IN CONCLUSION
After turning over Dürer prints and drawings, after meditating on his
writings, we feel that we are in the presence of one of those forces
which are constant and equal, which continue and remain like the growth
of the body, the return of seasons, the succession of moods. This is
always among the greatest charms of central characters: they are mild
and even, their action is like that of the tides, not that of storms.
"If only you had my meekness," Dürer wrote to Pirkheimer (set: p. 85),
half in jest doubtless, but with profound truth:--though the word
meekness does not indeed cover the whole of what we feel made Dürer's
most radical advantage over his friend; at other times we might call it
naïvety, that sincerity of great and simple natures which can never be
outflanked or surprised. Sometimes it might be called pride, for it has
certainly a great deal of self-assurance behind it, the self-assurance
of trees, of flowers, of dumb animals and little children, who never
dream that an apology for being where and what they are can be expected
of them. Such natures when they come home to us come to stop; we may go
out, we may pay no heed to them, we may forget them, but they abide in
the memory, and some day they take hold of us with all the more force
because this new impression will exactly tally with the former one; we
shall blush for our inconstancy, our indifference, our imbecility, which
have led us to neglect such a pregnant communion. Not only persons but
works of art produce this effect, and they are those with whom it is the
greatest benefit to live.
It is true that, compared with Giotto, Rembrandt, or Michael Angelo,
Dürer does not appear comprehensive enough. It is with him as with
Milton; we wish to add others to his great gifts, above all to take him
out from his surroundings, to free him from the accidents of place and
time. In one sense he is poorer than Milton: we cannot go to him as to a
source of emotional exhilaration. If he ever proves himself able so to
stir us, it is too occasionally to be a reason why we frequent him as it
may be one why we frequent Milton. Nevertheless, the greater characters
of control which are his in an unmatched degree, his constancy, his
resource and deliberate effectiveness, joined to that blandness, that
sunshine, which seems so often to replace emotion and thought in works
of image-shaping art, are of priceless beneficence, and with them we
would abide. Intellectual passion may seem indeed sometimes to dissipate
this sunshine and control without making good their loss. Such cases
enable us to feel that the latter are more essential: and it is these
latter qualities which Dürer possessed in such fulness. In return for
our contemplation, they build up within us the dignity of man and render
it radiant and serene. Those who have felt their influence longest and
most constantly will believe that they may well warrant the modern
prophet who wrote:
The idea of beauty and of human nature perfect on all its sides, which
is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it
has not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious
faults of our animality and of a human nature perfect on the moral
side--which is the dominant idea of religion--has been enabled to have;
and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a devout
energy, to transform and govern the other.
INDEX
Aachen
Adam (Melchor)
Aeschylus
Albertina
Altdorfer (Albrecht)
Anabaptists
Andreae (Hieronymus)
Angelico (Fra Beato)
Antwerpo
Apelles
Aristotle
Arnold (Matthew)
Augsburg
Balccarres (Lord)
Bamberg (Library)
Barbari (Jacopo dei)
Barberini (Gallery)
Barye (Antoine Louis)
Basle
Baudelaire (Charles)
Bavaria
Beers (Jan van)
Beham (Barthel and Sebald)
Behaim
Bellini (Gentile)
Bellini (Giovanni)
Berlin
Blake (William)
Bologna
Bonnat (Léon)
Borgia (Cesare)
Borgia (Alexander), see Pope
Botticelli
Bremen
Breslau (Bishop of)
Breughel (Peter)
British Museum.
Browning (Robert)
Brussels
Brutus
Burgkmair (Hans)
Butler (Bishop)
Caietan (Cardinal)
Calvin
Camerarius (Kunz Kamerer)
Carpaccio
Celtes (Conrad)
Charles V. (Emperor)
Cicero
Coleridge
Colet (Dean)
Colmar
Cologne (Köln)
Conway (Sir Martin)
Cook (Sir Francis)
Correggio
Cranach (Lucas)
Dante
Danube
Dodgson (Campbell)
Dolce (Ludovico)
Dresden
Dürer (Albert the Elder)
Dürer (Agnes, nee Frey)
Dürer, Andreas
Brothers and Sisters
Father-in-law, Hans Frey
Forefathers
Dürer, Hans
Dürer's House,
Mother (Barbara Helper)
Dürer (Quotations from),
Dürer's
Books:
Art of Fortification,
Human Proportions,
Measurement with Compass.
Drawings:
Adam's hand,
Christ bearing His Cross,
Dance of monkeys,
Himself,
Lion,
Lucas van Leyden,
Memento Mei,
Mein Angnes,
Mount of Olives,
Nepotis (Florent),
Pfaffroth (Hans),
Plankfelt (Jobst),
Sea-monsters,
Women's Bath,
Walrus.
Engravings on Metal:
Agony in the Garden,
Great Fortune,
Jerome (St.),
Knight (The),
Melancholy,
Passion.
