The Mentor, No. 48, Two Early German Painters: Dürer and Holbein

Two Early German Painters
DÜRER AND HOLBEIN

By FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.

Marquand Professor of Art and Archeology, Princeton University

MENTOR GRAVURES

ALBRECHT DÜRER

A great painter gives us much more than skilfully arranged lines and colors. These are only the symbols by which we may share his vision of the world. What we must try to find in any work of art is the soul of a great man. This is particularly true of so serious an artist as Albrecht Dürer (doo´-rer) of Nuremberg, who was born in 1471, a little before the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation. In that movement he shared heartily, but without bitterness for the Catholic Church, in which he had been bred. He was a broad-minded Christian, a thoughtful and thorough craftsman. In the little drawing he did of himself at thirteen we see the serious, worried lad already a competent draftsman. We may see him again in the Madrid portrait, the confident young painter of twenty-seven; at Munich, the mature and dignified artist of thirty-six; and finally, in the haggard woodcut profile, as a man grown old with unabated ardor of spirit.

The accent of study and concentration is present at every stage. He painted so carefully that such work did not pay him. The engravings, of which he did about 100 with his own hand, brought him in a comfortable fortune. They are marvels of faithful observation and of minute execution. When old age and illness made painting and engraving difficult, he wrote books on the proportions of the human body and the art of fortification. We must not expect a man of such stern and high ideals to be charming. He may, however, have many true things to tell about life and character that it behooves us to know.

THE ENGRAVINGS

At fifteen Dürer was apprenticed to the painter and woodcutter, Michael Wohlgemuth. The lad saw the advantages of the new process of woodcutting and copperplate engraving, by which a design might be multiplied. Then the good wife Agnes, whom he married by parental arrangement at twenty-three, came to be a thrifty saleswoman for the prints. The work was of the most taxing kind, being all done under a magnifying lens. When the firm lines had been graven in the copper they were filled with ink, which under heavy pressure from a roller press was transferred to paper. The lines of Dürer were so fine and closely spaced that the whole print got a charming pearly quality which is well represented in our reproductions. Bible stories, the life of Christ and the Virgin, popular customs, portraits of his learned friends, and a strange series of plates having a moral meaning may be specially noted. In 1513 and 1514 he engraved what are called the four master plates, two of which are reproduced.

The Knight, Death, and the Devil. Upon a splendid steed an armored knight rides through a rocky defile, high above which is seen his goal, an imposing castle. Forms of horror beset the traveler. The horse sniffs impatiently at a skull in the road. King Death himself, mounted on a jaded nag, holds up an hourglass. The Knight’s hours are measured. Behind the horse stalks a swinelike form, which may represent the lower temptations that assail a warrior of the Lord. Regardless of these nightmare shapes, the Knight holds his restive horse in the road. Fortitude has overcome sin and fear of death. Such seems the large, informing idea of a picture which would be exquisite if regarded merely as minute delineations of forms of rocks and trees, and textures of hair and armor.

Saint Jerome in His Study. In depicting the Cardinal Saint, who in the late fourth century translated the Holy Scriptures into eloquent Latin, Dürer may well have wished to emphasize the enviable serenity of the scholar’s lot in contrast with the perilous course of the Knight. Everything in this study speaks of peace and steady, satisfactory endeavor. The light shimmers upon wall, floor, and ceiling like a blessing. It seems as if no sight or sound of troublous or unworthy sort could enter this scholar’s sanctuary. The skull and hourglass are no longer symbols of dread. The saint is oblivious of the passage of time, and looks forward to death as the opening of fuller knowledge. The elaborate and beautiful details of the room assure us that this is no mere dream of an idealist, but an actual place that a student of the divine mysteries might inhabit. A different kind of peacefulness pervades the small engraving of the Hermit Saint, Anthony of Egypt, behind whom rise the picturesque walls and roofs of Dürer’s own Nuremberg.

