HISTORY ONLINE

"The Apocalypse" (15 cuts) is distinguished by its daring fancy and grandeur of composition . The most striking of the series are: the "Four Riders", the "Angels of the Euphrates", and the "Battle of the Angels with the Dragon". To the same period belong, for the most part, the powerful "Larger Passion" (7, later 20, cuts) as well as the beautiful "Life of the Virgin" (16, later 20, cuts), in which the scenes from the life of the Holy Family in Egypt have all the sweetness of a charming idyll. Mention should be made of the so-called "Green Passion" in the Albertina Museum at Vienna, a series of twelve drawings with pen on green paper, also of the "Smaller Passion" of a later date in 37 woodcuts, and of the 17 copperplate engravings on the same subject. For the fifth time the artist came back to the Passion of Christ eight years before his death; a few sketches are to be found in the Uffizi at Florence and in the Albertina at Vienna. Wood and copperplate engraving were brought to great perfection by Durer; the latter, and etchings as well, by his own work; the former by his directions to the wood-engravers who carried out his designs.

German artists found it difficult to reconcile their medieval devotional imagery-represented with rich textures, brilliant colors, and highly detailed figures-with the emphasis by Italian artists on the antique, on mythological subjects, and on idealized figures. Dürer's self-appointed task was to provide a model for his northern contemporaries by which they could combine their own empirical interest in naturalistic detail with the more theoretical aspects of Italian art. In his many letters-especially those to his lifelong friend, the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer-and in his various publications, Dürer stressed geometry and measurement as the keys to understanding the art of the Italian Renaissance and, through it, classical art. From about 1507 until his death, he made notes and drawings for his best-known treatise, the Four Books on Human Proportions (published posthumously, 1528). Artists of his day, however, more visually oriented than literary figures, looked more to Dürer's engravings and woodcuts than to his writings to guide them in their attempts to modernize their art with the classicizing nudes and idealized subjects of the Italian Renaissance.

What is beauty ?

This was the question which Durer asked himself daily throughout his life, and to which he could never find a satisfactory answer. '6 Utility is an element of Beauty," he says, " therefore what is useless in man is not beautiful. To judge of Beauty requires reflection. The standard of Beauty should, in my opinion, be like the standard of what is good." Such are some of Durer's scattered thoughts upon the subject. His final opinion was that no man on earth can positively affirm what the perfection of human beauty is. No one but God knows that, and he to whom God may reveal it. In truth, and in truth alone, lies the secret of what constitutes beauty and perfection of shape in the human form, Truth, therefore, in Durer's opinion is the nearest equivalent to beauty, and truth can only be acquired by close intellectual study with careful and accurate observation of nature. The aesthetic mind of the nineteenth century may be repelled by some of Durer's most truthful creations, especially in his delineations of the nude female figure.

Durer, however, went to nature for his studies of truth, and rejected all search of ideal beauty, feeling, no doubt, that it would be as futile and unsatisfying as that of Faust. Hence all his exquisite studies of natural objects. A stag-beetle, a hare, a plant of celandine, a dead jay, a marble quarry, a village nestling by a stream-to him are all as much imbued with beauty as the human form and countenance. Dreaming of beautiful things which he could not achieve, he depicted exactly what he did see in his waking hours ; combining the somewhat farou&e veracity of a Rembrandt with the imagination of a Watts and the minute accuracy of an Isaac Oliver.

As has been mentioned before, Durer was a devoted student of natural history, especially of any object new or strange to him. A good instance of this is the well-known woodcut of a rhinoceros, done in I 5 I 5 from a drawing made by Durer from the description sent him by a friend from Lisbon, where in I 5 I 3 a live rhinoceros had been brought from India. The original drawing of which this woodcut .was made is in the British Museum, together with a similar drawing of a walrus, made also from description. It will be remembered that it was to try and see a whale that Durer made his hurried and, as it proved, fatal journey into Zeeland. It is as a black-and-white artist that Di.irer has his chief claim on the reverence of posterity. He was the first great artist in this noble art, in which he was to be followed by Rembrandt, Hollar, Ostade, Meryon, Whistler, Haden, and a host of others. For the first time in history art was, in spite of the abnegation of colour, placed within the grasp and the intelligence of the people. Schongauer had led the way with his engravings ; but it was Durer, with his great woodcuts, who spoke and taught a new popular language. Erasmus writ% of Durer's woodcuts as follows : 'Apelles, it is true, made use of few and unobtrusive colours ; while Durer, admirable as he is too in other respects, what can he not express with one single colour-that is to say, with black lines ? He can give the effect of -light and shade, brightness, foreground and background. Moreover, he reproduces not merely the natural look of a thing, but also observes the laws of perfect symmetry and harmony with regard to the position of it. He can also transfer, by enchantment, so to say, upon the canvas things which it seems not admiration to achieve without the winning charm of colour what Apelles only realised with its assistance ?'

In this short study of Albrecht Durer's life and work it has not been possible to do more than recount the more salient events of his life, and note the development and importance of his work as an engraver. His countless drawings, executed in every size and method, must be passed over with the remark that it is in them that Durer's chief excellence as an artist is to be found, and that a prolonged study of such collections as those in the print rooms at the British Museum and at Berlin, or in the Albertina collection at Vienna, cannot fail to instruct and inform the mind of any student, lay or professional. Of his numerous designs for ornament more cannot be said here than that they proved the foundation of a school at Nuremberg, it being the branch of engraving in which Durer's pupils and successors, the little masters, particularly excelled. All the works of carving or sculpture which have been attributed to Durer may be considered as doubtful ; the once famous hone-stone carving of liie Birth of St. John tile Baptist being now known to be the work of a later Nuremberg artist. As a painter Durer's works rank high, but not in the first class ; as an engraver he is easily the first of his age, though some may think him to have been excelled in mere technical skill by Schongauer or Aldegrever ; as a draughtsman he remains unrivalled for precision, dexterity, and variety ; as a thinker he is a worthy representative of the age of Luther and Erasmus.

But it is not only as a mere creative artist that D;irer attained his eminence. He was one of the great pioneers of art. Before him, little or nothing had been done north of the Alps to make art a factor in popular life. There is probably no branch of the fine arts which has not been affected in some way or another by the fact of Durer's existence. Of how many artists can it be said that they left an impress on the whole subsequent history of art, and that they remain beacon lights or milestones by which the course of true art can be followed with the certainty of arriving at some definite conclusion ? Giotto, Luca Signorelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, Titian, Velazquez, Turner, Rembrandt, it is among these names that that of Durer will rank for ever in the history of the world.

The minds of those who study Durer's work should be open and unbiassed. In that case there cannot but be conveyed to them the lesson which truth, purity, and sincerity of purpose are ever bound to teach. In the words of Camerarius, '6 There is nothing foul, nothing disgraceful in his work ; the thoughts of his pure mind shunned all such things " ; and again, " if there be anything in this man that at all resembled a fault, it was only his incessant diligence and the frequently unjust severity of his own self-criticism."

In bringing this monograph to a conclusion, the words may be quoted which Durer wrote in 15 I 2 among the many drafts for his book on proportion : "In this matter I will, with the help of God, set forth the little which I have learnt, though it will seem but a poor thing to many. But this does not trouble me, for I know well that it is easier to find fault with a thing than to make something better."