On the elder Durand see V. Leclerc in _Histoire litteraire de la

France_, vol. xx. pp. 411-497 (1842); Schulte, _Geschichte der Quellen

des canonischen Rechts_ (1877); E. Male, _L'Art religieux au XIII^e

siecle en France_ (1898). On the nephew see B. Haureau, in _Journal

des savants_ (1892), 64.

DURAND, GUILLAUME (d. 1334), French scholastic theologian, known also by

the Latin form of his name as DURANDUS of St Pourcain (_de Sancto

Porciano_), and as _Doctor Resolutissimus_, was born at St

Pourcain-sur-Sioule in the Bourbonnois. He entered the Dominican order

at Clermont, and in 1313 was made a doctor in Paris, where he taught

till Pope John XXII. called him to Avignon as master of the sacred

palace, i.e. theological adviser and preacher to the pope. He

subsequently became bishop of Limoux (1317), of Le Puy (1318) and of

Meaux (1326). He composed a commentary on the Sentences of Peter

Lombard, in which, breaking with the realism of St Thomas Aquinas, he

anticipated the _terminism_ of William of Occam, and gave up the attempt

to show that dogmas can be demonstrated by reason. In the question of

the beatific vision, arising out of opinions promulgated by John XXII.

(q.v.), he sided with Thomas Walleis, Armand de Bellovisu and the

doctors of the faculty of theology in Paris against the pope, and

composed his _De statu animarum post separationem a corpore_. Mention

should also be made of his _De origine jurisdictionum quibus populus

regitur, sive de jurisdictione ecclesiastica et de legibus_.

See B. Haureau, _Histoire de la philosophie scolastique_ (2nd ed.,

Paris, 1872); C. Werner, _Die Scholastik des spateren Mittelalters_,

vol. ii. (Vienna, 1883); H.S. Denifle, in _Archiv f. Litteratur und

Kirchengeschichte_, ii. (1886); U. Chevalier, _Rep. des sources hist.

du moyen age_, s.v. Durand de St Pourcain.

DURANDO, GIACOMO (1807-1894), Italian general and statesman, was born at

Mondovi in Piedmont. He was implicated in the revolutionary movements of

1831 and 1832, after which he was obliged to take refuge abroad. He

served in the Belgian army, taking part in the war of 1832, and fought

in Portugal in 1833. The following year he entered the service of Spain,

when he fought in various campaigns, and was promoted colonel in 1838.

After a short stay in France he returned to Italy and identified himself

with the Liberal movement; he became an active journalist, and founded a

newspaper called _L'Opinione_ in 1847. In 1848 he was one of those who

asked King Charles Albert for the constitution. On the outbreak of the

war with Austria he took command of the Lombard volunteers as

major-general, and in the campaign of 1849 he was aide-de-camp to the

king. He was elected member of the first Piedmontese parliament and was

a strenuous supporter of Cavour; during the Crimean campaign he took

General La Marmora's place as war minister. In 1855 he was nominated

senator, lieutenant-general in 1856, ambassador at Constantinople in

1859, and minister for foreign affairs in the Rattazzi cabinet two years

later. He was president of the senate from 1884 to 1887, after which

year he retired from the army. He died in 1894.

His brother, GIOVANNI DURANDO (1804-1869), was in early life driven into

exile on account of his Liberal opinions. He served in the armies of

Belgium, Portugal and Spain, distinguishing himself in many

engagements. Returning to Italy on the outbreak of the revolution of

1848, he was appointed commander of a division of the pontifical forces,

and fought against the Austrians in Venetia until the fall of Vicenza,

when he returned to Piedmont as major-general. In the campaign of 1849

he commanded the first Piedmontese division; he subsequently served in

the Crimea, in the war of 1859, and in that of 1866 as commander of the

I. Army Corps. In 1867 he was appointed president of the supreme

military and naval tribunal.

DURANGO, a state of northern Mexico, bounded N. by Chihuahua, E. and

S.E. by Coahuila, S. by Zacatecas and the territory of Tepic, and W. by

Sinaloa. Pop. (1895) 292,549; (1900) 370,294. Area 38,009 sq. m. Durango

is a continuation southward of the high, semi-arid plateau of Chihuahua,

with the Sierra Madre extending along its western side. The Bolson de

Mapimi covers its N.E. angle, and in the S. there are peculiar volcanic

hills, covering about 1000 sq. m. and known as La Brena. The Bolson de

Mapimi, previous to the building of the Mexican Central railway across

it, had been considered an uninhabitable desert, but irrigation

experiments have demonstrated that its soil is highly fertile and well

adapted to the production of cotton and fruit. The rainfall is very

light in the eastern part of the state, a succession of years sometimes

passing without any precipitation whatever, but in the W. it is

sufficient to produce good pasturage and considerable areas of forest.