THE WOODCUTS

The engravings are by Dürer’s own hand; the woodcuts are copies of his designs by capable assistants. As early as 1499 he had published the impressive illustrations for the Revelation of Saint John. For terror and ferocity the print representing the four riders who begin the destruction of mankind before the last day has never been equaled. For twelve years he worked at the designs for the Life of the Virgin, and a large and a small series of the Passion of Christ. One woodcut from the Little Passion, Christ in Gethsemane with the sleeping apostles, is reproduced. He has used the small scale of the plate to indicate a peculiar heartlessness in the disciples calmly sleeping so near their agonized Lord. The postures of vehement prayer and of complete exhaustion are affectingly truthful. The basis of such designs is the artist’s own pen drawing, which is pasted or traced on a pear-wood plank. All the blank spaces are cut away with a knife, leaving the lines in relief. This wood block may be set up with type pages and printed on an ordinary press. It is thus better adapted to book illustration than engraving, which requires special printing.

About 1511 Dürer reprinted the Revelation, and published the three new books. They were justly popular, and from that time he painted only when he pleased. The woodcuts, which faithfully represent drawings made with a coarse quill pen, will look rude to eyes accustomed to the often meaningless finish of modern illustrations. It will require patience to see how direct, sincere, and vigorous is the expression. With so coarse a tool nothing can be left to chance or smoothed down. Every line must tell, and every line in the Dürer woodcut does tell its story of structure and feeling. Dürer’s woodcuts are as fine in their way as his more popular engravings.

THE PAINTED PORTRAITS

From the first Dürer revealed in portraiture an inflexible curiosity as to form and insight as to character. The earlier portraits, those of his master Wohlgemuth, and of his own father, have a speaking lifelikeness. But the very endeavor to omit nothing and say everything with resolute truthfulness makes some of the early portraits stiff and forbidding. This defect is hardly noticeable in the three admirable portraits of his maturity, which are our special theme.

They were all painted after his Venetian visit of 1506. There he saw portraiture as faithful as his own, but softer and more agreeable. Open-minded student that he always was, he readily learned the lesson. The charming head of a young woman represents the fruits of this new experience. With a comeliness that is by no means merely pretty, one gets the sense also of character and of capacity. The tightly drawn hair, the head held alertly a little forward, tell of aggressiveness with self-control, of perfect physical and mental well-being. It was such strong mothers as this that bore the men who in finance, manufactures, commerce, and scholarship made the little city of Nuremberg famous. Initials on the bodice suggest that this may be the wife Agnes, who was an efficient business partner and a terror to certain easygoing friends. Firm yet minutely varied lines, modeling soft and lifelike but also decisive,—such are the technical merits of this masterpiece.

Among Dürer’s portraits of himself, the head in which the master gave himself the aspect of a Christ is the favorite of many people. The workmanship is of extraordinary carefulness and beauty. Every detail of the fur, of the flowing hair, of the powerful, slender hand, is there; but the effect remains large. There is in the face a sense of dignity, reserve, decision, and sympathy. Other portraits are probably much more like Dürer as Nuremberg saw him. This presents his own ideal of himself as creative artist, exemplifying a spiritual beauty that he ever strove to attain. Despite an old inscription reading 1500, we must date this portrait after that Venetian visit which brought to Dürer new power and self-confidence.

Efficiency was the trait Dürer most admired. His merchant friend Hieronymus Holzschuher possessed this quality in a high degree, as his portrait shows. He still directs toward an admiring world the bluest, brightest, steadiest eyes ever painted. The silvery hair and beard glisten like a halo before a blue sky. The firm, thin lips under the scant, well kept mustache still tell of the sagacity and persistence that won for Hieronymus a fortune and the mayoralty of a proud city. Nor is this power and rectitude without kindness. One feels the living presence of a man absolutely just, but also quick to see another man’s side, and withal humorous. Of an old age not too frosty and wholly vigorous, this picture is a most remarkable embodiment. That Dürer’s genius is as marked in a slight sketch as in elaborately executed works, witness the charcoal study which he did of his old mother just before her death. Have a few lines ever told more piteously of resigned decrepitude?

