HISTORY ONLINE

THIRD PERIOD (1520-1528)

Admirable sketches for "St. Jerome with the Skull", lately discovered by Anton Weber in Lisbon, give ample proof of the artist's diligence during his stay in the Netherlands. The striking head of the saint is very like the "Head of an Old Man" in the Albertina. After his return to Nuremberg, Durer painted a noteworthy "Head of Christ", and portraits of Pinkheimer, Erasmus, and Holzschuher. His last work of importance (1526) was the "Four Apostles", Peter with John and Paul with Mark; these paintings which are now in Munich, are much admired for the individuality of character expressed by the figures and the fine treatment of the drapery. From the inscription under these pictures, despite the fact that Peter is represented as holding the keys of heaven, and from other circumstances that prove little, some have wished to infer that towards the end of his life became attached to the doctrines of Luther. But even the Protestants van Eye, A. W. Becker, C, Kinkle, and others, do not share in this opinion, and M. Thausing, the great Durer scholar, has now rejected it. No doubt many well-disposed persons of the time saw the necessity of ecclesiastical reform and hoped it would be hastened by Luther's stand. But they were deceived and acknowledged it, as Pirkheimer did for himself and his friend: "I confess that in the beginning I believed in Luther, like our Albert of blessed memory...but as anyone can see, the situation has become worse." In the years 1525-27, Durer wrote three books: on geometry, the proportions of the human figure, and the art of fortification.

When Dürer returned from Venice in 1507, it was his intention to write a manual of the art of painting. Soon, however, his attention was concentrated on the proportions of the human form. His work on the engraving of Adam and Eve (1504; B.1) taught him that the information given by Vitruvius was insufficient to establish universally valid laws of proportion. If he wanted to progress further towards a systematic description of the external appearance of the ideal human body, his only recourse was to engage in an exact study of nature, through precise measurements of a large number of men, women and children. In doing this, he employed two methods. In the first, distances between clearly defined points on the body were measured and expressed as aliquot parts of the model’s total height. By arranging the resulting data and eliminating aberrant values, series of typical values were obtained. Dürer’s second method was derived from the ‘Exempeda’ (six-foot) system described by Alberti in his De statua (1434): the total height of the figure is divided into six equal parts to obtain a module that is then used for all subsequent measurements. Dürer called this unit of measurement, which differs from one model to the next, the Messtab (‘guage’). As with Alberti, it is expressed in three measurements, calculated decimally.

By 1513 Dürer’s research on the basis of the aliquot parts was complete and was incorporated in the first book of his treatise of proportion, the Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion, of which there exists a manuscript fair copy made in 1523 (Dresden, Sächs. Landesbib., MS. R147f). He immediately embarked on the work with the Messtab, which formed the second of the four books; this too is likely to have been substantially complete in 1523. As the human types deduced from anthropometry and defined in these two books were not sufficient for all the practical demands of the working artist, Dürer invented methods and drawing instruments in order to present, in a third book, ways in which the proportions could be varied, still on the basis of the given types. The following sections are devoted to the construction of the head and present a series of transmogrifications of human physiognomy that cross the border into caricature. The third book closes with a reflective passage that considers the nature and essence of art and its relationship to God. This ‘aesthetic digression’, the first attempt in the language to deal with such a theme, is a superb piece of German prose. Dürer became a linquistic creator, giving every sentence an almost pictorial shape and depth from the riches of his own imagination. In the fourth book, to enhance the practical usefulness of his treatise, Dürer added a theory of movement. Here, however, the concern is only with the external appearance of the body in motion, with no attempt at teaching anatomy, as he expressly emphasized. There is then a special section devoted to twisted and bent postures, which are evolved with the aid of parallel projection from the basic plan.

Dürer’s previous work, the Vnderweysung der Messung (Nuremburg, 1525), was intended to improve the young artist’s basic theoretical equipment. Here too he progressed from practical information to theory and principle. He gave the first account in German of the generation of the ellipse, the parabola and the hyperbola from conic sections. The same determination to base practical application on theoretical speculation also underlies his concern with the geometry of three-dimensional bodies, the five Platonic and seven Archimedean Solids, all of which are figured. He then supplied instructions for folding the pages to make a three-dimensional model ‘which is useful for many things’. The third book of the Vnderweysung deals with the practical application of geometry in architecture. It includes instructions for making both fixed ad movable sundials, including the necessary basic astronomical concepts. The work ends with a comprehensive exposition of scientific perspective.

The practical application of geometrical theory reappears in Dürer’s work on fortification, Etliche Vnderricht, zu Befestigung der Stett, Scholz vnd Flecken (Nuremburg, c. 1527). Although he had earlier, mostly Italian, literature to go on, and although most of the designs for fortifications he presented were not of his own devising, the importance of the work transcends the fact that it was the first book in German on the subject. With its plans, elevations, sections and perspectival views (see MILITARY ARCHITECTURE AND FORTIFICATIONS, fig. 23), it was the first printed book in any language to bring together elements of the art of fortification, both speculative and proved in action, from many sources and to present them as a system.