchral chapel of its founder, and presented it to the Emperor Rudolph II. It is now one of the gems of the Vienna Belvedere.

About this time the master’s brother Andreas, the goldsmith, returned to Nuremberg after his long wanderings, and eased the evident anxiety of his family by settling respectably in life. Hans was still in his brother’s studio, where he learned his art so well that he afterwards became court-painter to the King of Poland.

In 1511 Dürer published a third edition of the engravings of the Apocalypse, with a warning to piratical engravers that the Emperor had forbidden the sale of copies or impressions other than those of the author, within the Empire, under heavy penalties to transgressors. To the same year belong three of the master’s greatest works in engraving on wood.

“The Great Passion” contains twelve folio woodcuts, unequal in their execution, and probably made by different workmen of varying abilities. The vignette is an “Ecce Homo;” and the other subjects are, the Last Supper, Christ at Gethsemane, His Betrayal, the Scourging, the Mockery, Christ Bearing the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Descent into Hell, the Maries Mourning over Christ’s Body, the Entombment, and the Resurrection. These powerful delineations of the Agony of Our Lord are characterized by rare originality of conception, pathos, and grandeur. They were furnished with Latin verses by the monk Chelidonius, and bore the imperial warning against imitation. Four large editions were printed from these cuts, and numerous copies, especially in Italy, where the Emperor’s edict was inoperative.

“The Little Passion” was a term applied by Dürer himself to distinguish his series of thirty-seven designs from the larger pictures of “The Great Passion.” It is the best-known of the master’s engravings; and has been published in two editions at Nuremberg, a third at Venice in 1612, and a fourth at London in 1844. The blocks are now in the British Museum, and show plainly that they were not engraved by Dürer. This great pictorial scene of the fall and redemption of man begins with the sin of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Eden, and follows with thirty-three compositions from the life and passion of Christ, ending with the Descent of the Holy Ghost and the Last Judgment. Its title was Figuræ Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi; and it was furnished with a set of the Latin verses of Chelidonius.

The third of Dürer’s great works in wood-engraving was “The Life of the Virgin,” with explanatory Latin verses by the Benedictine Chelidonius. This was published in 1511, and contains twenty pictures, full of realistic plainness and domestic homeliness, yet displaying marvellous skill and power of invention. To the same year belong the master’s engravings of the Trinity, St. Christopher, St. Gregory’s Mass, St. Jerome, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, the Holy Family with the Guitar, Herodias and the Head of John the Baptist, and the Adoration of the Magi; and the copper-plates of the Crucifixion and the Virgin with the Pear.

Dürer was much afflicted by the boldness of many imitators, who plagiarized his engravings without stint, and flooded the market with pictures from his designs. His rights were protected but poorly by the edicts of the Emperor and the city of Nuremberg; and a swarm of parasitical copyists reproduced every fresh design as soon as it was published. Marc Antonio Raimondi, the great Italian engraver who worked so many years with Raphael, was the most dangerous of these plagiarists, and reproduced “The Little Passion” and “The Life of the Virgin” in a most exquisite manner, close after their publication. Vasari says, “It happened that at this time certain Flemings came to Venice with a great many prints, engraved both in wood and copper by Albert Dürer, which being seen by Marc Antonio in the Square of St. Mark, he was so much astonished by their style of execution, and the skill displayed by Albert, that he laid out on those prints almost all the money he had brought with him from Bologna, and amongst other things purchased ‘The Passion of Jesus Christ,’ engraved on thirty-six wooden blocks.... Marc Antonio therefore, having considered how much honor as well as advantage might be acquired by one who should devote himself to that art in Italy, resolved to attend to it with the greatest diligence, and immediately began to copy these engravings of Albert, studying their mode of hatching, and every thing else in the prints he had purchased, which from their novelty as well as beauty, were in such repute that every one desired to possess them.”

It appears that Marc Antonio was afterwards enjoined from using Dürer’s monogram on his copies of the Nuremberger’s engravings, either by imperial diplomatic representations to the Italian courts, or else as the result of a visit which some claim that Dürer made to Italy for that purpose. Many of the copies of Marc Antonio were rather idealized adaptations than exact reproductions of the German’s designs, but were furnished with the forged monogram A. D., and sold for Dürer’s works. Sixty-nine of our artist’s engravings were copied by the skilful Italian, profoundly influencing Southern art by the manual dexterity of the North. This wholesale piracy was carried on between 1505 and 1511, and before Marc Antonio passed under Raphael’s overmastering influence.