There are no rivers of any magnitude in the state. The largest is the

Rio Nazas, which flows eastward into the lakes of the Mapimi depression,

and the Mezquital, which flows S.W. through the sierras to the Pacific

coast. The climate is generally dry and healthful. Cotton is produced to

a limited extent, especially where irrigation is employed, and wheat,

Indian corn, tobacco, sugar-cane and grapes are also grown. In the

elevated valleys of the sierras stock-raising is successful. The

principal industry of Durango, however, is mining, and some of the

richest and best known mines of Mexico are found in the state. Besides

silver, which has been extensively mined since the first arrival of the

Spanish under Francisco de Ibarra (1554-1562), gold, copper, iron,

cinnabar, tin, coal and rubies are found. The famous Cerro del Mercado,

2 m. from the city of Durango, is a hill composed in great part of

remarkably pure iron ore, and is estimated to contain 300,000,000 tons

of that metal. Near it are iron and steel works. The principal mining

districts of Durango include San Dimas (on the western slope of the main

sierra), Guarisamey, Buenavista, Gavilanes, Guanacevi, Mapimi, El Oro

and Inde. In the first-named is the celebrated Candelaria mine, where

the ores (largely argentite) assay between $70 and $140 a ton, the

aggregate output being estimated as over $100,000,000 before the close

of the 19th century. With the exception of silver, the mineral resources

of the state have been but slightly developed because of difficult and

expensive transportation. The Mexican Central railway crosses the

eastern side of the state, and the Mexican International crosses N.E. to

S.W. through the state capital on its way to the port of Mazatlan. The

history of Durango is similar to that of Chihuahua, the state originally

forming part of the province of Nueva Viscaya. The capital is Durango,

and among the principal towns are Guanacevi (pop. 6859), El Oro, Nombre

de Dios (the first Spanish settlement in the state), San Juan de

Guadalupe, San Dimas and Villa Lerdo. These are comparatively small

mining towns. Mapimi lies 130 m. N.N.E. of Durango and gives its name to

the great arid depression situated still farther north.

DURANGO, sometimes called CIUDAD DE VICTORIA, a city of Mexico, capital

of the state of Durango, 574 m. N.W. of the federal capital, in lat. 24

deg. 25' N., long. 105 deg. 55' W. Pop. (1900) 31,092. Durango is served

by the Mexican International railway. The city stands in the picturesque

Guadiana valley formed by easterly spurs of the Sierra Madre, about 6850

ft. above the sea. It has a mild, healthy climate, and is surrounded by

a district of considerable fertility. Durango is an important mining and

commercial centre, and was for a time one of the most influential towns

of northern Mexico. It is the seat of a bishop, and has a handsome

cathedral, ten parish churches, a national institute or college, an

episcopal seminary, government buildings, a public library, hospital,

penitentiary and bull-ring. The city is provided with urban and suburban

tramways, electric light, telephone service and an abundant

water-supply, and there are thermal springs in its vicinity. Its

manufacturing establishments include reduction works, cotton and woollen

mills, glass works, iron foundries, tanneries, flour mills, sugar

refineries and tobacco factories. Durango was founded in 1563 by Alonso

Pacheco under the direction of Governor Francisco de Ibarra, who named

it after a city of his native province in Spain. It was known, however,

as Guadiana for a century thereafter, and its first bishops were given

that title. It was the capital of Ibarra's new province of Nueva

Viscaya, which included Durango and Chihuahua, and continued as such

down to their separation in 1823.

DURANI, or DURRANI, the dominant race of Afghans, to which the ruling

family at Kabul belongs. The Duranis number 100,000 fighting men, and

have two branches, the Zirak and the Panjpai. To the former section

belong the Popalzai, Alikozai, Barakzai and Achakzai; and to the latter

the Nurzai, Alizai, Isakzai, Khokani and Maku tribes. The Saddozai clan

of the Popalzai Duranis furnished the first independent shahs of the

Durani dynasty (A.D. 1747), the Barakzais furnishing the amirs. The line

of the shahs was overthrown in the third generation (A.D. 1834), after a

protracted period of anarchy and dissension, which broke out on the

death in A.D. 1773 of Ahmad Shah Durani, the founder of Afghan national

independence.

Bar Durani is a name sometimes applied to the independent Pathan tribes

who inhabit the hill districts south of the Hindu Kush, parts of the

Indus valley, the Salt Range, and the range of Suliman, which were first

conceded to them by Ahmad Shah. Bar Durani includes the Yusafzai, Utman

Khel, Tarkanis, Mohmands, Afridis, Orakzais and Shinwaris, as well as

the Pathan tribes of the plains of Peshawar and those of Bangash and

Khattak, although the derivation of some of these tribes from the true

Durani stock is doubtful.

DURANTE, FRANCESCO (1684-1755), Italian composer, was born at

Frattamaggiore, in the kingdom of Naples, on the 15th of March 1684. At

an early age he entered the Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesu Cristo, at

Naples, where he received lessons from Gaetano Greco, later he became a

pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti at the Conservatorio di Sant' Onofrio. He

is also supposed to have studied under Pasquini and Pitoni in Rome, but

no documentary proof of this statement can be given. He is said to have

succeeded Scarlatti in 1725 at Sant' Onofrio, and to have remained there

until 1742, when he succeeded Porpora as head of the Conservatorio di

Santa Maria di Loreto, also at Naples. This post he held for thirteen

years, till his death on the 13th of August 1755 at Naples. He was

married three times. His fame as a teacher was all but unrivalled, and

Jommelli, Paesiello, Pergolesi, Piccini and Vinci were amongst his

pupils. A complete collection of Durante's works, consisting all but

exclusively of sacred compositions, was presented by Selvaggi, a

Neapolitan lover of art, to the Paris library. A catalogue of it may be

found in Fetis's _Biographie universelle_. The imperial library of

Vienna also preserves a valuable collection of Durante's manuscripts.

