Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them
throng.
Memories of the middle ages, when the emperors, rough and bold,
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old.
And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted in their uncouth rhyme,
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every
clime.”
[Illustration: Fig. 228.--The Town Walls, Nürnberg.]
The “uncouth rhyme” was the familiar old proverb which told of the
universal trade of the old city, couched in the few words--
_Nürnberg’s hand,
Geht durch alle land;_
and which may be rendered in our modern vernacular--
“Nürnberg’s hand
Goes through every land.”
This proud boast was more truthful than boasts are in general; its
artisans literally sent their handiwork far and wide, their connections
were great, and their city was the centre of trade between the East and
West; for, prior to the discovery of the circumnavigation of the Cape of
Good Hope, it was the depôt for eastern merchandise, which was
principally sent with their own productions from Venice and Genoa; its
convenient central position in Europe enabling its traders to distribute
such produce, and all others coming to it, by means of the Danube and
the Rhine to the north and west of Europe. Its own manufacturers were
also much esteemed, and their works in metal highly valued, whether
consisting of armour for the knight or bijouterie for his lady. The
city, in fact, held within its warehouses the combined results of the
taste, luxury, and necessities of the age, and was busied in exchanging
them with the great trading towns of the low countries,--Bruges, Ghent,
and Antwerp,--the trade of the latter rising on the decline of that of
old Nürnberg, whose inland position kept it far away from the
sea-traffic which resulted from the discovery already alluded to. The
religious wars contributed ultimately to accelerate its downfall at the
commencement of the seventeenth century, and when peace was again
restored, prosperity had flown in the turmoil.
[Illustration: Fig. 229.--The Castle, Nürnberg.]
It was during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that Nürnberg
attained its greatest prosperity. At this time it was a free city of the
German empire, possessing an independent domain around it extending
twenty-three German miles, and was enabled to furnish the Emperor with
six thousand soldiers. Its castle had been the home of these rulers from
the twelfth century: memories of such inhabitants may still be traced.
“In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,
Stands the mighty linden, planted by Queen Cunigunde’s hand.”
The old tree still overshadows the inner yard of the castle, and the
“Heathen Tower” tells of still earlier times. The entire place is full
of antique memories; it has no sympathy with modern life; and you stand
in its quiet crumbling walls, and expect, if the silence be broken at
all, it will be by the heavy tread and clanking echo of a mail-clad
knight. Maximilian himself and his knights, so quaintly delineated by
Hans Burgmair, might rise from their graves, and enter their old
quarters as if they had but left them yesterday, so unchanged is the
aspect of the picturesque old castle which crowns the rock, and was erst
the proud home of Germany’s proudest rulers.
But why dwell on the past glories of the warlike great? rather let us
again quote the words of Longfellow, and exclaim
“Not thy councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world’s regard;
But thy painter Albert Dürer, and Hans Sachs the cobbler bard.”
Of the latter worthy we shall discourse anon; but the place of honour
and our primary attention must now be given to the artist.
[Illustration: Fig. 230.]
In the city of Nürnberg, on the 20th of May, in the year 1471, the house
of the goldsmith, Albert Dürer, rejoiced over the birth of a son. Albert
was thrifty, industrious, and had achieved for himself a good position
among the burghers of the old town. He was a native of Cola in Hungary,
but had sought congenial employ early in life where patronage was more
rife, and had entered the service of the goldsmith, Jerome Haller, who
had perfected him in a knowledge of his art, and finding the young man
worthy, he had ultimately given him his daughter in marriage, living to
rejoice with him over his increasing prosperity, and to congratulate him
on the birth of his son, who was destined to bear the same names as his
father, and to give them an undying celebrity. The young Albert grew up
a handsome, intellectual lad, and his tastes were such as an artistic
life in early youth might lead him to. The old goldsmiths were indeed
the best patrons of ancient art; but for them an important branch of
it--ornamental design--would have wanted the constancy of inventive
spur, and the art of engraving and printing from incised plates
originated in their workshops. They were intimately connected with the
artists of their day; and the greatest among them did not disdain to
furnish designs for their artisans. Hence the great variety and flow of
fancy exhibited in their works. This intercommunication benefited both
parties, and should be a lesson to modern exclusiveness, as it is a sort
of key to the reason why the artistic beauty of the past eclipses much
of the artisan’s work of the present age; and why also it displays an
abundance of creative ingenuity, which can scarcely be compatible with
the narrow studio a modern workshop has made itself. The early
intercourse of young Dürer with art and artists, spurred him on to
desire to occupy himself in greater works than he could find himself
employed upon in his father’s house. He had learned nearly all he could
learn there, and had diligently acquired the power to execute good works
as a goldsmith by the time he had reached his sixteenth year; but he was
wearied with the task of copying, and wished to join the ranks of the
master spirits of whom he occasionally caught a glimpse in the hours of
business. He also would be an artist, and communicated his higher
aspirations to his father. The elder Dürer had worked his way patiently
on by a slow and steady course, and could not understand why his son,
now a good workman, with a fair prospect of equally succeeding in trade,
should not be content to do as he had done. He had also that unpoetic
thrifty style of looking at the whole question, which led him to
consider his son as making a total wreck of the many years’ study which
he had already gone through to fit him for the goldsmith’s trade; and he
was, consequently, much displeased. He considered the question in the
light of a positive loss for an uncertain gain, and somewhat rudely
dismissed it from his mind. Like the majority of men, he could not bear
that his son should shape himself a new course by the aid of the strong
will of his own genius, when he considered the old course the best. He
had rested on the hope of his son’s aid, which he saw he was well able
to give him; and the prospect of his quietly succeeding him as a thrifty
goldsmith of Nürnberg he thought enough to satisfy the most ardent hope.
It was long before he could patiently listen to his son’s contrary mode
of reasoning, and it was not until the young Albert, by reiterated
attacks of earnest argument, closely but carefully enforced, had in some
degree shaken him, that he would turn a willing ear to his wishes. Once
having done this, and become fully aware of the strength of his son’s
hopes, and the eagerness of his aspirations, the elder Dürer changed his
whole conduct, and with laudable zeal sought the best artist by whom his
son should be instructed. There were always many in Nürnberg, but none
had better reputation than Michael Wohlgemuth; he also was an earnest,
busy man, constantly employed in many branches of his profession,
possessing in fact a great deal of the trading spirit, and therefore he
was the man with whom Dürer would most desire to see his son studying.
It was ultimately arranged that the young Albert should be bound to him
for the term of three years to learn the art of painting.
[Illustration: Fig. 231.--Michael Wohlgemuth.]
Wohlgemuth was at this period in the full vigour of his life, and was
performing an abundance of labour; he painted pictures, he furnished
designs for goldsmiths and artisans, he illustrated books, and was a
thriving and prosperous man. His works would not delight any eye now as
they once charmed the Nürnbergers. They are essentially stiff and hard,
exhibiting the exaggeration of form and attitude which makes early art
look grotesque: he was fond of stern drawing, and generally painted a
firm black outline to his figures, which has a very harsh effect. His
colouring is equally positive, and his saints are generally arrayed in
prismatic tints, relieved by the gold backgrounds which prevailed so
constantly in early art. His portrait painted by Dürer at a later period
of his life, is characteristic of the man. It is now in the Pinacothek
at Munich, and has been well described by Dr. Kügler, as delineating “a
strangely sharp, bony, and severe countenance.” Wohlgemuth was born at
Nürnberg in 1434, and died in 1519. His native city still contains some
of his best works, particularly in the Moritzkapelle, that sacred
resting-place of quaint old art, thus religiously preserved for an age
which brings to it few worshippers. It is but justice, however, to one
who was great in his own day, to observe that he occasionally rises
above the level of the bald style above indicated; and the eminent
writer we have just now quoted, observes,--“whenever tranquil feeling is
to be shown, he then exhibits many indications of a sense for grace in
form, and tenderness in expression;” and at a later period of his
life,--“the sharp cutting style, which strikes us so disagreeably in his
early works, is much softened: the colouring is also warm and powerful.”