In later years the Rath of Nuremberg warned the booksellers of the city against selling false copies of Dürer’s engravings, and sent letters to the authorities of Augsburg, Leipsic, Frankfort, Strasbourg, and Antwerp, asking them to put a stop to such sales within their jurisdictions. His works have been copied by more than three hundred artists, the best of whom were Solis, Rota, the Hopfers, Wierx, Vischer, Schön, and Kraus.

In 1512 Dürer made most of the plates for “The Passion in Copper,” a series of sixteen engravings on copper, which was begun in 1507 and finished in 1513. These plates show the terrible scenes of the last griefs of the Saviour, surrounded with uncouth German men and women, buildings and landscapes, yet permeated with mysterious reverence and solemn simplicity. The series was never published in book form, with descriptive text, but the engravings were put forth singly as soon as completed. The prints of “Christ Bound” and “St. Jerome” were published this same year.

In 1512 Dürer was first employed by the Emperor Maximilian, who was not only a patron of the arts but also an artist himself, and munificently employed the best painters of Germany, though his treasury was usually but poorly filled. Science and literature also occupied much of his attention; and, while his realm was engaged in perpetual wars, he kept up a careful correspondence on profound themes with many of the foremost thinkers of his day. The records of his intercourse with Dürer are most meagre, though during the seven years of their connection they must have had many interviews, especially while the imperial portrait was being made.

Melanchthon tells a pretty story, which he heard from Dürer himself. One day the artist was finishing a sketch for the Emperor, who, while waiting, attempted to make a drawing himself with one of the charcoal-crayons; but the charcoal kept breaking away, and he complained that he could accomplish nothing with it. Dürer then took it from his hand, saying, “This is my sceptre, your Majesty;” and afterwards taught the sovereign how to use it.

The story which is told of so many geniuses who have risen from low estate is applied also to this one: The Emperor once declared to a noble who had proudly declined to perform some trivial service for the artist, “Out of seven ploughboys I can, if I please, make seven lords, but out of seven lords I cannot make one Dürer.”

Tradition states that the Emperor ennobled Dürer, and gave him a coat-of-arms. Possibly this was the crest used in his later years, consisting of three shields on a blue field, above which is a closed helmet supporting the armless bust and head of a winged negro!

The idea of the immense woodcut of the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian was conceived after 1512, either by the Emperor or by the poet-laureate Stabius; and Dürer was chosen to put it into execution. The history of the deeds of Maximilian, with his ancestry and family alliances, was to be displayed in the form of a pictorial triumphal arch, “after the manner of those erected in honor of the Roman emperors.” The master demanded payment in advance, and received an order from the Emperor to the Rath of Nuremberg to hold “his and the Empire’s true and faithful Albert Dürer exempt from all the town taxes and rates, in consideration of our esteem for his skill in art.” But he surrendered this immunity, in deference to the wishes of the Rath; and Maximilian granted him an annual pension of 100 florins ($200), which was paid, however, somewhat reluctantly.

“The Knight, Death, and the Devil,” is the most celebrated of Dürer’s engravings, and dates from 1513. It shows a panoplied knight riding through a rocky defile, with white-bearded Death advancing alongside and holding up an hour-glass, and the loathsome Satan pursuing hard after and clutching at the undismayed knight. The numerous commentators on this picture variously interpret its meaning, some saying that the knight is an evil-doer, intent on wicked purposes, whom Death warns to repentance, while Satan rushes to seize him; others, and the most, that he is the Christian man, fearless among the menaces of Death and Hell, and steadily advancing in spite of the horrible apparitions. Others claim that the Knight represents Franz von Sickingen, a turbulent hero of the Reformation; or Philip Ring, the Nuremberg herald, who was confronted by the Devil on one of his night-rides; or Dürer himself, beset by temptations and fears; or Stephen Baumgärtner, the master’s friend, whose portrait bears a resemblance to the knight’s face. Still another interpretation is given in the romance of “Sintram and his Companions,” which was suggested by this engraving, as we are told by its author, La Motte Fouqué.

Kugler says: “I believe I do not exaggerate when I particularize this print as the most important work which the fantastic spirit of German art has ever produced.” It was made in Dürer’s blooming time, and the plate is a wonderful specimen of delicate and exquisite execution. It has frequently been copied, in many forms.

“The Little Crucifixion” is one of the most exquisitely finished of Dürer’s engravings on copper, and is a small round picture, about one inch in diameter, which was made for an ornament on the pommel of the Emperor’s sword. It contains seven figures, full of clearness and individuality, and engraved with marvellous skill. There are, fortunately, several very beautiful copies of this print. Other copper-plates of 1513 were “The Judgment of Paris,” and the small round “St. Jerome.”