Two requiems, several masses (one of which, a most original work, is the

_Pastoral Mass_ for four voices) and the _Lamentations_ of the prophet

Jeremiah are amongst his most important settings. The fact that Durante

never composed for the stage brought him a somewhat exaggerated

reputation as a composer of sacred music. Although certainly one of the

best church composers of his style and period, he is far inferior to

Leo, and seems to have been the founder of the sentimental school of

Italian church music. Leo and Scarlatti at their best have a solidity

and dignity entirely wanting in Durante, and Alessandro Scarlatti at his

worst is frivolous rather than sentimental. This type of music is

characteristic of Durante as a man; intellectually uncultured, but

sincerely devout. As a teacher he insisted on the strict observance of

rules for which he either would not or could not give a reason,

differing thus from Alessandro Scarlatti, whose first care was to

develop his pupils' talents according to their own individualities,

regarding all rules as subservient to his exquisite sense of musical

beauty. Hasse rightly protested against Durante's being described as the

greatest harmonist of Italy, a title which could be claimed only by

Alessandro Scarlatti. (E. J. D.)

DURAO, JOSE DE SANTA RITA (1720-1784), Brazilian poet, was born near

Marianna, in the province of Minas Geraes, in 1720, and died in Lisbon

in 1754. He studied at Coimbra, in Portugal, graduated as a doctor of

divinity, became a member of the Augustinian order of friars, and

obtained a great reputation as a preacher. Having irritated the minister

Pombal by his defence of the Jesuits, he retired from Portugal in 1759;

and, after being imprisoned in Spain as a spy, found his way to Italy in

1763, where he became acquainted with Alfieri, Pindemonte, Casti and

other literary men of the time. On his return to Portugal he delivered

the opening address at the university of Coimbra for the year 1777; but

soon after retired to the cloisters of a Gratian convent. At the time of

his death he taught in the little college belonging to that order in

Lisbon. His epic in ten cantos, entitled _Caramuru, poema epico do

descubrimento da Bahia_, appeared in Lisbon in 1781, but proved at first

a total failure. Its value has gradually been recognized, and it now

ranks as one of the best poems in Brazilian literature--remarkable

especially for its fine descriptions of scenery and native life in South

America. The historic institute of Rio de Janeiro offered a prize to the

author of the best essay on the legend of Caramuru; and the successful

competitor published a new edition of Durao's poem. There is a French

translation which appeared in Paris in 1829.

See Adolfo de Varnhagen, _Epicos Brazileiros_ (1845); Pereira da

Silva, _Os Varoes illustres do Brasil_ (1858); Wolf, _Le Bresil

litteraire_ (Berlin, 1863); Sotero dos Reis, _Curso de litteratura

Portugueza e Brazileira_, vol. iv. (Maranhao, 1868); Jose Verissimo,

_Estudos de literatura Brazileira, segunda serie_ (Rio, 1901).

DURAZZO (anc. _Epidamnus_ and _Dyrrachium_; Albanian, _Durresi_; Turkish

and Slavonic, _Drach_), a seaport and capital of the sanjak of Durazzo,

in the vilayet of Iannina, Albania, Turkey. Pop. (1900) about 5000.

Durazzo is about 50 m. S. of Scutari, on the Bay of Durazzo, an inlet of

the Adriatic Sea. It is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop and a

Greek metropolitan, but in every respect has greatly declined from its

former prosperity. The walls are dilapidated; plane-trees grow on the

gigantic ruins of its old Byzantine citadel; and its harbour, once

equally commodious and safe, is gradually becoming silted up. The only

features worthy of notice are the quay, with its rows of cannon, and the

bridge, 750 ft. long, which leads across the marshes stretching along

the coast. The chief exports are olive oil--largely manufactured in the

district--wheat, oats, barley, pottery and skins.

_Epidamnus_ was founded by a joint colony of Corcyreans and Corinthians

towards the close of the 7th century B.C., and from its admirable

position and the fertility of the surrounding country soon rose into

very considerable importance. The dissolution of its original

oligarchical government by the democratic opposition, the consequent

quarrel between Corcyra and the oligarchical city of Corinth, and the

intervention of Athens on behalf of Corcyra, are usually included among

the contributory causes of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). In 312

B.C., Epidamnus was seized by the Illyrian king Glaucias, and shortly

afterwards it passed into the power of the Romans. As the name Epidamnus

sounded to Roman ears like an evil omen, as though it were derived from

the Latin _damnum_, "loss" or "harm," the alternative name of

_Dyrrachium_, which the city possibly received from the rugged nature of

the adjoining sea-coast, came into general use. Thenceforward Epidamnus

rose rapidly in importance. It was a favourite point of debarcation for

the Roman armies; the great military road known as the _Via Egnatia_ led

from Dyrrachium to Thessalonica (Salonica); and another highway passed

southwards to Buthrotum and Ambracia. Broad swamps rendered the city

almost impregnable, and in 48 B.C. it became famous as the place where

Pompey made his last successful resistance to Caesar. After the battle

of Actium in 31 B.C., Augustus made over Dyrrachium to a colony of his

veterans; it became a _civitas libera_ and a great commercial emporium

(for coins see Maier, _Numis. Zeitschr._, 1908). The summit of its

prosperity was reached about the end of the 4th century, when it was

made the capital of Epirus Nova. Its bishopric, created about A.D. 58,

was raised to an archbishopric in 449. In 481 the city was besieged by

Theodoric, the king of the East Goths; and in the 10th and 11th

centuries it frequently had to defend itself against the Bulgarians. In

1082 it was stormed by the Norman Robert Guiscard, who in the previous

year had defeated the Greeks under their emperor Alexius; and in 1185 it

fell into the hands of King William of Sicily. Surrendered to Venice in

1202, it afterwards broke loose from the republic and in 1268 passed

into the possession of Charles of Anjou. In 1273 it was laid in ruins by

an earthquake, but it soon recovered from the disaster, and became an

independent duchy under John, the grandson of Charles (1294-1304), and

afterwards under Philip of Otranto. In 1333 it was annexed to Achaea, in

1336 to Servia, and in 1394 to Venice. The Turks obtained possession in

1501.

