This paper is abridged from “German, Flemish and Dutch
Paintings,” by H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M.A., and Edward J. Poynter,
R.A.
Art in Germany and the Netherlands may be considered as beginning about
the middle of the fourteenth century. There is, however, no name of
importance in the German school of artists until the time of Albrecht
Dürer. Before him painters had shown little or no originality in their
work. They had followed the Byzantine models largely, and had been
influenced by the servile and narrow influences of the middle ages. With
the new intellectual and spiritual life which sprang up in the fifteenth
century, artistic life awoke in Germany. Dürer was the first and greatest
master of the school. He was born in Nuremberg on the 21st of May, 1471.
His father was a Hungarian, who settled in Nuremberg as a goldsmith.
Albrecht Dürer was taught his father’s trade, but fortunately his talent
for art was observed, and he was sent, in 1484, a boy of thirteen years,
to Schongauer. In 1486 he was apprenticed to Michael Wolgemut for three
years. From the studio of his master, Albrecht Dürer passed, in the year
1490, to a new world—he traveled; and in those “wander-years,” which
lasted till 1494, he was doubtless laying in stores of learning for the
after-time; but unfortunately we know nothing of those years, except
that he had a glimpse of Venice, the first sight of the Italian paradise
which, in his case, though seen again, never made him unfaithful to the
art of his fatherland. In 1494, Albrecht Dürer returned to Nuremberg, and
married Agnes Frey, the daughter of a singer. He received two hundred
florins with his wife for her dowry, and it has been said that with
her he found more than two thousand unhappy days. In 1506, Dürer again
traveled to Italy, and found a warm welcome from the painters at Venice,
a city which he now beheld for the second time. Doubtless he learned
much from the works which he saw, and the criticism which he heard, but,
fortunately for his country, he could go to Italy without becoming a
copyist. Giovanni Bellini paid him especial honor, and Dürer tells us
that he considered Bellini “the best painter of them all.”
Between the years 1507 and 1520, Dürer produced many of his most famous
works. In 1509, he bought a house for himself in the Zisselgasse, at
Nuremberg. In 1515 Raphael sent a sketch from his own pencil to his great
brother, who has been well styled the “Raphael of Germany.” The sketch is
in red chalk, and is preserved in the collection of the Archduke Charles,
at Vienna. In 1520 we find Dürer appointed court-painter to the emperor,
Charles V., a position which he had already held under Maximilian. His
own countrymen seem to have been niggardly in their reward of genius,
for the court-painter had only a salary of one hundred florins a year,
and painted portraits for a florin (about twenty English pence). In the
same year Dürer, accompanied by his wife, visited the Netherlands, and
at Antwerp, then the most important town of the Low Countries, both he
and his wife were entertained at a grand supper; the master has recorded
in his journal his pleasure at the honor bestowed upon him. At Ghent
and Bruges all were delighted to show their respect for his genius. At
Brussels, Dürer was summoned to the court of Margaret of Austria, Regent
of the Netherlands, to whom he presented several engravings. Either
through jealous intrigues, or from some other cause, his court favor was
of short duration. In Brussels he painted several portraits which were
never paid for, and for a time he was in straitened circumstances. Just
at this time, however, Christian II., king of Denmark, became acquainted
with him, and having shown every mark of honor to the painter, sat to him
for his portrait. Soon afterward he returned to Germany.
Once more at home in his beloved Nuremberg, Dürer wrote to remind the
Town Council that whilst the people of Venice and Antwerp had offered
him liberal sums to dwell among them, his own city had not given him
five hundred florins for thirty years of work. But we must pass to the
end. Whether the health of Albrecht Dürer had been injured by home cares
and the tongue of Agnes Frey, we know not, though many passages in his
letters and journal seem to point to this fact. He died on the 6th of
April, 1528, and was buried in the cemetery of St. John, at Nuremberg.
Most of Dürer’s works are to be found in Germany. In the Louvre there are
only three or four drawings. The Museum of Madrid possesses several of
his paintings—a “Crucifixion” (1513), showing the maturity of his genius,
two “Allegories” of the same type as the “Dance of Death,” so favorite
a subject at this period, and a “Portrait of Himself,” bearing the date
1496. At Munich we may trace, in a series of seventeen pictures, the
dawn, the noonday, and the evening of Albrecht Dürer’s art. The “Portrait
of his Father,” 1497, is one of his earliest works. His father was then
seventy years old. The color is warm and harmonious. The masterpiece of
Dürer’s art is the painting of the four apostles—“St. John, St. Peter,
St. Paul and St. Mark.” This wonderful work is clearly the production of
his later years; it bears no date, but the absence of the hardness, which
Michael Wolgemut’s workshop had imparted to his early style, is gone, and
the whole work shows the influence of his travels and unflagging study.
It is usually assigned to the year 1526. The picture has been supposed
to represent the “Four Temperaments,” but there is no satisfactory proof
that Dürer intended this.
Vienna possesses some of the finest specimens of his art. In the legend
of “The Ten Thousand Martyrs,” who were slain by the Persian king
Shahpour II., Dürer has described on a panel of about a foot square every
conceivable kind of torture. These horrors are witnessed by two figures
which represent the painter himself, and his friend Pirkheimer.
The “Adoration of the Trinity” is one of the most famous of Dürer’s
works. It is a vast allegorical picture, representing the Christian
Religion.
Of his wood-cuts the best known are the “Apocalypse,” 1498; the “Life
of the Virgin,” 1511; and the “History of Christ’s Passion.” Of his
copper-plate engravings, “St. Hubert,” “St. Jerome,” and “The Knight,
Death, and the Devil,” bearing the date 1513, in which we see what Kugler
calls “the most important work which the fantastic spirit of German art
has ever produced.” The weird, the terrible, and the grotesque look forth
from this picture like the forms of some horrible nightmare. Another
famous engraving, called “Melancholy,” is full of mystic poetry; it bears
the date 1514. To these may be added a series of sixteen drawings in pen
and ink on gray paper, heightened with white, representing “Christ’s
Passion,” which he never engraved. They are in his best style, and among
the finest of his works.