The famous Baumgärtner altar-piece was painted for the patrician family of that name, as a votive picture, in thanksgiving for the safe return of its knightly members from the Swiss campaigns. Nuremberg unwillingly surrendered it to Maximilian of Bavaria, and it is now in the Munich Pinakothek. It consists of a central picture of “The Nativity,” of no special merit, with two wings, the first of which shows Stephen Baumgärtner, a meagre-faced and resolute knight, in the character of St. George, while the other portrays the plain-mannered and practical Lucas Baumgärtner, in the garb of St. Eustachius. These excellent portrait-figures are clad in armor, and stand by the sides of their horses.

The “Vision of St. Eustachius” was executed on copper-plate, and is one of Dürer’s most delicate and beautiful works. It shows the huntsman Eustachius as a strong and earnest German mystic, kneeling before the miraculous crucifix set in the stag’s forehead, which has appeared to convict him of his sins, and to stimulate in him that faith by which he led a new life of prayer and praise, and won a martyr’s crown. His solemn-faced horse seems to realize that a miracle is taking place; and in the foreground are five delicately drawn hounds. On the steep hill in the rear a noble and picturesque mediæval castle rears its battlemented towers above long lines of cliffs. Tradition says that the face of Eustachius is a portrait of the Emperor Maximilian. When the Emperor Rudolph secured the original plate of the engraving, he had it richly gilded.

“The Great Fortune,” or “The Nemesis,” is a copper-plate showing a repulsively ugly naked woman, with wings, holding a rich chalice and a bridle, while on the earth below is a beautiful mountain village between two confluent rivers. Sandrart says that this is the Hungarian village of Eytas, where Dürer’s father was born; but there is no proof of this theory. “The Coat-of-Arms with the Cock” is a fine copper-plate, with some obscure allegorical significance, representing, perhaps, Vigilance by the cock which stands on a closed helmet, and Faith by the rampant lion on the shield below.

CHAPTER V.

“The Virgin on the Crescent Moon” was a copper-plate executed also in 1514, showing the graceful and charming Mary, treated with an idealism which almost suggests Raphael. This is one of the best of the seventeen Mary-pictures (Marien-bilder) which Dürer executed in copper. Other copper-plates of 1514 represented Sts. Paul and Thomas, the Bagpipe-Player, and a Dancing Rustic and his Wife.

“The Melencolia” is the most weirdly fascinating of Dürer’s works, and the most mysterious and variously interpreted. It represents a woman, goddess, or devil, fully clad, and bearing keys and a purse at her girdle, her head wreathed with spleenwort, and great wings springing from her shoulders; the while she gazes intently, and with unutterable melancholy, into a magic crystal globe before her. On one side a drowsy Cupid is trying to write, near a ladder which rises from unseen depths to unimagined heights; and on the wall are the balanced scales, the astrological table of figures, the hour-glass running low, and the silent bell. The floor is strewn with scientific and necromantic instruments, and a great cube of strange form lies beyond. The prevailing gloom of the picture is but dimly lighted by a lurid and solitary comet, whose rays shimmer along an expanse of black ocean, and are reflected from a firm-arched rainbow above. Across the alternately black and blazing sky flies a horrible bat-winged creature, bearing a scroll inscribed with the word Melencolia, before the blank negations symbolized by the disastrous portent of the comet and the joyous sign of the rainbow.

Under the guise of this mystic black-browed woman the artist probably typifies the profound sorrow of the human soul, checked by Divine limitations from attaining a full knowledge of the secrets of nature or the wisdom of heaven. The discarded implements of natural and occult science are alike useless; and nought remains but gloomy introspection and a consciousness of insufficiency.