D'URBAN, SIR BENJAMIN (1777-1849), British general and colonial

administrator, was born in 1777, and entered the British army in 1793.

Promoted lieutenant and captain in 1794 he took part in that year in

operations in Holland and Westphalia. In 1795 he served under Sir Ralph

Abercromby in San Domingo. He went on half-pay in 1800, joining the

Royal Military College, where he remained until 1805, when he went to

Hanover with the force under Lord Cathcart. Returning to England he

filled various staff offices, and in November 1807 went to Dublin as

assistant-quartermaster-general, being transferred successively to

Limerick and the Curragh. He joined the army in the Peninsula in 1808,

and his marked abilities as a staff officer led to his selection by

General (afterwards Viscount) Beresford as quartermaster-general in the

reorganization of the Portuguese army. He served throughout the

Peninsular War without once going on leave and took part in nine pitched

battles and sieges, Busaco, Albuera, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, the

Pyrenees, the Nivelle, the Nive and Toulouse. He was promoted

major-general in the Portuguese army and colonel in the British army in

1813, and made a K.C.B. in 1815. He remained in Portugal until 1816,

when he was summoned home to take up the posts of colonel of the royal

staff corps and deputy quartermaster-general at the Horse Guards. In

1819 he became major-general and in 1837 lieutenant-general. From 1829

he was colonel of the 51st Foot.

Sir Benjamin began his career as colonial administrator in 1820 when he

was made governor of Antigua. In 1824 he was transferred to Demerara and

Essequibo, then in a disturbed condition owing to a rising among the

slaves consequent on the emancipation movement in Great Britain.

D'Urban's rule proved successful, and in 1831 he carried out the

amalgamation of Berbice with the other counties, the whole forming the

colony of British Guiana, of which D'Urban was first governor. The

ability with which he had for nine years governed a community of which

the white element was largely of Dutch origin led to his appointment as

governor of Cape Colony. He assumed office in January 1834, and the four

years during which he held that post were of great importance in the

history of South Africa. They witnessed the abolition of slavery, the

establishment of a legislative council and municipal councils in Cape

Colony, the first great Kaffir war and the beginning of the Great Trek.

The firmness and justice of his administration won the cordial support

of the British and Dutch colonists. The greater part of 1835 was

occupied in repelling an unprovoked invasion of the eastern borders of

the colony by Xosa Kaffirs. To protect the inhabitants of the eastern

province Sir Benjamin extended the boundary of the colony to the Kei

river and erected military posts in the district, allowing the Xosa to

remain under British supervision. Since his appointment to the Cape

there had been a change of ministry in England, and Lord Glenelg had

become secretary for the Colonies in the second Melbourne

administration. Prejudiced against any extension of British authority

and lending a ready ear to a small but influential party in South

Africa, Glenelg adopted the view that the Kaffirs had been the victims

of systematic injustice. In a momentous despatch dated the 26th of

December 1835 he set forth his views and instructed Sir Benjamin D'Urban

to give up the newly annexed territory. At the same time Sir Andries

Stockenstrom, Bart. (1792-1864), was appointed lieutenant-governor for

the eastern provinces of the colony to carry out the policy of the home

government, in which the Kaffir chiefs were treated as being on terms of

full equality with Europeans. D'Urban in vain warned Glenelg of the

disastrous consequences of his decision, the beginning of the long

course of vacillation which wrought great harm to South Africa. One

result of the new policy was to recreate a state of insecurity,

bordering on anarchy, in the eastern province, and this condition was

one of the causes of the Great Trek of the Dutch farmers which began in

1836. In various despatches D'Urban justified his position,

characterizing the Trek as due to "insecurity of life and property

occasioned by the recent measures, inadequate compensation for the loss

of the slaves, and despair of obtaining recompense for the ruinous

losses by the Kaffir invasion." (See further SOUTH AFRICA: _History_,

and CAPE COLONY: _History_.) But Glenelg was not to be convinced by any

argument, however cogent, and in a despatch dated the 1st of May 1837 he

informed Sir Benjamin that he had been relieved of office. D'Urban,

however, remained governor until the arrival of his successor, Sir

George Napier, in January 1838.

During his governorship Sir Benjamin endeavoured to help the British

settlers at Port Natal, who in 1835 named their town D'Urban (now

written Durban) in his honour, but his suggestion that the district

should be occupied as a British possession was vetoed by Lord Glenelg.

Though no longer in office D'Urban remained in South Africa until April

1846. In 1840 he was made a G.C.B., and in 1842 declined a high military

appointment in India offered him by Sir Robert Peel. In January 1847 he

took up the command of the troops in Canada, and was still in command at

the time of his death at Montreal on the 25th of May 1849.

DURBAN, the principal seaport and largest city of Natal, South Africa,

the harbour being known as Port Natal, in 29 deg. 52' 48" S. 31 deg. 42'

49" E. It is 6810 m. from London via Madeira and 7785 via Suez, 823 m.

by water E.N.E. from Cape Town and 483 m. by rail S.S.E. of

Johannesburg. Pop. (1904) 67,842, of whom 31,302 were whites, 15,631

Asiatics (chiefly British Indians), 18,929 natives and 1980 of mixed

race. From its situation and the character of its buildings Durban is

one of the finest cities in South Africa. The climate is generally hot

and humid, but not unhealthy. Although nearly half the citizens are

British, the large number of Indians engaged in every kind of work gives

to Durban an oriental aspect possessed by no other town in South Africa.