He was certainly the best of the Nürnberg painters until his pupil
eclipsed him. Dr. Waagen considers the picture in the south aisle of the
Frauenkirche as one of the best works now possessed by his native city;
it represents St. Gregory celebrating mass amid many other saints; but
the men of Nürnberg seem most to value those in the Moritzkapelle, and
which he painted in 1487 for the high altar of the Schusterkirche, at
the expense of the family of Peringsdorfer. They represent various
saints life-size, and are drawn with much vigour, and coloured with
considerable power; the outlines are strongly marked in black, and they
exhibit his full merits. We select the figure of St. Margaret as an
example of his style; the somewhat constrained and angular attitude of
the right arm carries the mind back to the missal paintings of the
previous century; the small, pinched, and confused folds of the drapery,
belong to the German school almost entirely; and to it may be traced
Dürer’s errors in this particular portion of art. In the figure we have
selected from his works for comparison, we see the same peculiar,
“crinkled,” minute folds, completely destructive of dignity or breadth,
and untrue to nature: but we see also a grandeur of general conception,
and the bold leading lines of the composition unbroken by such minutiæ,
which are secondary to the main idea. It represents St. Anne (the mother
of the Virgin) clasping her hands in anguish at the refusal of the high
priest to accept the offering of herself and husband in the temple at
Jerusalem, and occurs in the first of Dürer’s series of woodcuts
illustrating the life of the Virgin.
[Illustration: Fig. 232.--St. Margaret, after Wohlgemuth.]
[Illustration: Fig. 233.--St. Anne, after Dürer.]
This striking peculiarity of treatment adopted by the early German
artists in their draperies, was once explained to us by an old native
artist, who assured us that it was entirely caused by the models for
study which they universally employed. These were small lay figures,
over which draperies were cast formed in _wet paper_, disposed according
to the artist’s fancy, and allowed to dry and set in the rigid form we
see in their pictures. We have nowhere met with this key to the mode of
study adopted by them; but it so completely accords with the character
of their drawings, and would be so easy to attain in this material, and
so difficult in any other, that it seems to bear the impress of
accuracy.
The work of Wohlgemuth, by which he is now most familiarly known, are
the illustrations of the _Nürnberg Chronicle_, of Hartmann Schedel,
published in 1493, which he executed in conjunction with William
Pleydenwurff. This once famous history is a folio, full of historic
learning, and illustrated by more than a thousand woodcuts, many of
which are very large. It would appear that Pleydenwurff executed the
views of cities and minor illustrations, and his greater fellow-labourer
designed and drew upon the wood the historical scenes. In conformity
with the custom of ancient chronicles, the history begins with the
creation of the world, the various incidents connected therewith being
all delineated. There is considerable invention, but great lack of
grace, in all these designs; they bear, however, strong resemblances to
the leading characteristics of Wohlgemuth’s paintings, and they are
superior to the woodcuts that preceded him, particularly as regards the
amount of finish and chiaroscuro they exhibit. The earliest woodcuts by
Dürer bear some resemblance to these works, and are in the dry hard
style of a master who evidently valued positive drawing at a higher rate
than the blandishments of colour; this, indeed, has always been a
characteristic of German art.
The three years of Dürer’s pupilage having expired, in conformity with
the usual German custom, he travelled to see the world and improve
himself. Of the early works of his genius we have no certain trace. That
he was a good portrait painter we may be assured by the examination of
his own picture in the gallery of the Uffizi at Florence, painted in
1498, and that of his father, in the Pinacotheck at Munich; but earlier
chalk drawings exist, showing his proficiency in this branch of art at
the age of fourteen. In the course of his peregrinations in Germany he
visited his brother artists, returning to his native city in 1494. His
earliest works on his return seem to have been designs on wood, for in
1498 appeared the series of woodcuts, illustrating the Revelations of
St. John. Dr. Kügler says “we should regard them as proofs of his
activity in the years immediately preceding; such at least is the case
in similar works. In these compositions the artist has already attained
great and peculiar excellence, but in these, as might be expected from
the subject, the fantastic element forms the groundwork of the whole.
These mystical subjects are conceived in a singularly poetical spirit;
the wonderful and monstrous meet us in living bodily forms. Some of them
exhibit a power of representation to the eye, and a grandeur of
conception the more surprising, since the shapeless exuberance of the
scriptural visions might easily have led the artist astray, as has
indeed frequently happened in the case of others who have attempted
these subjects.” In artistic effects these cuts are inferior to his
latter works, and the drawing is sometimes more defective; but in
inventive power they are master-pieces, and no artist before or since
has so successfully treated these mysteries. The reputation of Dürer was
well-established by these cuts, and gave him a good position in his
native town, which he never left afterwards, except for a journey to
Venice in 1506, and to the Netherlands in 1520.
All Dürer’s tastes were essentially national, if indeed they may not be
said to be narrowed within the circle of the town of Nürnberg and its
neighbourhood. He married soon after his return; and living entirely at
home, prosecuted his art with unwearied assiduity, the avarice of his
wife urging still further his constant labours. His studies seem to have
been made from the people around him, or from the scenes which
constantly met his eye. Thus, in his scripture prints, the people of
Nürnberg and the peasants of the neighbourhood, figure as
representatives of the ancient Jews. St. Joseph is a Nürnberg carpenter,
and the Virgin herself seems to have been modelled from some fair maiden
of the city. The stout burghers, who witness the happy meeting of St.
Joachim and Anne at the golden gate of the temple, in his series of
prints illustrative of the Life of the Virgin, are such as Dürer might
have seen daily loitering by the tower gate opposite his own windows;
and the modest-looking maiden with the extravagantly fashionable
head-dress, whom he has introduced in his “Marriage of the Virgin,” has
been absolutely copied from nature; the original sketch, made by his own
hand from a Nürnberg damsel, is preserved with many similar studies by
him in the British Museum. He was untiring in his converse with nature
as he saw it around him; and the minutely careful sketches which now
enrich our national collection, testify to his industry and anxiety for
truth as the basis of his labours.
[Illustration: Fig. 234.--View from Dürer’s House.]
The old town of Nürnberg was eminently picturesque, and was enriched
with artistic works by the best men of the day. The wealth of its
inhabitants was expended on their houses within and without, and the
churches were lavishly adorned with paintings and sculpture, as well as
with other riches of art connected with the service of religion. In its
quaint old streets might be studied the fruits of the faith and feeling
of its inhabitants. Numerous figures of the Holy Mother decorated the
street corners, or were enshrined over the portals of the doors of the
merchantmen, the light burning before each serving the double purpose of
religion and utility, in a city of dark tortuous lanes. The ingenuity of
the mason and sculptor was taxed in varied inventions for the further
adornment of the homes of the wealthy; and the numerous specimens of
artistic ironwork still remaining attest the taste and opulence of the
merchant princes of the old city. Art was thus wedded to utility as well
as to luxury, and at every step in Nürnberg the attention will still be
arrested by its influence.
[Illustration: Fig. 235.--The Residence of Albert Dürer.]
Dürer lived in a large mansion at one extremity of the town, close to
the gate from whence he could in a few minutes escape from the pent-up
city to the open fields. His house is one of those roomy buildings in
which there is enough timber to build at least a dozen modern houses.
The lower portion is stone, the upper, with its open galleries, of wood.
The view from his doors embraced the town gate, and the picturesque
tower, known as the Thiergartenthor, beside it. The house between that
and the narrow lane which leads up the castle hill was the property at
that time of one Martin Kötzel, who, having twice employed himself in
pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and in measuring the number of paces the
Saviour trod on the Via Dolorosa, had determined on his return to
consider his house as the representative of Pilate’s house, the Gate of
Nürnberg as that of Jerusalem, the churchyard of St. John in the fields
beyond, as Calvary, and the road between as the Via Dolorosa, and to
cause representations of the events of the Saviour’s journey in the line
of this road at the various distances where they were traditionally
supposed to occur; and the chief sculptor of Nürnberg, Adam Kraft, was
employed to execute the sculptures, which still stand a monument of the
piety of the old citizen, whose house (known by the figure of an armed
knight at its angle) is still familiarly called “Pilate’s House.” Time
has written strange alterations on these old works, and wanton injury
has also been done to them, but there still remains enough to show the
ability of their conception and execution.
[Illustration: Fig. 236.--The Himmelsthor, Nürnberg Castle.]
The castle comprises the somewhat rambling series of buildings of all
ages, styles, and dates, which crown the rock above. The singular manner
in which this isolated mass of stone suddenly rises from the sandy
plain may have induced the first foundation of the city, by the secure
locality it afforded the castle of a ruler in days of old. Its early
history is shrouded in obscurity--one of its towers has been attributed
to the Romans; it can still show undoubted works of the ninth century in
the chapels of Sts. Ottmar and Margaret, from which time it received
alterations and additions of all kinds, ending in leaving it the
picturesque assemblage of quaint old buildings which it at present
remains. The Himmelsthor, or “tower of heaven,” is the name given to the
large round tower which is built within the castle precincts on the
highest point of the rock, and which, as its title implies, soars toward
heaven, and forms a prominent feature in all views of Nürnberg. The
panorama from its summit is singularly striking, comprising the entire
country for an immense distance round. The _alt Feste_, where
Wallenstein encamped, in his memorable defence of these lines and of the
city when besieged by Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, and the blue hills
known as the Franconian Switzerland, terminating with the Moritzberg,
give relief to the otherwise flat vicinity. This tower has been
introduced in the background of some of Dürer’s designs, as well as
other portions of the castle. The old town-walls also figure in those
scenes from Holy Writ he so frequently designed. The anachronisms which
result from such a mode of realising scenes in past history were
sufficiently familiar in his own day to save them from all adverse
criticism; indeed, it had become the formula of early art, thus to
verify sacred events by adapting them to the experiences of every-day
life around, to which it never appealed in vain. To comprehend fully the
art of any one period, and the talent of any artist of that period, we
must go back mentally to the time in which he flourished, and measure
him by such as had preceded him. In this way alone can we form a right
judgment of his powers, and award him his due place in art.