Pictures:
Adam and Eve,
Adoration of Magi,
Avarice,
Christ among Doctors,
Coronation of Virgin,
Crucifixion,
Dresden Altar Piece,
Feast of Bose Garlands,
Hercules,
Lucretia,
Madonna with Iris,
Martyrdom of Ten Thousand,
Paumgartner, Altar Piece,
Preachers (The Pour),
Road to Calvary,
Trinity and All Saints.
Portraits:
Of himself, Leipzig, Madrid, Munich,
Holzschuher (Hieronymus),
Imhof, Hans (?),
Kleeberger (Johannes)
Krel (Oswolt),
Maximilian,
Muffel (Jacob),
Orley (Bernard van),
Unknown (Vienna),
Unknown (Hampton Court),
Unknown (Boston)
Unknown Woman (Berlin),
Unknown Girl (Berlin),
Wolgemut.
Woodcuts:
Apocalypse,
Assumption of Magdalen,
St. Christopher,
Gate of Honour,
Jerome (St.),
Life of the Virgin,
Last Supper,
Little Passion.
Ebner
Eck (Dr.)
Eckenstein (Miss)
Emerson
Erasmus
Euclid
Euripides
Eusebius
Eyck (Jan van)
FLAUBERT (Gustave)
Florentine
Frankfort
Frederick the Wise (Elector of Saxony)
Frey (Hans)
Frey (Felix),
Fronde,
Fugger,
Furtwängler,
Gainsborough,
Ghent,
Giehlom (Dr. Carl),
Giorgjone,
Giotto,
Goes (Hugo vander)
Goethe,
Gospel of
St. Luke,
St. Matthew,
St. John,
Grapheus (Cornelius),
Greece, Greeks, Greek,
Grien (Baldung),
Heaton (Mrs.),
_Heller (Jacob)_.
Henry VIII,
Hess (Eoban),
Hess (Martin),
Hippocrates,
Hokusai,
Holbein,
Holzselraher,
Homer,
Humanists,
Hungary,
Hutten (Ulrich von),
Imhof (Hans),
Innsbruck,
Jeanne D'Arc,
Jesus,
John (St.),
Jonson (Ben),
Juggernaut,
Keats (John),
Kolb (Anton),
Kratzer (Nicholas),
Kress (Christopher),
Lady Margaret (Governess of the Netherlands),
Landauer (Matthew),
Leipzig,
Leonardo da Vinci,
Link (Wenzel),
Lippmann,
London,
Longfellow,
Lotto (Lorenzo),
Louvre,
Lucas van Leyden,
Luther,
Lutzelburger,
Mabuse (Jan de),
Macbeth,
Machiavelli.
Madrid,
Mantegna (Andrea),
Mantua,
Manuel,
Marcantonio,
Mark (St.),
Marlowe,
Maximilian I.,
Melanchthon,
Mexico,
Michael Angelo,
Miller (A.W., Esq.),
Millet (Jean Francois),
Miltitz,
Milton,
Montaigne,
_Monthly Review_,
Montpelier (Town Council),
More,
Morley (Lord and Lady),
Moses,
Muffel (Jacob),
Munich,
Nassau,
Neudörffer,
Nietzsche,
Nützel (Caspar),
Orley (Bernard van)
Ostendorfer (Michael)
Pacioli (Luca)
Padua
Parrhasius
Paul (St.)
Paumgartner (Stephan)
Peasants' War
Penz (Georg)
Peter (St,)
Phidias
Pirkheimer (Charitas)
(Philip)
(Willibald)
Pitti (Gallery)
Plato
Pleydenwurf
Pliny
Polizemo
Polycleitus
Pope
Adrian IV.
(Alexander VI.)
(Julius II.)
(Leo X.)
Porto Venere
Portugal
Prague
Praxiteles
Protogenes
Psalms
Rabelais
Raphael
Reformation, Reformers
Rembrandt
Renascence
Reuohlin (Dr.)
Reynolds
Ricketts (C. S.)
Rochefoucauld (La)
Roger van der Weyden
Rome
Rossetti (Dante Gabriel)
Rubens (Peter Paul)
Savonarola
Scheurl (Christopher)
Schongauer (Martin)
Schönsperger
Shannon (C. H.)
Shakespeare
Sistine (Chapel)
Spalatin (George)
Spengler (Lazarus)
Stabius (Johannes)
Städel Institut
Stromer (Wolf)
Strong (S. A)
Swift (Dean)
Teniers (David)
Thawing (Dr. Moritz)
Titian
Tschertte (Johannes)
Uffizi (Gallery)
Ulm
Van Dyck
Varnbüler (Ulrioh)
Vasari
Velasquez
Venice
Veronese (Paul)
Verona
Verrall (Dr.)
Vienna
Virgil
Vitruvius
Warham (Archbishop)
Watteail (Antoine)
Watts (G. F.)
Weimar (Grand Ducal Museum)
Whistler (James McNeil)
Wittenberg
Wolfenbüttel
Wolgemut
Wordsworth
Würzburg (Bishop of)
Zeeland
Zeuxis