The town is built on the E. side of a bay (Durban Bay or Bay of Natal),

the entrance to which is marked on the west by a bold cliff, the Bluff,

whose summit is 195 ft. above the sea, and on the east by a low sandy

spit called the Point. The city extends from the Point along the side of

the bay and also for some distance along the coast of the Indian Ocean,

and stretches inland to a range of low hills called the Berea.

The chief streets, Smith, West and Pine, are in the lower town, parallel

to one another and to the bay. They contain the principal public

buildings, warehouses and shops, the Berea being a residential quarter.

Of the three streets mentioned, West Street, the central thoroughfare,

is the busiest. In its centre are the public gardens, in which is a

handsome block of buildings in the Renaissance style, built in 1906-1908

at a cost of over L300,000, containing the town hall, municipal offices,

public library, museum and art gallery. The art gallery holds many

pictures of the modern British school. Opposite the municipal buildings

are the post and telegraph offices, a fine edifice (built 1881-1885)

with a clock tower 164 ft. high. The post office formerly served as town

hall. In Pine Street is the Central railway station and the spacious

Market House. Among the churches St Cyprian's (Anglican), in Smith

Street, has a handsome chancel. The Roman Catholic cathedral is a fine

building in the Gothic style. The town possesses several parks, one, the

Victoria Park, facing the Indian Ocean. This part of the town is laid

out with pleasure grounds and esplanades. The botanic gardens, in the

upper town, contain a very fine collection of flowering shrubs and

semi-tropical trees. Above the gardens is the observatory. There is a

fine statue of Queen Victoria by Hamo Thornycroft, R.A., in the public

gardens, and a memorial to Vasco da Gama at the Point. There is an

extensive system of electric trams. Another favourite means of

conveyance is by rickshaw, the runners being Zulus. The town is governed

by a municipality which owns the water and electric lighting supplies

and the tramway system. The sanitary services are excellent. The main

water-supply is the Umlaas river, which enters the ocean 10 m. S. of the

port. The municipal valuation, which is based on capital value, was

L9,494,400 in 1909, the rate, including water, being 2-1/2 d. in the L.

The entrance to the harbour was obstructed by a formidable sand bar, but

as the result of dredging operations there is now a minimum depth of

water at the opening of the channel into the bay of over 30 ft., with a

maximum depth of over 33 ft. The width of the passage between the Bluff

and the Point is 450 ft. From the foot of the Bluff a breakwater extends

over 2000 ft. into the sea, and parallel to it, starting from the Point,

is a pier. The harbour is landlocked, and covers 7-1/2 sq. m. Much of

this area is shoal water, but the accommodation available was largely

increased by the removal during 1904-1908 of 24,000,000 tons of sand.

The port has over 3 m. of wharfage. It possesses a floating dock capable

of lifting a vessel of 8500 tons, a floating workshop, a patent slip for

small craft, hydraulic cranes, &c. The minimum depth alongside the quays

at low water is 23 ft., increased at places to over 30 ft. The principal

wharves, where passengers, mails and general merchandise are landed, are

along the Point. On the opposite side at the foot of the Bluff land has

been reclaimed and extensive accommodation provided for ships coaling.

At Congella at the N.E. end of the harbour some 65 acres of land were

reclaimed during 1905-1906, and wharves built for the handling of heavy

and bulky goods such as timber and corrugated iron. Here also are

situated warehouses and railway works. The port is defended by batteries

armed with modern heavy guns. The trade of the port is almost

coextensive with the foreign trade of Natal.

_History._--The early history of Durban is closely identified with that

of the colony of Natal. The first permanent settlement by white men in

the bay was made by Englishmen in 1824, when Lieutenant F.G. Farewell,

R.N., and about ten companions went thither from Cape Town in the brig

"Salisbury," from which circumstance the island in the bay gets its

name. In 1835 a township was laid out and the colonists gave it the name

of D'Urban, in honour of Sir Benjamin D'Urban, then governor of Cape

Colony. At this time a mission church was built on the heights

overlooking the bay by Captain Allen Gardner, R.N., who named the hill

Berea in gratitude for support received from the settlers, whom he found

"more noble than those of" Zululand--Dingaan having refused to allow the

captain to start a mission among his people. From December 1838 to

December 1839 a small British military force was stationed at the port.

On its recall the little settlement was taken possession of by Dutch

emigrants from the Cape, who had defeated the Zulu king Dingaan, and who

the year before at the upper end of the bay had formed an encampment,

_Kangela_ (look-out), the present Congella. The Dutch claimed

independence, and on the block-house at Durban hoisted the flag of the

"Republic of Natalia." In 1842, however, a British military force

reoccupied Durban, and on the 15th of July of that year a treaty was

signed in which the Dutch recognized British sovereignty (see further

NATAL: _History_). From that date Durban, though not the seat of

government, became the principal town in Natal. In 1850 there were 500

white inhabitants, and in 1853 the town was granted municipal

government. The first mayor was Mr George Cato (c. 1810-1893), one of

the earliest settlers in Natal. In 1860 a railway from the Point to the

town, the first railway in South Africa, was opened. The discovery of

the gold-mines on the Rand greatly increased the importance of the port,

and renewed efforts were made to remove the bar which obstructed the

entrance to the bay. The Harbour Board, which was formed in 1881 and

ceased to exist in 1893, effected, under the guidance of Mr Harry

Escombe, enormous improvements in the port--on which the prosperity of

Durban is dependent. But it was not until 1904 that the fairway was

deepened sufficiently to allow mail steamers of the largest class to

enter the harbour. The growth of the port as illustrated by customs

receipts is shown in the increase from L250,000 in 1880 to L981,000 in

1904. In 1846 the customs revenue was returned at L3510.

See _Durban: Fifty Years' Municipal History_, compiled for the

corporation by W.P.M. Henderson, Asst. Town Clerk (Durban, 1904); G.