[Illustration: Fig. 237.--Entrance Hall of Dürer’s House.]
In the days of Albert Dürer the street in which he resided was known as
“die Zisselgasse;” it is now appropriately named after the great artist
himself. When he lived and worked in his roomy old mansion, Nürnberg was
not quite so crowded within its own walls as it has since become by the
pressure of modern exigencies; and Dürer’s house appears to have had
out-buildings, and, most probably, a small garden, such as was awarded
to better-class houses in mediæval times. Dr. Frederick Campe tells us
that he bought, in 1826, from the proprietor of the house, a balcony in
which Dürer worked in summer time, and which originally must have
commanded some sheltered space wherein a few trees might grow. The house
has since been purchased by a society of artists, who honour themselves
by that act, and do honour to Dürer by preserving it as much as possible
in the state in which he left it, and exhibiting his works in the rooms.
The interior of the house has undergone some renovation, but it has
been done cautiously, and in strict character with the original
portions: it chiefly consists of new panelling and new doors, and they
are quaintly carved in the style of the sixteenth century. The external
door of the house still retains its old ironwork and lock
fittings.[212-*] We pass through from the street, and enter a roomy
hall, with a wide passage on one side, and an equally wide staircase on
the other, which leads to the upper floors. A ponderous beam supports
the ceiling, and a massive wooden pillar props the centre of this beam.
The profusion of timber, and abundance of space accorded to passages and
staircase, are indicative of past times, when wood was of less value
than it has since become. The floor on which this pillar rests is
flagged with stones; a small parlour is to the right; we pass it, and
midway in the passage come to a low door leading into a small square
room,--it was the studio of Dürer.
“Here, when art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart,
Lived and laboured Albert Dürer, the Evangelist of Art.”[212-†]
It is lighted from the street by a long narrow window about five feet
from the ground inserted in the top of an arch in the wall, as seen from
the inside, beneath which is a shelf of capacious breadth. A small
richly-carved altar-piece is now placed within it, and a few chairs. It
is a quiet secluded room, having no communication with any other. The
top of the walls and turrets of the old town, and a small patch of sky,
may be seen by an upward glance at the window; but there is no feature
to distract the denizen of the apartment: it is a place for
concentration of mind, and such must have been Dürer’s habits, as the
enormous amount of his works show. Leaving this room and proceeding
farther, we reach the quaintly constructed kitchen, with its enormous
fire-place half filling the apartment. The one small window to the
street lets in a gleam of light such as Rembrandt would have admired.
The arched door is fitted with a lock of that peculiar form and
character which assure the spectator that it is the handwork of an
ingenious smith of Dürer’s day; its broad plate is decorated with a
simple ornament consisting of the favourite gnarled twigs and leaves, so
constantly adopted in German decorations of all kinds, at the end of the
fifteenth, and during the sixteenth century. We leave the ground floor
and ascend the wide stairs. The front room on the first floor commands a
pleasant view of the small _Platz_ opposite the house, as it fronts the
Thiergartenthor, and the castled crag rises grandly over the houses
beside it. The walls are panelled, and the beams across the wooden
ceiling chamfered, and slightly carved. The aspect of the whole room is
striking, and it is rendered more impressive by the many examples of
Dürer’s genius placed within it, as well as of others by his master
Wohlgemuth. The woodcuts are framed, and comprise the best examples of
both masters; there is also an original drawing on vellum testifying to
the minute accuracy of Dürer’s studies. It is the figure of a lion,
bearing date 1512, drawn with all that patient care which characterises
his transcripts from nature. In the British Museum is a large volume
containing numerous studies for his principal works, and it is a
wonderful record of truth-seeking patience, as the minute parts of his
designs appear to have been drawn from nature as carefully as if such
sketches had been parts of a finished picture; his unwearied assiduity
in his profession has never been exceeded.
[Illustration: Fig. 238.--Dürer’s Studio.]
[Illustration: Fig. 239.--Kitchen in Dürer’s House.]
Nürnberg contains fewer of Dürer’s works than a stranger might be led to
expect.[215-*] The print-room of our British Museum, with its great
number of engravings and drawings, and its wonderful sculpture in
hone-stone by him, is a far better place to study the works of this
artist. There is, however, one work of singular interest preserved in
the old city, which is worth a long journey to see. It is the portrait
of the old Nürnberg patrician--Jerome Holzschuher, the friend and patron
of the artist. It represents a cheerful, healthy man over whose head
fifty-seven years have passed without diminishing his freshness and
buoyancy of spirit; the clear complexion, searching eye, and general
vigour which characterise the features, almost seem to contradict the
white hair that falls in thick masses over the forehead. For freshness,
power, and truth, this portrait may challenge comparison with any of its
age. Time has also dealt leniently with the picture, for it is as clear
and bright as the day it was painted, and is carefully preserved in its
original frame, into which a sliding wooden panel is made to fit and
cover it: the outside being emblazoned with the _armes parlantes_ of the
family of Holzschuher--a _wooden shoe_, raised from the ground in the
manner of the Venetian _chopine_. The picture was painted in 1526, and
“combines,” says Kügler, “the most perfect modelling with the freest
handling of the colours; and is certainly the most beautiful of all this
master’s portraits, since it plainly shows how well he could seize
nature in her happiest moments, and represent her with irresistible
power.” It still remains in the possession of the Holzschuher family,
and is located in their mansion at the back of the Egidienkirche, where
it is politely shown to strangers on proper application; and should the
visitor have the advantage accorded to the writer, of the attendance of
the last representative of the family, he will see that the same clear
eye and expressive features have also descended as a heir-loom in the
house.
It is at Florence, Vienna, and Munich, that Dürer’s paintings are
principally located. The Castle at Nürnberg possesses his portraits of
the Emperors Charlemagne and Sigismund. In the Moritzkapelle is the
picture which he painted for the church of St. Sebald in Nürnberg, by
the order of Holzschuher. It represents the dead Saviour just removed
from the cross, and mourned over by his mother and friends. It is
peculiarly brilliant in colour, and there is considerable force in the
deep rich draperies with which the figures are clothed, but it has the
defect visible in the works of Dürer’s master--a love of hard black
outlines. In this picture the faces, hands, and feet are delineated by
lines very slightly relieved by shadow, and reminding the spectator too
much of his woodcuts. This love for expressing firm outline is better
adapted to such works as his wall-paintings in the Rathhaus, or
Town-hall. They are executed on the north wall of the grand saloon, and
are divided by the principal door leading from the gallery; on one side
of which is an allegory of the “Unjust Judge” (which formed one of the
series of moral broadsheets published by Hans Sachs); and a group of
musicians in a gallery, probably representing those that belonged to the
town; on the other side of the door the entire length of the wall is
occupied by the allegorical triumphal car of the Emperor Maximilian I.,
a work which Dürer copied on wood in a series of large cuts, published
in 1522. In a fanciful car, drawn by many horses, sits the emperor in
regal state, attended by all the virtues and attributes which may be
supposed to wait on moral royalty. The very nature of such a work is
beset with difficulties, and it is seldom that any artist has entirely
surmounted them. State allegories present small fascinations to any but
the statesman glorified; but Dr. Kügler in his criticism of this work,
while he acknowledges its defects, is prepared to say that some of the
figures “display motives of extraordinary beauty, such as might have
proceeded from the graceful simplicity of Raphael.”[218-*] This painting
has suffered from time, and “restoration;” the design may be best
studied in the woodcut made from it.
[Illustration: Fig. 240.--House of Melchior Pfintzing.]