Dürer describes his mother’s death with mournful tenderness and touching simplicity, saying: “Now you must know that in the year 1513, on a Tuesday in Cross-week, my poor unhappy mother, whom I had taken under my charge two years after my father’s death, because she was then quite poor, and who had lived with me for nine years, was taken deathly sick on one morning early, so that we had to break open her room; for we knew not, as she could not get up, what to do. So we bore her down into a room, and she had the sacraments in both kinds administered to her, for every one thought that she was going to die, for she had been failing in health ever since my father’s death. And her custom was to go often to church; and she always punished me when I did not act rightly, and she always took great care to keep me and my brothers from sin; and, whether I went in or out, her constant word was, ‘In the name of Christ;’ and with great diligence she constantly gave us holy exhortations, and had great care over our souls. And her good works, and the loving compassion that she showed to every one, I can never sufficiently set forth to her praise. This my good mother bore and brought up eighteen children; she has often had the pestilence and many other dangerous and remarkable illnesses; has suffered great poverty, scoffing, disparagement, spiteful words, fears, and great reverses: yet she has never been revengeful. A year after the day on which she was first taken ill ... my pious mother departed in a Christian manner, with all sacraments, absolved by Papal power from pain and sin. She gave me her blessing, and desired for me God’s peace, and that I should keep myself from evil. And she desired also St. John’s blessing, which she had, and she said she was not afraid to come before God. But she died hard; and I perceived that she saw something terrible, for she kept hold of the holy water, and did not speak for a long time. I saw also how Death came, and gave her two great blows on the heart; and how she shut her eyes and mouth, and departed in great sorrow. I prayed for her, and had such great grief for her that I can never express. God be gracious to her! Her greatest joy was always to speak of God, and to do all to his honor and glory. And she was sixty-three years old when she died, and I buried her honorably according to my means. God the Lord grant that I also make a blessed end, and that God with his heavenly hosts, and my father, mother, and friend, be present at my end, and that the Almighty God grant us eternal life! Amen. And in her death she looked still more lovely than she was in her life.”

In 1514 the prince of Italian painters and the noblest of German artists exchanged pleasant civilities by correspondence, accompanied by specimens of their labors. Dürer sent to Raphael his own portrait, which was afterwards inherited and dearly prized by Giulio Romano. Raphael returned several of his own studies and drawings, one of which, showing two naked men drawn in red crayon, is now preserved in the Albertina at Vienna. It still bears Dürer’s inscription: “Raphael of Urbino, who is so highly esteemed by the Pope, has drawn this study from the nude, and has sent it to Albert Dürer at Nuremberg, in order to show him his hand.”

The invention of the art of etching has been generally attributed to Dürer, though it now seems that he merely improved and perfected the process. There are but few etchings in existence which can certainly be ascribed to him; and the chief of these, an “Ecce Homo” and “Christ in the Garden,” date from 1515. The iron plate of the latter was found two centuries later, in a blacksmith’s shop, where it was about to be made into horse-shoes. A third etching represents a frightfully homely woman being carried off by a man on a unicorn, a wild and incomprehensible composition, calculated to awaken an uncomfortable impression in the beholder. Some of the etchings were on iron, and others on pewter; but none were on copper, which was afterwards universally used. The corrosive nitrous acid acted inefficiently on the metals which he employed, and so his etchings fall short of excellence.

In 1514 Jorg Vierling uttered disgraceful libels and threats against Dürer, and finally attacked him in the street. He was imprisoned by the authorities; but the kind-hearted artist interceded for him, and he was released, after being bound over to keep the peace.

In the same year Dürer wrote to Herr Kress to see if the laureate Stabius had done any thing about his delayed pension; saying also, “But if Herr Stabius has done nothing in my matter, or my desire was too difficult for him to attain, then I pray of you to be my favorable lord to his Majesty.... Point out to his Majesty that I have served his Majesty for three years, that I have suffered loss myself from doing so, and that if I had not used my utmost diligence his ornamental work would never have been finished in such a manner; therefore I pray his Majesty to reward me with the 100 guilders.” In September an imperial decree was issued, giving Dürer his promised pension of $200 a year out of the tax due from Nuremberg to the Emperor. This annuity was paid to the artist until his death, with one short intermission.

Dürer executed for the Emperor a series of most fantastic and grotesque pen-drawings, on the borders of his prayer-book, now in the Munich town-library. Alongside the solemn sentences of the breviary are whimsical monkeys and pigs, Indians and men-at-arms, satyrs and foxes, screeching devils and saints, hens and prophets, martyrs and German crones, mingled in a weird wonderland, and not inappropriate according to mediæval ideas of taste. “The Great Column” is another quaint and inexplicable engraving, which Dürer did for the Emperor in 1517, and is composed of four blocks 5⅓ feet high. It shows two naked angels holding a large turnip, from which springs a tall column with two horrible female monsters at the base, and a horned satyr at the top, holding long garlands.