Russell, _History of Old Durban_ [to 1860] (Durban, 1899).

DURBAR, a term in India for a court or levee, from the Persian _darbar_.

A durbar may be either a council for administering affairs of state, or

a purely ceremonial gathering. In the former sense the native rulers of

India in the past, like the amir of Afghanistan to-day, received

visitors and conducted business in durbar. A durbar is the executive

council of a native state. In the latter sense the word has come to be

applied to great ceremonial gatherings like Lord Lytton's durbar for the

proclamation of the queen empress in India in 1877, or the Delhi durbar

of 1903.

DUREN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the right

bank of the Roer, 19 m. E. from Aix-la-Chapelle on the main line of

railway to Cologne. Pop. (1905) 29,270. It has two Protestant and six

Roman Catholic churches, among the latter the Gothic St Annakirche, said

to contain a portion of the head of the saint, to the shrine of which

frequent pilgrimages are made. There are several high grade schools,

monuments to the emperor William I., Bismarck and Moltke, and, in the

town-hall, a collection of antiquities. It is the seat of considerable

manufactures, notably cloth, paper, flax-spinning, carpet, artificial

wool, sugar, iron wares and needles.

Duren derives its name, not, as was at one time believed, from the

_Marcodurum_ of the Ubii, mentioned in Tacitus, but from the _Dura_ or

_Duria_, assemblies held by the Carolingians in the 8th century. It

received civic rights early in the 13th century. Hypothecated by the

emperor Frederick II. to Count William of Julich, it became incorporated

with the duchy of that name, and with it passed to Prussia in 1816.

DURENE (1.2.4.5 tetramethyl benzene) C6H2(CH3)4, a hydro-carbon which

has been recognized as a constituent of coal-tar. It may be prepared by

the action of methyl iodide on brom-pseudocumene or 4.6 dibrom

metaxylene, in the presence of sodium; or by the action of methyl

chloride on toluene, in the presence of anhydrous aluminium chloride. It

crystallizes in plates, having a camphor-like smell, melting at 79-80

deg. C. and boiling at 189-191 deg. C. It is easily soluble in alcohol,

ether and benzene, and sublimes slowly at ordinary temperature. On

oxidation with chromic acid mixture, it is completely decomposed into

carbon dioxide and acetic acid; nitric acid oxidizes it to durylic and

cumidic acids [C6H2.(CH3)2.(COOH)2].

DURER, ALBRECHT (1471-1528), German painter, draughtsman and engraver,

was born at Nuremberg on the 21st of May 1471. His family was not of

Nuremberg descent, but came from the village of Eytas in Hungary. The

name, however, is German, and the family device--an open door--points to

an original form Thurer, meaning a maker of doors or carpenter. Albrecht

Durer the elder was a goldsmith by trade, and settled soon after the

middle of the 15th century in Nuremberg. He served as assistant under a

master-goldsmith of the city, Hieronymus Holper, and in 1468 married his

master's daughter Barbara, the bridegroom being forty and the bride

fifteen years of age. They had eighteen children, of whom Albrecht was

the second. The elder Durer was an esteemed craftsman and pious citizen,

sometimes, as was natural, straitened in means by the pressure of his

numerous progeny. His famous son writes with reverence and affection of

both parents, and has left a touching narrative of their death-bed

hours. He painted the portrait of his father twice, first in 1490, next

in 1497. The former of these is in the Uffizi at Florence; of the

latter, four versions exist, that in the National Gallery (formerly in

the Ashburton-Northampton collections) having the best claim to

originality.

The young Albrecht was his father's favourite son. "My father," he

writes, "took special delight in me. Seeing that I was industrious in

working and learning, he put me to school; and when I had learned to

read and write, he took me home from school and taught me the

goldsmith's trade." By and by the boy found himself drawn by preference

from goldsmith's work to painting; his father, after some hesitation on

the score of the time already spent in learning the former trade, gave

way and apprenticed him for three years, at the age of fifteen and a

half, to the principal painter of the town, Michael Wolgemut. Wolgemut

furnishes a complete type of the German painter of that age. At the head

of a large shop with many assistants, his business was to turn out,

generally for a small price, devotional pieces commissioned by

mercantile corporations or private persons to decorate their chapels in

the churches--the preference being usually for scenes of the Passion, or

for tortures and martyrdoms of the saints. In such work the painters of

Upper Germany at this time, working in the spirit of the late Gothic

style just before the dawn of the Renaissance, show considerable

technical attainments, with a love of quaint costumes and rich draperies

crumpled in complicated angular folds, some feeling for romance in

landscape backgrounds, none at all for clearness or balance in

composition, and in the attitudes and expressions of their overcrowded

figures a degree of grotesqueness and exaggeration amounting often to

undesigned caricature. There were also produced in the workshop of

Wolgemut, as in that of other artist-craftsmen of his town, a great

number of woodcuts for book illustration. We cannot with certainty

identify any of these as being by the 'prentice hand of the young Durer.