The Emperor Maximilian was a great patron of the arts, but particularly
of that branch which had newly arisen--the art of wood-engraving--which
he fostered with continual care, and by the help of such men as Dürer,
Burgmeyer, Schaufflein, and Cranach, produced works which have never
been excelled. During this period, extending over the first quarter of
the sixteenth century, a series of elaborate woodcuts were executed
under his own auspices, which were, however, principally devoted to his
own glorification. Two of these are the well-known “Adventures of Sir
Thuerdank,” and “The Wise King,” written in ponderous folios after the
fashion of the old romances, by Melchior Pfintzing, who resided in the
old parsonage house of St. Sebald (he being a canon of that church), a
picturesque building on the sloping ground beside it, which rises upward
to the Schlossberg, and which still retains the aspect it bore in his
days; its beautiful oriel and open balcony still testify to the taste of
mediæval architects. It is but a short distance from Dürer’s house, and
he must have frequently visited here. Here also, came the emperor to
examine the progress of these works: and the great interest he took in
superintending them has been recorded; for it is said that during the
time when Jerome Retzsch was engaged in engraving on wood the triumphal
car from the drawing by Dürer, the emperor was almost a daily visitant
to his house. This anecdote may naturally lead here to the consideration
of the question--did Dürer _engrave_ the cuts which bear his name, or
did he only _draw them_ upon the wood for the engraver? It is generally
considered that all cuts bearing an artist’s mark are engraved by that
artist, but this is in reality an error resulting from modern practice.
It is now the custom for wood-engravers to place _their_ names or marks
on their cuts, and very seldom those of the artists who draw the designs
for them upon the wood. It was the reverse in the old time; then it was
usual to place that of the designer alone, and as he drew upon wood
every line to be engraved, after the manner of a pen-and-ink drawing,
the engraver had little else to do than cut the wood from between the
spaces: hence his art was a very mechanical one, and his name was seldom
recorded. That of Retzsch does not appear on the car just named, but the
mark of Dürer solely; and when we consider the vast amount of labour
performed by Dürer as an artist, it is not likely that he wasted time in
the mechanical labour of cutting out his own drawings when he could
employ it more profitably. The Baron Derschau, himself a collector of
old cuts, assured Dr. Dibdin “that he once possessed a journal of
Dürer’s, from which it appeared that he was in the habit of drawing upon
the blocks, and that his men performed the remaining operation of
cutting away the wood.” Bartsch is decidedly of opinion “that he had
never employed himself in this kind of work.” Mr. W. A. Chatto, in his
anonymous “History of Wood Engraving,” has gone into this question with
much research and learning, and comes to the same conclusion; which is
strengthened by the fact, that the names of fourteen engravers, and the
initials of several others, were found engraved on the backs of the cuts
they executed for the “Triumph of Maximilian,” now preserved in the
imperial library at Vienna; the names of others are incidentally
preserved; and among the drawings by Dürer in the British Museum, is one
of a young lady, whom he has designated “wood engraver,” and who was
most probably employed by him. There is also a sufficient difference in
the style and manner of cutting his designs, which shows they must have
been done by different hands. It is not possible to note here a tithe of
the cuts done from his drawings.[221-*] His great serials are the
“Apocalypse,” published in 1498, the two series of the “Passion of
Christ,” and the “Life of the Virgin” (from which we give a specimen,
Fig. 241, “Christ bidding Farewell to his Mother”), all published in
1511. His largest woodcut was published in 1515, the “Triumphal Arch of
the Emperor Maximilian,” and this, like the car already alluded to, was
engraved on a series of ninety-two wood blocks, and then the impressions
pasted together, forming a large print ten feet high. It is a work of
great labour, and displays considerable invention.
[Illustration: Fig. 241.--Christ bidding farewell to his Mother.]
Of Dürer’s powers as a painter we have already spoken; but he excelled
also as an engraver on copper, and his prints of “Adam and Eve,”
“Melancholia,” and the small “Life of Christ,” have not been surpassed.
To him also we owe the invention of etching; he practised the art on
iron and on copper, and it is impossible to overvalue its utility. In
addition to his other labours he executed several pieces of sculpture,
one of which, the “Naming of John the Baptist,” we have already alluded
to as preserved in the British Museum, and some few others in
hone-stone, bearing his well-known mark, exist. He also wrote on Art,
and a portion of the original manuscripts of his book on the
proportions of the human figure, is still preserved in the library of
the old Dominican monastery at Nürnberg. He was a good mathematician, he
also studied engineering, and is believed to have designed and
superintended the additional fortifications in the town walls beside the
castle, which are remarkable as the earliest examples of the more modern
system of defence, which originated in the south of Europe, and with
which Dürer became acquainted during his sojourn in Venice, and the
fruits of which he thus practically brought to the service of his native
city.[223-*] He published too an essay on the fortification of towns. In
fact, there were few subjects to which his mind was directed that he did
not make himself complete master of.
Thus lived and laboured Dürer in the city of his adoption, studying
nature most diligently, and combining therewith high imaginings of his
own. In 1506 he undertook a journey to Venice, and its influence improved
him greatly. In the letters he wrote on this journey to his intimate
friend Pirkheimer he acknowledges this; in one of them he declares “the
things which pleased me eleven years ago please me no longer.” He also
notes the popularity which had preceded him, and says, “the Italian
artists counterfeit my works in the churches and wherever else they can
find them, and yet they blame them, and declare that as they are not in
accordance with ancient art they are worthless.”[223-†] But though
subjected to the slights of the unworthy, Dürer gratefully records the
nobler acts of nobler men, and notes that Giovanni Bellini publicly
praised him before many gentlemen, “so that I am full of affection for
him.” This noble old man did not confine his acts to praise alone, but
came to Dürer’s lodging and requested him to paint him a picture, as he
was desirous to possess one of his works, and he would pay liberally for
it. Dürer at this time was far from rich, was merely paying his way by
the practice of his art; and the small sums of money he notes as sending
for the use of his wife and widowed mother in Nürnberg, sufficiently
attest this, as well as his request to Pirkheimer to help them with loans
which he would repay.
[Illustration: Fig. 242.--Gate of Pirkheimer’s House.]
Pirkheimer’s name is so intimately connected with Dürer, and he remained
throughout his life so steady and consistent a friend, that no memoir of
Dürer can be written, however briefly, without his name appearing. He
was a man of considerable wealth and influence in Nürnberg, a member of
the Imperial Council, and frequently employed in state affairs. He had
it, therefore, in his power to aid Dürer greatly; he did so, and Dürer
returned it with a gratitude which ripened to affection, he declares in
one of his letters that he had “no other friend but him on earth,” and
he was equally attached to Dürer. The constant intercourse and kindly
advices of his friend were the few happy relaxations Dürer enjoyed.
Pirkheimer was a learned man, and cheerful withal, as his facetious book
“_Laus Podagræ_,” or the “Praise of the Gout,” can testify. The house in
which he resided is still pointed out in the _Egidien Platz_; it has
undergone alterations, but the old doorway remains intact, through
which Dürer must have frequently passed to consult his friend. “What is
more touching in the history of men of genius than that deep and
constant attachment they have shown to their early patrons?” asks Mrs.
Jameson.[225-*] How many men have been immortalised by friendships of
this kind; how many of the greatest been rendered greater and happier
thereby? When the Elector John Frederick of Saxony met with his
reverses in 1547, was driven from his palace, and was imprisoned for
five years, the painter Lucas Cranach, whom he had patronised in his
days of prosperity, shared his adversity and his prison with him, giving
up his liberty to console his prince by his cheerful society, and
diverting his mind by painting pictures in his company. He thus
lightened a captivity and turned a prison into a home of art and
friendship; thus the kindness and condescension of a prince were
returned in more value “than much fine gold,” in the bitter hour of his
adversity, by his humble but warm-hearted artist-friend.
That brotherly unity which ought to bind professional men of all
kinds--isolated as they must be from the general world--was more of a
necessity in the past time than in the present; and the artists formed a
little band of friends within the walls of ancient Nürnberg, consulting
with and aiding each other. The peculiarity of thought and tendency of
habit which constitute the vitality of the artist-mind, are altogether
unappreciated by the general world; completely misunderstood, and most
frequently contemned by men of a trading spirit, who look upon artists
as “eccentrics,” upon art as a “poor business,” and judge of pictures
solely by their “market value.” These things should bind professors more
strongly together. Their numbers are few; their time for socialities
limited; their world a small select circle; few can sympathise with
their cares or their more exquisite sensibilities; they must, therefore,
be content with the few whose minds respond to theirs, and they ought
not to make the narrow circle narrower, by unworthy jealousies or
captious criticism. Well would it be for us all, and infinitely better
for the world of art, if we practised still more
“Those gentler charities which draw
Man closer with his kind,
Those sweet humilities which make
The music which they find.”[227-*]
Dürer was essentially a man to love. His nature was kindly and open; he
knew no envy, and was never known to condemn the work of another
artist,--which, if bad, he would only criticise with a smile, and a
“Well! the master has done his best.” His general information was so
good, that it was declared of him by a contemporary, that his power as
an artist was his least qualification. His personal appearance was
dignified, and his face eminently handsome.[227-†] Yet, with all these
means of being happy, and making others so, few men endured more misery.