The marvellous “Triumphal Arch of Maximilian” is composed of ninety-two blocks, forming an immense woodcut ten and a half feet high and nine feet wide. It shows three great towers, under which are the three gates of Praise, Nobility, and Honor and Power, with the six chained harpies of temptation, and two vigilant Archdukes in armor, and figures holding garlands and crowns. The great genealogical tree rises above the figures that represent France, Sycambria, and Troy, and bears portrait-like half-figures of the twenty-six Christian princes from whom Maximilian claimed descent, with pictures of himself and his family. There are also twenty-four minutely delicate cuts, showing the most remarkable events in the Emperor’s life, accompanied with rugged explanatory rhymes by the poet-laureate. Dr. von Eye says that “the extent and difficulty of the task appear to have called forth the powers of the artist to their highest exercise. In no work of Dürer’s do we find more beautiful drawing than there is here. Each single piece might be taken out and prized as an independent work of art.”

The master drew these very elaborate and intricate designs between 1512 and 1515; and the enormous work of engraving them was devolved upon Hieronymus Rösch of Nuremberg. During its progress the Emperor frequently visited Rösch’s house in the Fraüengässlein; and it became a town saying, that “The Emperor still drives often to Petticoat Lane.” On one of his visits, a number of the artist’s pet cats ran into his presence; whence, it is said, arose the proverb, “A cat may look at a King.”

In 1516 Dürer painted a fine portrait of Wohlgemuth, now at Munich, showing a wrinkled old face lit up by bright eyes, and inscribed, “This portrait has Albert Dürer painted after his master Michael Wohlgemuth, in the year 1516, when he was 82 years old; and he lived until the year 1519, when he died, on St. Andrew’s Day, early, before the sun had risen.” About the same period he designed and partly executed the Pietà, which is now in the St. Maurice Gallery at Nuremberg; and carved a Virgin and Child standing on the crescent moon, similar to the one which he had engraved three years before.

In 1518 Dürer also painted the scene of the death-bed of the Empress Mary of Burgundy, under the title of “The Death of the Virgin,” and on the order of Von Zlatko, the Bishop of Vienna. The Emperor Maximilian, Philip of Spain, Bishop Zlatko, and other notables, were shown around the couch. This large and important work was in the sale of the Fries collection in 1822, but cannot now be found, although there is a rumor that it is on the altar of a rural church near St. Wolfgang’s Lake, in Upper Austria.

In 1518 Dürer visited Augsburg, during the session of the Diet of the Empire, and not only sold many of his engravings, but made a number of new sketches and portraits. His most important work on this journey was a portrait of the Emperor, who gave an order on the town of Nuremberg to pay 200 guldens “to the Emperor’s and the Empire’s dear and faithful Albert Dürer.” On this picture the master inscribed, “This is the Emperor Maximilian, whom I, Albert Dürer, drew at Augsburg, in his little room high up in the imperial residence, in the year 1518, on the Monday after St. John the Baptist.” About the same time the master painted the unpleasant picture of “The Suicide of Lucretia,” now at Munich, showing an ill-formed nude woman of life size, said to have been copied from Agnes Frey. The portrait of the witty and learned Lazarus Spengler dates from the same year.

When Maximilian died, the Rath of Nuremberg refused to continue the pension which he had granted to Dürer, though the artist addressed its members as “Provident, Honorable, Wise, Gracious, and Dear Lords,” and enumerated his services to the dead Emperor. He also vainly demanded the payment of the imperial order for 200 florins, “to be paid to him as if to Maximilian himself, out of the town taxes due to the Emperor on St. Martin’s Day,” though he offered to leave his house in pledge, so that the town might lose nothing if the new Emperor refused to acknowledge the validity of the claim.

At the time of the death of Maximilian the great woodcut of “The Triumphal Arch” was unfinished, and the blocks remained in the hands of the engraver. Dürer and Rösch published a large round cut containing twenty-one of the historical scenes, as a memorial of the late sovereign, and this singular production speedily went through four editions. A few trial-impressions of the whole Arch had been struck off before the Emperor’s death, two of which are now at Copenhagen, one in the British Museum, and one at Stockholm. In 1559 the first edition of the entire Arch was printed at Vienna, at the request of the Archduke Ferdinand, and another edition was issued by Bartsch in 1799.

In 1519 Dürer published an excellent wood-engraving of the late Emperor Maximilian, with inscriptions recording his titles and the date of his death. It showed a pleasant face, full of strength and character. Among the painted portraits of Maximilian which are attributed to the master, the best is in the Vienna Belvedere; and another was in the late Northwick Collection, in England. A beautiful portrait in water-colors is in the library of the Erlangen University.

In 1519 Dürer also prepared an exquisitely finished copper-plate engraving of “St. Anthony,” showing the meditative hermit before a background of a quaint mediæval city, very like Nuremberg, abounding in irregular gable-roofs and tall castle-towers. Several admirable copies of this work have been made.

CHAPTER VI.