Authentic drawings done by him in boyhood, however, exist, including one

in silver-point of his own likeness at the age of thirteen in the

Albertina at Vienna, and others of two or three years later in the print

room at Berlin, at the British Museum and at Bremen.

In the school of Wolgemut Durer learned much, by his own account, but

suffered not a little from the roughness of his companions. At the end

of his apprenticeship in 1490 he entered upon the usual course of

travels--the _Wanderjahre_--of a German youth. Their direction we cannot

retrace with certainty. There had been no one at Nuremberg skilled

enough in the art of metal-engraving to teach it him to much purpose,

and it had at one time been his father's intention to apprentice him to

Martin Schongauer of Colmar, the most refined and accomplished German

painter-engraver of his time. But after travelling two years in various

parts of Germany, where we are unable to follow him, the young Durer

arrived at Colmar in 1492, only to find that Schongauer had died the

previous year. He was received kindly by three brothers of the deceased

master established there, and afterwards, still in 1492, by a fourth

brother at Basel. Under them he evidently had some practice both in

metal-engraving and in furnishing designs for the woodcutter. There is

in the museum at Basel a wood-block of St Jerome executed by him and

elaborately signed on the back with his name. This was used in an

edition of Jerome's letters printed in the same city in the same year,

1492. Some critics also maintain that his hand is to be recognized in

several series of small blocks done about the same date or somewhat

later for Bergmann and other printers of Basel, some of them being

illustrations to Terence (which were never printed), some to the romance

of the _Ritter vom Turm_, and some to the _Narrenschiff_ of Sebastian

Brandt. But the prevailing opinion is against this conjecture, and sees

in these designs the work not of a strenuous student and searcher such

as Durer was, but of a riper and more facile hand working in a spirit of

settled routine. Whether the young Durer's stay at Basel was long or

short, or whether, as has been supposed, he travelled from there into

the Low Countries, it is certain that in the early part of 1494 he was

working at Strassburg, and returned to his home at Nuremberg immediately

after Whitsuntide in that year. Of works certainly executed by him

during his years of travel there are extant, besides the Basel

wood-block, only a much-injured portrait of himself, very finely

dressed and in the first bloom of his admirable manly beauty, dated 1493

and originally painted on vellum but since transferred to canvas (this

is the portrait of the Felix Goldschmid collection); a miniature

painting on vellum at Vienna (a small figure of the Child-Christ); and

some half a dozen drawings, of which the most important are the

characteristic pen portrait of himself at Erlangen, with a Holy Family

on the reverse much in the manner of Schongauer; another Holy Family in

nearly the same style at Berlin; a study from the female nude in the

Bonnat collection; a man and woman on horseback in Berlin; a man on

horseback, and an executioner about to behead a young man, at the

British Museum, &c. These drawings all show Durer intent above all

things on the sternly accurate delineation of ungeneralized individual

forms by means of strongly accented outline and shadings curved,

somewhat like the shadings of Martin Schongauer's engravings, so as to

follow their modellings and roundness.

Within a few weeks of his return (July 7th, 1494) Durer was married,

according to an arrangement apparently made between the parents during

his absence, to Agnes Frey, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant of the

city. By the autumn of the same year, probably feeling the

incompleteness of the artistic training that could be obtained north of

the Alps, he must have taken advantage of some opportunity, we know not

what, to make an excursion of some months to Italy, leaving his lately

married wife at Nuremberg. The evidences of this travel (which are

really incontestable, though a small minority of critics still decline

to admit them) consist of (1) some fine drawings, three of them dated

1494 and others undated, but plainly of the same time, in which Durer

has copied, or rather boldly translated into his own Gothic and German

style, two famous engravings by Mantegna, a number of the "Tarocchi"

prints of single figures which pass erroneously under that master's

name, and one by yet another minor master of the North-Italian school;

with another drawing dated 1495 and plainly copied from a lost original

by Antonio Pollaiuolo, and yet another of an infant Christ copied in

1495 from Lorenzo di Credi, from whom also Durer took a motive for the

composition of one of his earliest Madonnas; (2) several landscape

drawings done in the passes of Tirol and the Trentino, which technically

will not fit in with any other period of his work, and furnish a clear

record of his having crossed the Alps about this date; (3) two or three

drawings of the costumes of Venetian courtesans, which he could not have

made anywhere but in Venice itself, and one of which is used in his

great woodcut Apocalypse series of 1498; (4) a general preoccupation

which he shows for some years from this date with the problems of the

female nude, treated in a manner for which Italy only could have set him

the example; and (5) the clear implication contained in a letter written

from Venice in 1506 that he had been there already eleven years before;

when things, he says, pleased him much which at the time of writing

please him no more. Some time in 1495 Durer must have returned from this

first Italian journey to his home in Nuremberg, where he seems to have

lived, without further change or removal, in the active practice of his

art for the next ten years.