In an evil hour his family made a match for him in the household of Hans
Frei, whose daughter Agnes he married, and scarcely knew peace after.
She was a heartless, selfish woman, who could have no feeling in common
with her husband, and who only valued his art according to the money it
realised. “She urged him to labour day and night solely to earn money,
even at the cost of his life, that he might leave it to her,” says
Pirkheimer, in one of his letters to Tscherte, their mutual friend the
Viennese architect. All his friends she insulted and drove from the
house, in order that their visits might not interfere with his labours.
His aged mother, whom he had taken into his house after his father’s
death, was subject to contempt and ill-treatment. His letters from
Venice are sad, and show no pleasant home-thoughts. Yet he did much for
the bad woman to whom he was wedded, and seems to have thought of her
gratification by numerous presents. His amiable heart would not allow
him to separate from her, thus he bore her ill humours for his life, and
patiently endured his lot.[228-*] There were few men more adapted to
make a woman happy than Dürer: he had a handsome person, much fame, good
friends, great talent, and the most kindly amiability; but his wife was
perhaps the worst on record, on whom all this was thrown away. Yet she
was of very religious habit, and preserved all the externals of
propriety; but, as Pirkheimer observes, “one would rather choose a woman
who conducts herself in an agreeable manner, than a fretful, jealous,
scolding wife, however devout she may be.”
Banished from the society of friends, Dürer’s only solace was in his
art. Here only he found peace and pleasure. How earnestly and deeply he
laboured, the long catalogue of his productions can prove. The
truthfulness of his style is shown in his patient studies from nature,
and his works are the reflex of such a habit. The figure of the burly
townsman of Jerusalem who lifts his cap in acknowledgment of Joachim and
Anna, as they meet at the Golden Gate, in his illustrations of the Life
of the Virgin (Fig. 243), may be cited for its homely truth, a
characteristic which runs through all Dürer’s works, and gives them a
certain _naïveté_. The figure is an evident study of an honest townsman
of Nürnberg, and is as little like an ancient Jew as possible, though
admirable as a transcript from nature. Of far higher order are the
figures of the apostles, John, Peter, Mark, and Paul, which he painted
in 1526, and presented to his native city.[229-*] We engrave the figure
of Paul, the drapery of which is simple and majestic. A study for this
drapery, made as early as 1523, is in the collection of the Archduke
Charles of Austria. In these pictures, which are painted of life-size,
he has exerted his utmost ability, and eschewed any peculiarities of his
own which might interfere with the greatness of his design. “These
pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred the
mind of Dürer, and are executed with overpowering force. Finished as
they are they form the first complete work of art produced by
Protestantism.[229-†] What dignity and sublimity pervade those heads
of such varied character![230-*] What simplicity and majesty in the
lines of the drapery! what sublime and statue-like repose in their
attitudes! Here we no longer find any disturbing element: there are no
small angular breaks in the folds, no arbitrary or fantastic features
in the countenances, or even in the fall of the hair. The colouring too
is very perfect, true to nature in its power and warmth. There is
scarcely any trace of the bright glazing, or of those sharply defined
forms seen in other works by him, but everywhere a free pure impasto.
Well might the artist now close his eyes, he had in this picture
attained the summit of his art--here he stands side by side with the
greatest masters known in history.”[231-*]
[Illustration: Fig. 243.--Figure from Dürer’s Life of the Virgin.]
[Illustration: Fig. 244.--St. Paul, after Dürer.]
Of the great contemporaries of Dürer--whose works have given undying
celebrity to the old town of their residence--we must now discourse a
little. Honoured as these works still are by the Nürnbergers, they are
little known out of Germany; although, as exemplars of art in general at
the particular period when they were executed, they may challenge their
due position anywhere. The most remarkable is the bronze shrine of St.
Sebald, the work of Peter Vischer and his five sons, which still stands
in all its beauty in the elegant church dedicated to the saint. The
shrine encloses, amid the most florid Gothic architecture, the oaken
chest encased with silver plates, containing the body of the venerated
saint; this rests on an altar decorated with basso-relievos, depicting
his miracles.[231-†] The architectural portion of this exquisite
shrine partakes of the characteristics of the Renaissance forms
engrafted on the mediæval, by the influence of Italian art. Indeed, the
latter school is visible as the leading agent throughout the entire
composition. The figures of the Twelve Apostles and others placed
around it, scarcely seem to belong to German art: they are quite worthy
of the best Trans-alpine master. The grandeur, breadth and repose of
these wonderful statues cannot be excelled. Vischer seems to have
completely freed his mind from the conventionalities of his native
schools: we have here none of the constrained “crumpled draperies,” the
home-studies for face and form, so strikingly present in nearly all the
works of art of this era; but noble figures of the men elevated above
the earthly standard by companionship with the Saviour, exhibiting
their high destiny by a noble bearing, worthy of the solemn and glorious
duties they were devoted to fulfil. We gaze on these figures as we do on
the works of Giotto and Fra Angelico, until we feel human nature may
lose nearly all of its debasements before the “mortal coil” is “shuffled
off,” and that mental goodness may shine through and glorify its earthly
tabernacle, and give an assurance in time present of the superiorities
of an hereafter. Dead, indeed, must be the soul that can gaze on such
works unmoved, appealing as they do to our noblest aspirations, and
vindicating humanity from its fallen position, by asserting its innate,
latent glories. Here we feel the truth of the scriptural phrase--“In his
own image made He them.”
[Illustration: Fig. 245.--Shrine of St. Sebald.]
[Illustration: Fig. 246.--Peter Vischer’s House.]
The memory of Peter Vischer is deservedly honoured by his townsmen. The
street in which his house is situated, like that in which Dürer’s
stands, has lost its original name, and is now only known as “Peter
Vischer’s Strasse;” but these two artists are the only ones thus
distinguished.[234-*] Vischer was born in 1460, and died in 1529. He
was employed by the warden of St. Sebald’s, and magistrate of Nürnberg,
Sebald Schreyer, to construct this work in honour of his patron saint;
he began it in 1506, and finished it in 1519. Thirteen years of labour
were thus devoted to its completion, for which he received seven
hundred and seventy florins. “According to tradition, Vischer was
miserably paid for this great work of labour and art; and he has
himself recorded in an inscription upon the monument, that ‘he
completed it for the praise of God Almighty alone, and the honour of
St. Sebald, Prince of Heaven, by the aid of pious persons, paid by
their voluntary contributions.’”[235-*] The elaboration of the entire
work is marvellous; it abounds with fanciful figures, seventy-two in
number, disposed among the ornaments, or acting as supporters to the
general composition. Syrens hold candelabra at the angles; and the
centre has an air of singular lightness and grace. It is supported at
the base by huge snails. At the western end there is a small bronze
statue of Vischer, which we copy (Fig. 247): he holds his chisels in
his hand, and in his workman’s dress, with capacious, leather apron,
stands unaffectedly forth as a true, honest labourer, appealing only to
such sympathies as are justly due to one who laboured so lovingly and
so well.
[Illustration: Fig. 247.--Peter Vischer.]
[Illustration: Fig. 248.--Adam Krafft’s Sacramentshauslein.]
Sharing the palm with Vischer for perfect mastery in sculpture (the
one as a worker in metal, the other in stone) stands Adam Krafft,
whose works are still the principal ornaments of the city. To him were
his fellow-townsmen indebted for the grand gate of the Frauenkirche,
the series of sculptures on the “Via Dolorosa,” numerous others in
the churches and public buildings, but principally for the
“Sacramentshauslein,” in the Church of St. Laurence (Fig. 248). This
marvellous work is placed against a pillar beside the high altar, and
is intended as a receptacle for the consecrated bread and wine in its
service; a small gallery runs round the lower portion, in which the
“host” is kept; over this the sculpture ascends upwards in a series
of tapering columns and foliage of the most light and fanciful
description, until it reaches the spring of the arched roof, where the
crowning pinnacle “bows its beautiful head like the snowdrop on its
stem,” in the curve of the arch, gracefully completing a work which,
for originality, delicacy, and the most extraordinary elaboration of
design, is a perfect marvel of stone-carving. The foliations are so
flowing and delicate, that it has given rise to a popular tradition
that Krafft was possessed of some secret for making stone plastic. We
have nothing so delicate in this country, unless it be some of the
leaflets on the Percy shrine, and screen of Beverley Minster. Krafft’s
leaves are as thin and delicate, as crisp and free, as if moulded from
nature in plaster of Paris, while the grand curves of his ornamental
adjuncts are astonishing, when we reflect on the mass of stone
necessarily cut away to produce these boldly-flowing enrichments.