THE FOUR APOSTLES

In his last years Dürer painted as a legacy to his native town the stately figures of the apostles Paul, Mark, Peter, and John. Already the Protestant movement which he held so dear was breaking up into wrangling sects. Dürer wished to recall men to the founts of Christian wisdom and unity. The apostles wear their grand robes with Roman dignity. The heads are sharply distinguished by temperament. The burning determination of Saint Paul is very unlike the excitability of Saint Mark; the inward serenity of Saint John most unlike the careworn pensiveness of Saint Peter. These are men to move a world.

On the 6th of April, 1528, he passed away, only fifty-seven years old, but exhausted by constant effort. The great bankers, merchants, scholars, and craftsmen of Nuremberg knew that a notable citizen had gone. He had known familiarly Melanchthon and Luther. Raphael had been glad to exchange drawings with him. His engravings and woodcuts were admired throughout Europe. After four centuries he remains the finest exemplar in art of the peculiar steadfastness and thoroughness of the German race. Goethe, the greatest of German poets, has written the finest tribute to Germany’s greatest artist:

HANS HOLBEIN

Whoever understands the art of Dürer needs little introduction to that of Holbein (hole´-bine). Hans Holbein was born in 1497, when Dürer was just beginning to be famous, at the imperial city of Augsburg, which was merely a larger Nuremberg. Holbein’s father was a painter, and the lad was early perfected in the craft. By his seventeenth year he was working at Basel, where for some ten years he practised book illustration, designing for metal and glass, religious subjects, wall painting. Such versatility he renounced later for the better paying branch of portraiture. In 1526 some German merchants called him over to London. There he soon became court painter to Henry VIII, and there he remained for the most part until his death by the plague in 1543. He was one of the first of those cosmopolitan portrait painters who follow their market, a homeless man, separated from wife and children, a completely detached person. That he was fitted for the part, the sturdy, confident portrait of himself shows.

As a painter Holbein was Dürer’s superior, though inferior to him as a man. Where Dürer set his bright colors in rather harsh combinations, Holbein worked out arrangements of mosaiclike depth and brilliance. Usually the background is pale blue, green, or other solid tone, against which the pale flesh tints, with crimson, green, or black of the rich costumes, glow like some precious enamel. He is as accurate in his drawing as Dürer, with less sense of effort.

Holbein painted the profile portrait of the scholar Erasmus about 1523. Erasmus was not merely very learned but also a wit, and Holbein has combined with the self-control and concentration of the face a sense of astuteness. The set lips would readily break into a smile. The gentle and careful pose of the hands is noteworthy. It is as if the great stylist caressed the paper to invite a happy phrase. Very effective too is the setting of the figure in the frame. Everything forms a beautiful pattern. Cut off the margin ever so little, and the figure will seem out of balance.

Finely composed again is the famous Madonna of the Meier family. The kneeling figures make the base of a pyramid, the lines of which are carried up by the Madonna’s cloak and the Christ Child’s outstretched hand. Perhaps the formal arrangement and the stately niche are a little out of keeping with the evident simplicity of all the people. In fact, the greatness of the picture lies mainly in its vitality, in the sense of strength and devotion it conveys. Holbein, like Dürer, conceives the Virgin simply as a German mother, none too intelligent, and rather ungraceful, but wholly wrapped up in the Divine Child, who is after all much like an ordinary German baby. The gentleness of Mary’s clasped hands is one of the many beautifully studied details.

A consummate example of his work is the Jane Seymour of 1536. In the third wife of Henry VIII Holbein had only a moderately good subject. She seems a stolid person. Yet a certain shrewdness is also in the face. The setting in the frame is perfect, and the gold-embroidered robes and jewelry are done with a quiet dexterity that simply takes one’s breath away. The sketch for the portrait is preserved. Holbein always made a careful crayon drawing for every portrait, introducing slight tints, or even writing down the color of hair, eyes, etc. From such a study, which was made in a few hours, the picture was painted. We have then the most lifelike portraits known to art painted with the model absent. Today artists plague themselves and the sitter to poorer purpose. By utmost concentration upon the original drawing, Holbein seems to have omitted all unimportant or merely general traits of his subject, fixing upon the few that were really characteristic. Moreover, he stood upon his first reading of the character.