Krafft was born at Ulm in 1430, and died 1507. His father was the
printer, Ulrich Krafft. He commenced this work in the year 1496, and
completed it in 1500. In it we see the perfect mastery produced by a
life of labour, and in front of it he has sculptured his own effigy,
kneeling, mallet in hand, and supporting his favourite work. There is
a touching simplicity in this union of the artist and his labours,
made in these instances all the more impressive by its utter want of
pretension. There is no affectation--no studied artistic or classical
portraying; we have simply the man and his work before us, appealing
by their dumb native eloquence to that homage and love, which are
their due by their own inherent greatness.
[Illustration: Fig. 249.--Adam Krafft.]
[Illustration: Fig. 250.--The Goose-seller.]
That works based on truth and nature will always possess this power, may
be proved by the admiration bestowed on a small work by a pupil of
Vischer’s, which is popularly loved by the Nürnbergers, and known as
“Das Gänsemänchen” (Fig. 250). It forms the central figure of a small
fountain beside the Frauenkirche, and represents a country boor leaning
against a small pillar, with a goose under each arm, waiting a customer
in the market; from the mouth of each goose a stream of water descends.
The figure is not more than eighteen inches high, and is, from the
smallness of its size, compared with the greatness of its celebrity, a
general disappointment to those who see it for the first time. It rivals
in celebrity the work of Vischer himself, and was executed by his
scholar, Pancratius Labenwolf (born 1492, died 1563); the fountain in
the quadrangle of the “Rathhaus” is also by him. The Goose-seller owes
its popularity to its perfect truth and simplicity.
Another artist of this era, inferior to none in taste and delicacy of
sentiment, was Veit Stoss. He was a native of Poland, born at Cracow in
1447; making Nürnberg the city of his adoption, and dying there in
1542.[240-*] The same exquisite grace and purity which characterises the
works of Vischer is seen in those of Stoss. He devoted himself to
sculpture in wood, and in this way is said to have furnished models to
those who worked in stone, as well as to goldsmiths, and other artisans
who required designs. “The Crowning of the Virgin,” still preserved in
the old castle at Nürnberg, had all the delicacy and grace of the missal
paintings of Julio Clovio.
[Illustration: Fig. 251.--“The Nativity,” by Veit Stoss.]
There is an exquisite repose about his works, only to be gained by great
mastership in art. At times a tenderness of sentiment singularly
beautiful is apparent in these too-much-forgotten works. We engrave, as
an illustration of this, one of the compartments of the
“Rosenkranztafel,” preserved in the same locality, and representing the
“Nativity.” The Virgin in the stable at Bethlehem, piously rejoices in
the birth of the Lord, and is about to wrap the sacred infant in the
folds of her own garments, having no other clothing. She has reverently
laid the babe in a corner of her mantle, when, penetrated with a sense
of the divinity, she clasps her hands in prayer before the Infant
Saviour; while her husband Joseph, who holds the lantern beside her,
feeling the same emotion, drops on one knee, and reverently lifts his
hat in acknowledgment of the Immortal One.
[Illustration: Fig. 252.--“The Entombment,” by Adam Krafft.]
It is this fervent devotion, this pure, high, yet simple-mindedness,
which gives vitality to ancient works of art, and is to be felt by all
who are not insensible to its agency in the time present. Another
touching incident is seen in the sculpture by Adam Krafft over the grave
of Schreyer, representing “The Entombment.”[243-*] The dead body of our
Saviour is being reverently lifted into the tomb; the sorrowing mother,
loving as only mothers love, partially supports the wounded body of her
inanimate son; in process of movement the Saviour’s head falls languidly
on one side, and the dead cheek is again greeted with the fervent kiss
of love, which still burns in the breast of the sorrowing mother. Who
shall rudely criticise the perspective, the draperies, the absence of
“scholastic rule,” in this touching work of a true-hearted man? Not the
writer of these lines! Let it be rather his province to vindicate for
these old artists their due position, among the few forming that galaxy
of the great and good, elevating and adorning human nature.
Our parting glance at “the Athens of Germany” must comprehend a view of
the life and manners of the people among whom Dürer and his compatriots
lived. Theirs were the palmy days of the old city, for its glories
rapidly fell to decay toward the end of the sixteenth century. Its
aspect now is that of a place of dignity and importance left to
loneliness and the quiet wear of time; like an antique mansion of a
noble not quite allowed to decay, but merely existing shorn of its full
glories. “Nürnberg--with its long, narrow, winding, involved streets,
its precipitous ascents and descents, its completely Gothic
physiognomy--is by far the strangest old city I ever beheld; it has
retained in every part the aspect of the Middle Ages. No two houses
resemble each other: yet, differing in form, in colour, in height, in
ornament, all have a family likeness; and with their peaked and carved
gables, and projecting central balconies, and painted fronts, stand up
in a row, like so many tall, gaunt, stately old maids, with the toques
and stomachers of the last century. Age is here, but it does not suggest
the idea of dilapidation or decay; rather of something which has been
put under a glass case, and preserved with care from all extraneous
influences. But, what is most curious and striking in this old city, is
to see it stationary, while time and change are working such miracles
and transformations everywhere else. The house where Martin Behaim, four
centuries ago, invented the sphere, and drew the first geographical
chart, is still the house of a map-seller. In the house where cards were
first manufactured, cards are now sold. In the very shops where clocks
and watches were first seen, you may still buy clocks and watches. The
same families have inhabited the same mansions from one generation to
another for four or five centuries.”[244-*]
In a city where all its associations of greatness are with the past, and
its memories essentially connected with those who have been long
numbered with the dead, it is natural we should find a strong tendency
to remembrances of events and personages generally forgotten in other
and more stirring cities. The Nürnbergers lovingly preserve all that
will connect them with the glorious days of Kaiser Maximilian, when
their “great Imperial City” held the treasures of the Holy Roman empire,
the crown and royal insignia of Charlemagne, as well as the still more
precious “relics” which he had brought from the Holy Land.[245-*]
Among all their literary magnates none is better remembered than
“Hans Sachs, the cobbler-bard,”
and statuettes of this great poet of small things are to be seen in most
Nürnberg book and print shops. Since the days of Lope de Vega no writer
scribbled so fluently and so well on the thousand-and-one incidents of
his own day, or fancies of his own brain. Sachs was born at Nürnberg in
1494 and was the son of a poor tailor, who insured his education in the
free-school of the town, and at fifteen he was apprenticed to a
shoemaker; when the period of servitude had expired, in accordance with
the German practice, he set out on his travels to see the world. It was
a stirring time, and men’s eyes were rapidly opened to the corruptions
of church and state; the great principles of the Reformation were
making way. Hans possessed much of that stirling common sense, and
shrewd practical observation which belong to many of the lower class,
and make them outspoken rude despisers of courtiership. On his return he
applied for admission as a fellow rhymester among the master-singers’
fraternity of Nürnberg, a corporation of self-styled poets, who
surrounded the “divine art” with all kinds of routine ordinances, and
regulated the length of lines and number of syllables which each “poem”
(?) should contain, so magisterially that they reduced it to a
mathematical precision, and might class it among the “exact sciences.”
Before this august tribunal the muse of Sachs appeared, his poem was
read, its lines were measured, its syllables counted, and he was
admitted to the honour of being an acknowledged master of song. From
that hour till his death, he cobbled and sang to the wonderful amusement
of the good citizens; and when seventy-seven years had passed gaily over
his head, “he took an inventory of his poetical stock-in-trade, and
found, according to his narrative, that his works filled thirty volumes
folio, and consisted of 4,273 songs, 1,700 miscellaneous poems, and 208
tragedies, comedies and farces, making an astounding sum-total of 6,181
pieces of all kinds. The humour of his tales is not contemptible; he
laughs lustily and makes his reader join him; his manner, so far as
verse can be compared to prose, is not unlike that of Rabelais, but less
grotesque.”[246-*] His most popular productions were broadsheets with
woodcuts, devoted to all kinds of subjects, sold about the streets, and
stuck “like ballads on the wall” of old English cottages; speaking
boldly out to the comprehension and tastes of the people on subjects
they were interested in. From a large volume of these “curiosities of
literature” now lying before the writer, his immense popularity with the
people can be well understood. Here we find fables of never-dying
interest, such as “The Old Man and his Ass,” reproduced in doggerel they
could enjoy, with a humour they could relish, and headed by bold
woodcuts. If they wanted morality they had it in “pious chansons” about
fair Susannah, “The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,” “Daniel in the
Lions’ Den,” “Twelve short Sermons,” &c. Moral allegories suited to
every-day life wooed their attention in his “Christian Patience,” where
the whole human family is depicted as a solitary in a ship on a stormy
sea, with the world, death, and the devil, as adversaries to oppose his
safe entry into his port, “das vaterland,” but who is mercifully guarded
by the Most High. If amusing satire were required, it might be found in
his “Women setting Traps for Fools;” while the strong religious
tendencies of the Reformers were enforced in his rhymes of the “True and
False Way,” above which was printed a large cut where the Saviour
invites all to the open door of his fold, while the pope and his priests
hinder all from entering, except by back-doors, holes, and corners. At
this period Nürnberg was torn by religious faction; and it ultimately
became enthusiastically Protestant. There is no doubt that Hans Sachs
helped greatly to foster the feeling in its favour, as his “broadsides”
told forcibly, and were immensely popular. They were in fact the only
books of the poor.
[Illustration: Fig. 253.--Hans Sachs.]
The portrait of the old cobbler was painted in 1568 by Hans Hoffman, and
is a strikingly characteristic resemblance of a man whose
“age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.”
There is an intensity of expression in the clear, deep-set eye, a shrewd
observant look in the entire features, while it shows a capacity of
forehead that will make Hans pass muster with modern phrenologists. The
cobbler-bard wrote and sung, and mended his neighbours’ boots in an
unpretending domicile in a street leading from the principal market,
which street now goes by his name. Since his time the house has been
almost rebuilt and entirely new fronted. Its old features have been
preserved in an etching by Fleischmann, after a sketch by J. A. Klein,
at which period it was a beershop known by the sign of the “Golden
Bear.” Hans died full of years and honour in the year 1576, and is
buried with the great men of his city in the cemetery of St. John.
[Illustration: Fig. 254.--The House of Hans Sachs.]
The domestic life of the old Nürnbergers seems to have been
characterised by honourable simplicity, and their posterity appear to
follow laudably in their footsteps. They delight in the antiquity of
their city, and reverently preserve the relics of their past glories.
Their houses seem built for a past generation, their public edifices for
the Middle Ages; their galleries abound in the art of the fifteenth
century, and admit nothing more modern than the seventeenth. In the old
garden upon the castle bastion is a quaint quadrangular tower[250-*]
having its entrance therefrom, and this has been fitted up with antique
furniture, to give a true idea of the indoor life of Dürer’s days. It
contains a hall hung with tapestries, from which a staircase leads to a
suite of rooms, one fitted as a kitchen, another as a music-room, filled
with the most quaint and curious antique instruments, which have ceased
“discoursing most eloquent music” for the last two hundred years. The
third room (a view of which we engrave) is a boudoir, containing the
large antique German stove, built up with ornamental tiles cast in
relief, with stories from bible history of saints, and arabesque. Beside
it is a bronze receptacle for water, shaped like a huge acorn, the tap
having a grotesque head, and the spigot being a small seated figure;
this was gently turned when wanted, and a thin stream of water trickled
over the hands into the basin beneath; an embroidered napkin hangs
beside it; and above it is the old-fashioned set of four hour-glasses,
so graduated that each ran out a quarter of an hour after the other. The
furniture and fittings of the entire building are all equally curious,
and reproduce a faithful picture of old times, worthy of being copied
in National Museums elsewhere.
[Illustration: Fig. 255.--Apartment in the Garden of the Castle of
Nürnberg.]
Nürnberg being a “free city” was governed by its own appointed
magistrates, having independent courts of law. The executive council of
state consisted of eight members, chosen from the thirty patrician
families who, by the privilege granted to them from the thirteenth
century, ruled the city entirely. In process of time these privileges
assumed the form of a civic tyranny, which was felt to be intolerable by
the people, and occasionally opposed by them. The fierce religious wars
of the sixteenth century assisted in destroying this monopoly of power
still more; yet now that it is gone for ever, it has left fearful traces
of its irresponsible strength. All who sigh for “the good old times,”
should not moralise over the fallen greatness of the city, and its
almost deserted but noble town-hall; but descend below the building into
the dark vaults and corridors which form its basement; the terrible
substructure upon which the glorious municipal palace of a free imperial
self-ruled city was based in the Middle Ages, into whose secrets none
dared pry, and where friends, hope, life itself, were lost to those who
dared revolt against the rulers. There is no romance-writer who has
imagined more horrors than we have evidences were perpetrated under the
name of justice in these frightful vaults, unknown to the busy citizens
around them, within a few feet of the streets down which a gay wedding
procession might pass, while a true patriot was torn in every limb, and
racked to death by the refined cruelty of his fellow-men. The heart
sickens in these vaults, and an instinctive desire to quit them takes
possession of the mind, while remaining merely as a curious spectator
within them. The narrow steps leading to them are reached through a
decorated doorway, and the passage below receives light through a series
of gratings. You shortly reach the labyrinthine ways, totally excluded
from external light and air, and enter one after another confined
dungeons, little more than six feet square, cased with oak to deaden
sounds, and to increase the difficulty of attempted escape. To make
these narrow places even more horrible, strong wooden stocks are in
some, and day and night prisoners were secured in total darkness, in an
atmosphere which even now seems too oppressive to bear. In close
proximity to these dungeons is a strong stone room, about twelve feet
wide each way, into which you descend by three steps. It is the
torture-chamber. The massive bars before you are all that remain of the
perpendicular rack, upon which unfortunates were hung with weights
attached to their ankles. Two such of stone, weighing each fifty pounds,
were kept here some years back, as well as many other implements of
torture since removed or sold for old iron. The raised stone bench
around the room was for the use of the executioner and attendants. The
vaulted roof condensed the voice of the tortured man, and an aperture on
one side gave it freedom to ascend into the room above, where the
judicial listeners waited for the faltering words which succeeded the
agonising screams of their victim. So much we know and still see, but
worse horrors were dreamily spoken of by the old Nürnbergers; there was
a tradition of a certain something that not only destroyed life, but
annihilated the body of the person sacrificed. The tradition took a more
definite form in the seventeenth century, and the “kiss of the Virgin”
expressed this punishment, and was believed to consist in a figure of
the Virgin, which clasped its victim in arms furnished with poignards,
and then opening them, dropped the body down a trap on a sort of cradle
of swords, arranged so as to cut it to pieces, a running stream below
clearing all traces of it away.
[Illustration: Fig. 256.--The Torture-chamber.]
These frightful traditions were received with doubt by many, and with
positive disbelief by others, until a countryman of our own, with
unexampled patience and perseverance, fully substantiated the truth of
all, and after many years traced the absolute “Virgin” herself, which
had been hurriedly removed from Nürnberg during the French Revolution,
two or three days before the French army entered the town, and then
passed into the collection of a certain Baron Diedrich, and was kept by
him in a castle called Feistritz, on the borders of Steinmark.
Determined to persevere in tracing this figure, our countryman visited
this castle in 1834, and there was the machine; it was formed of bars
and hoops covered with sheet iron, representing a Nürnberg maiden of the
sixteenth century in the long mantle generally worn. It opened with
folding doors, closing again over the victim, and pressing a series of
poignards into the body, two being affixed to the front of the face, to
penetrate to the brain through the eyes. “That this machine had formerly
been used cannot be doubted; because there are evident blood-stains yet
visible on its breast and part of the pedestal.” This machine was
introduced to Nürnberg in 1533, and is believed to have originated in
Spain, and to have been transplanted into Germany during the reign of
Charles V., who was monarch of both countries. At this period there were
great tumults in Germany and continual quarrels at Nürnberg between the
Catholics and Protestants: the men of that city had no doubt to thank
“the most holy Inquisition” for this importation of horrors.
The great leading principles of the Reformation interested Dürer as they
did other thinking men. He examined by the biblical test the unwholesome
power and pretensions of the papacy, and found it wanting. We have
already noted the exhortation to abide by “the written word” which he
appended to his famous picture of the Apostles. In his journal he breaks
forth into uncontrolled lamentations over the crafty capture of Luther
made by his friend the Elector of Saxony, who conveyed him thus out of
harm’s way, and kept him nearly a twelvemonth in the Wartburg. He
exclaims, “And is Luther dead? who will now explain the Gospel so
clearly to us? Aid me, all pious Christians, to bewail this man of
heavenly mind, and pray God for some other as divinely enlightened.” He
then exhorts Erasmus to “come forth, defend the truth, and deserve the
martyr’s crown, for thou art already an old man.” Dürer had painted
Erasmus’s portrait at Brussels in 1520, and appears to have been
intimate with that great man as he was with Melancthon, who said of
Dürer, that “his least merit was that of his art.”
[Illustration: Fig. 257.--The Cemetery of St. John.]