At any rate, these splendid sketches are the finest flower of Holbein’s genius. Scores of them are preserved at Windsor Castle. I reproduce only the rather vain and weak face of the poet, warrior, and dandy, the Earl of Surrey. I must repeat that Holbein was less of a man but in some ways more of an artist than Dürer, unqualifiedly superior as a mere painter. Dürer was full of profound ideas about religion and life. His work is truly a criticism of the life of his age. Holbein had virtually no ideas, and genially accepted his world as very good to live and paint in. He brought not a great mind to his art, but a tolerant temper, a most discerning eye, and a magnificently sure hand.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

LIFE OF ALBRECHT DÜRER (Translated from the German.)—By Moritz Thausing. The standard biography.

ALBRECHT DÜRER—(“Classics of Art”). Complete collection of reproductions of Dürer’s works in half tone.

ALBRECHT DÜRER—By Lina Eckstein. (Popular Library of Art.) A concise but readable epitome of the main facts.

ALBRECHT DÜRER—By T. Sturge Moore. (Scribner’s.) Somewhat fuller and of excellent literary quality.

ALBRECHT DÜRER—By Frederick Nüchter. (Macmillan.) Especially recommended as a biography and for excellent cuts of good scale at a moderate price.

HANS HOLBEIN AND HIS TIMES. (Translated from the German)—By A. Woltmann. The standard biography.

HANS HOLBEIN—By G. S. Davies. A recent and thorough work, in folio, with many illustrations.

HANS HOLBEIN—(“Classics of Art”). Useful collection of half tone cuts of all his work at a moderate price.

Editorial

In the letters that we have received from members of The Mentor Association we have had appreciation in full measure from readers of mature minds. The young people were yet to be heard from.

It meant a great deal to us, therefore, to receive a letter from a teacher concerning the work that she was doing with The Mentor. She had under her charge a class in High School, the pupils varying in age from 14 to 18 years. The teacher has been using The Mentor regularly. She distributes the pictures and the pupils read Monday’s Daily Reading on Monday, and so following, day by day throughout the week. On Friday afternoon she gives an hour to The Mentor. The article in The Mentor is read aloud to the class and also the Saturday Daily Reading. The teacher then reviews the subject with the pupils and asks them questions. In this way, she tells us, her class thoroughly absorbs each weekly subject in turn. Since receiving this letter we have made inquiry, and we find that a number of teachers are doing the same thing. We call the attention of teachers generally to this. It is a plan worth trying.

So much for the reading matter and the profit to be obtained for children therefrom. We have said nothing about the pictures, and surely it is not necessary to lay stress on the appeal made to children by beautiful pictures. And it is not merely a dull, crude interest that it arouses. It is in many cases an intelligent taste, that readily responds to cultivation. A writer in one of our daily papers called attention recently to an impressive scene that may be observed every Saturday morning at the Metropolitan Museum. It is a gathering of school children, who are assembled with open eyes and ears and eager and hungry minds to see and hear and know the things of beauty and of curious interest in the museum. These pupils are invited by the Metropolitan Museum itself, and under the sponsorship of The School Art League of New York.

When this was started the Museum people, it is said, doubted whether it would work. They were afraid perhaps that the school children would feel that they were being “done good to” and wouldn’t come. As a matter of fact, however, those who came first told the others that the visit was simply wonderful, and more and more came, until now you may see 600 children at the Metropolitan on Saturday morning, hanging on the lips of the people who are telling them about the art of the pictures and the stories that go with them. It is a most inspiring sight for those who are interested in education.

Most children are born with a certain understanding of the beautiful and a longing for it. They “want to know,” and they listen eagerly as long as anyone can tell them something that is interesting as well as informing. That is the attitude of mind that The Mentor addresses itself to, whether it is the mind of a child or of a grown-up. We have had plenty of assurances that The Mentor has interested and helped older readers. It is most gratifying to learn of the benefit that The Mentor is bringing to young readers—to have word from our readers that the children in the school or in the home are enjoying The Mentor. One reader tells us that he is taking The Mentor particularly for his children. “I want them to grow up with it,” he says. That interests us deeply. We want The Mentor to be a real factor in the life of the home, and a real part of the education of the young generation.