Amid the strong dissensions of the Reformation, at a time when old
Nürnberg was tottering to its fall, worn down by mental toil, and
withered at heart by one of the worst wives on record, died Albert Dürer
at the age of fifty-seven.
[Illustration: Fig. 258.--The Grave of Albert Dürer.]
In the old cemetery of St. John lies all that is mortal of the artist
who has given lasting celebrity to Nürnberg. Let us take a walk in that
direction. Passing out of the town by the gate opposite Dürer’s house,
the sculptured representations of the scenes of Christ’s Passion, by
Adam Krafft, already alluded to, will guide our footsteps on our way.
About three-quarters of a mile from the town, we reach the gate beside
which stands Krafft’s group of the Crucifixion.[257-*] We enter, and
stand in a graveyard thickly covered with gravestones. Here the burgher
aristocracy of Nürnberg have been buried for centuries.
The heavy slabs which cover the graves are in many instances highly
enriched by bronze plates elaborately executed, containing coats of
arms, emblems, or full-length figures. Each grave is numbered, and that
of Dürer is marked 649. The stone had fallen into decay, when Sandrart
the painter had it renewed in 1681.[258-*] This honourable act of love
from a living artist to a dead brother, enabled the memorial to stand
another century of time. The artists of Nürnberg now look after its
conservation; it has recently been repaired by them, and on the
anniversary of the Spring morning when the great master departed, they
reverently visit his resting-place. The inscription upon it runs thus:--
ME. AL. DU.
QUICQUID ALBERTI DURERI MORTALE
FVIT SUB HOC CONDITUR TUMULO.
EMIGRAVIT. VIII. IDUS. APRILIS
M.D.XXVIII.
The sentiment of this epitaph has been beautifully rendered by
Longfellow--
“_Emigravit_ is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;
Dead he is not,--but departed--for the artist never dies.”
Thus ends our brief review of the life and labours of Dürer and his
fellow artists. If it has “called up forgotten glories,” it has not been
a labour ill-bestowed. If it should induce others to leave England for
Nürnberg, as the writer hereof was induced, he can venture to predict
full satisfaction from the journey. Any one who may ramble through its
streets, know its past history, feel its poetic associations, like the
American bard we have just quoted, will say, as he has done, of old
Nürnberg and the great and good Albert Dürer--
“Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!”
FINIS.
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD, LONDON.
FOOTNOTES:
[190-*] Sir E. Head’s introduction to the English translation of
Kügler’s “Handbook of Painting.” Part II.
[191-*] Longfellow’s “Spanish Student.”
[212-*] Engravings of these will be found in the _Art-Journal_ for 1854,
pp. 307-8.
[212-†] Longfellow.
[215-*] They have been presented from time to time to such potentates as
the townsmen wished to conciliate. Thus, his Four Apostles, bequeathed
by the artist to his native town, was presented by the council to the
Elector Maximilian I., of Bavaria, and are now in the Pinacothek in
Munich.
[218-*] “Guido seems to have availed himself of some of these figures in
his celebrated fresco of the Car of Apollo, preceded by Aurora, and
accompanied by the Hours.”--CHATTO’S _History of Wood Engraving_, p.
303.
[221-*] For a general notice of Dürer’s works, and several engravings of
the best of them, see the _Art-Journal_ for 1851, pp. 141-144 and pp.
193-196. See also, “Vignettes d’Albert Dürer,” par George Franz.
[223-*] These incipient bastions and horn-works may be seen in our cut,
p. 194.
[223-†] Marc Antonio had copied Dürer’s cuts on copper, but they are
poor substitutes for the originals. They, however, did Dürer an injury
of which he complained.
[225-*] In her “Visits and Sketches of Art at Home and Abroad,” 4 vols.
8vo., 1834.
[227-*] L. E. L.
[227-†] Mrs. Jameson speaks of his portrait as “beautiful, like the old
heads of our Saviour; and the predominant expression is calm, dignified,
intellectual, with a tinge of melancholy. This picture was painted at
the age of twenty-eight; he was then suffering from that bitter domestic
curse, a shrewish, avaricious wife, who finally broke his heart.” We
have engraved this portrait in the head-piece to this subject (p. 187),
along with those of his wife and of his friend Pirkheimer.
[228-*] Leopold Schefer has constructed a _novelette_ on his domestic
career, which has been cleverly translated by Mrs. Stodart. It is
entitled “The Artist’s Married Life, being that of Albert Dürer.” It
teaches much by its pure philosophy.
[229-*] They are now in the Pinacothek at Munich.
[229-†] Dürer had warmly espoused the Reformation, and had placed
quotations from the gospels and epistles of the Apostles beneath each
picture, containing pressing warnings not to swerve from the written
word, or listen to false prophets and perverters of the truth. When the
town presented these pictures to the Roman Catholic Elector Maximilian
I., of Bavaria, in 1627, they cut off these inscriptions, and affixed
them to the copies they had made for themselves by Vischer, and which
are now in the Landauer Gallery at Nürnberg.
[230-*] There is an old tradition that Dürer intended these figures also
as embodiments of the four mental temperaments--John, representing the
melancholic; Peter, the meditative, or phlegmatic; Mark, the sanguine;
and Paul, the resolute or choleric.
[231-*] Kügler. Mrs. Jameson, in her “Visits at Home and Abroad,” also
speaks of them as “wonderful! In expression, in calm religious majesty,
in suavity of pencilling, and the grand, pure style of the heads and
drapery, quite like Raffaelle.”
[231-†] Among the rest is the very marvellous one performed during a
journey in winter, when he was nearly destroyed by cold, and entered a
peasant’s cottage, hoping to find relief. The poor man had no fuel, so
the saint made up a fire from the icicles which hung around the house,
completing his good acts by mending his broken kettle, “by blessing it,
at the request of his host,” and converting stones into bread by the
same simple process.
[234-*] Vischer’s house is situated on the other side of the River
Pegnitz, which divides the town; it is in a steep street rising suddenly
from the water. The house has undergone some alterations in its external
aspect, apparently about the latter half of the seventeenth century. It
is now a baker’s shop, having that quiet aspect which characterises such
trades in Germany, the central window on the ground-floor being that
through which bread is passed to applicants, who may mount the steps in
front, or rest on them while waiting. The beam projecting from the large
window in the roof is used as a crane to lift wood and heavy stores to
the upper floors, which are the depositaries for such necessities, and
not the cellars, as with us.
[235-*] Murray’s “Handbook of Germany.”
[240-*] His grave is in the cemetery of St. John, No. 268.
[243-*] This grave, surrounded by sculpture, forms a little external
chapel, at the back of the choir of St. Sebald’s Church. We have already
mentioned Schreyer as the originator of Vischer’s shrine in that church.
[244-*] Mrs. Jameson, “Sketches of Art at Home and Abroad.” The curious
series of views in Nürnberg, published there by Conrad Monath, about
1650, are remarkably identical with the present aspect of each locality
engraved.
[245-*] The crown and royal robes of Charlemagne were those found in his
tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle, afterwards used in the coronation of the German
emperors for many centuries, and only transferred to Vienna during the
great political changes of the last century. “The sacred relics” are
also at Vienna, and were among the most valued and venerated of church
treasures. They also were publicly exhibited at the coronations, and
consisted of the lance which pierced the Saviour’s side when upon the
cross; a piece of the cross, showing the hole made by the nail which
pierced one of the Saviour’s hands; one of the nails; and five of the
thorns of the crown put upon his head by the soldiers; a portion of the
manger of Bethlehem; a piece of the table-cloth used at the Last Supper;
and a piece of the towel with which Christ wiped the Apostles’ feet; an
arm-bone of St. Anne; a tooth of St. John the Baptist; a piece of the
coat of St. John the Evangelist; and three links of the chains which
bound St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John in the Roman prison.
[246-*] Edgar Taylor’s “Lays of the Minnesingers.”
[250-*] It is seen in our view from Albert Dürer’s house, and is close
beside the gate of the town.
[257-*] Our engraving (Fig. 257) is taken from a sketch made on this
spot, looking back towards the city, and its ancient castle on the rock.
Krafft’s sculptures are seen to the left, at intervals, on the
road-side.
[258-*] He also is interred in this cemetery. So is Dürer’s friend,
Pirkheimer; his grave is No. 1414.
Transcriber’s Note
Corrections:
95 Gealic changed to Gaelic
173 Figs 212, changed to Figs. 212,
174 Fig 215 represents changed to Fig. 215 represents
247 classical pourtraying changed to classical portraying
cross bar / cross-bar
Dürer / Durer
DÜRER / DURER
Dürer’s / Durer’s
ironwork / iron-work
Pinacotheck / Pinacothek