The hour when Durer, the typical artist of the German nation, attained

maturity was one of the most pregnant in the history of his race. It was

the crisis, in northern Europe, of the transition between the middle ages

and our own. The awakening of Germany at the Renaissance was not, like

the awakening of Italy a generation or two earlier, a movement almost

exclusively intellectual. It was indeed from Italy that the races of the

north caught the impulse of intellectual freedom, the spirit of science

and curiosity, the eager retrospect towards the classic past; but joined

with these in Germany was a moral impulse which was her own, a craving

after truth and right, a rebellion against spiritual tyranny and

corruption--the Renaissance was big in the north, as it was not in the

south, with a Reformation to come. The art of printing had been invented

in good time to help and hasten the new movement of men's minds. Nor was

it by the diffusion of written ideas only that the new art supplied the

means of popular enlightenment. Along with word-printing, or indeed in

advance of it, there had sprung into use another kind of printing,

picture-printing, or what is commonly called engraving. Just as books

were the means of multiplying, cheapening and disseminating ideas, so

engravings on copper or wood were the means of multiplying, cheapening

and disseminating images which gave vividness to the ideas, or served,

for those ignorant of letters, in their stead. Technically one of these

arts, that of line-engraving on copper, sprang from the craft of the

goldsmith and metal-chaser; while that of wood-engraving sprang from the

craft of the printers of pattern-blocks and playing cards. The engraver

on metal habitually cut his own designs, and between the arts of the

goldsmith and the painter there had always been a close alliance, both

being habitually exercised by persons of the same family and sometimes by

one and the same person; so that there was no lack of hands ready-trained

for the new craft which required of the man who practised it that he

should design like a painter and cut metal like a goldsmith. Designs

intended to be cut on wood, on the other hand, were usually drawn by the

artist on the block and handed over for cutting to a class of

workmen--_Formschneider_ or _Briefmaler_--especially devoted to that

industry. Both kinds of engraving soon came to be in great demand.

Independently of the illustration of written or printed books, for which

purpose woodcuts were almost exclusively used, separate engravings or

sets of engravings in both kinds were produced, the more finely wrought

and more expensive, appealing especially to the more educated classes, on

copper, the bolder, simpler and cheaper on wood; and both kinds found a

ready sale at all the markets, fairs and church festivals of the land.

Subjects of popular devotion predominated. Figures of the Virgin and

Child, of the apostles and evangelists, the fathers of the Church, the

saints and martyrs, with illustrations of sacred history and the

Apocalypse, were supplied in endless repetition to satisfy the cravings

of a pious and simple-minded people. But to these were quickly added

subjects of allegory, of classical learning, of witchcraft and

superstition and of daily life; scenes of the parlour and the cloister,

of the shop, the field, the market and the camp; and lastly portraits of

famous men, with scenes of court life and princely pageant and ceremony.

Thus the new art became a mirror of almost all the life and thoughts of

the age. The genius of Albrecht Durer cannot be rightly estimated without

taking into account the position which the arts of engraving on metal and

on wood thus held in the culture of this time. He was indeed

professionally and in the first place a painter; but throughout his

career a great, and on the whole the most successful, part of his

industry was devoted to drawing on the block for the woodcutter or

engraving with his own hand on copper. The town of Nuremberg in

Franconia, in the age of Durer's early manhood, was a favourable home for

the growth and exercise of his powers. Of the free imperial cities of

central Germany, none had a greater historic fame or a more settled and

patriotic government. None was more the favourite of the emperors, nor

the seat of a more active and flourishing commerce. Nuremberg was the

chief mart for the merchandise that came to central Europe from the east

through Venice and over the passes of Tirol. She held not only a close

commercial intercourse, but also a close intellectual intercourse, with

Italy. Without being so forward as the rival city of Augsburg to embrace

the architectural fashions of the Italian renaissance--continuing,

indeed, to be profoundly imbued with the old and homely German burgher

spirit, and to wear, in a degree which time has not very much impaired

even yet, the quaintness of the old German civic aspect--she had imported

before the close of the 15th century a fair share of the new learning of

Italy, and numbered among her citizens distinguished humanists like

Hartmann Schedel, Sebald Schreier, Willibald Pirkheimer and Conrad

Celtes. From associates like these Durer could imbibe the spirit of

Renaissance culture and research; but the external aspects and artistic

traditions which surrounded him were purely Gothic, and he had to work

out for himself the style and form-language fit to express what was in

him. During the first seven or eight years of his settled life in his

native city from 1495, he betrays a conflict of artistic tendencies as

well as no small sense of spiritual strain and strife. His finest work in

this period was that which he provided for the woodcutter. After some

half--dozen miscellaneous single prints--"Samson and the Lion," the

"Annunciation," the "Ten Thousand Martyrs," the "Knight and Men-at-arms,"

the "Men's Bath," &c.--he undertook and by 1498 completed his famous

series of sixteen great designs for the Apocalypse. The northern mind had

long dwelt with eagerness on these phantasmagoric mysteries of things to

come, and among the earliest block-books printed in Germany is an edition

of the Apocalypse with rude figures. Founding himself to some extent on

the traditional motives, Durer conceived and carried out a set of designs

in which the qualities of the German late Gothic style, its rugged

strength and restless vehemence, its love of gnarled forms, writhing

actions and agitated lines, are fused by the fire of the young master's

spirit into vital combination with something of the majestic power and

classic severity which he had seen and admired in the works of Mantegna.

Of a little later date, and of almost as fine a quality, are the first

seven of a large series of woodcuts known as the Great Passion; and a

little later again (probably after 1500), a series of eleven subjects of

the Holy Family and of saints singly or in groups: then, towards

1504-1505, come the first seventeen of a set illustrating the life of the

Virgin: neither these nor the Great Passion were published till several

years later.

In copper-engraving Durer was at the same time diligently training

himself to develop the methods practised by Martin Schongauer and

earlier masters into one suitable for his own self-expression. He

attempted no subjects at all commensurate with those of his great

woodcuts, but contented himself for the most part with Madonnas, single

figures of scripture or of the saints, some nude mythologies of a kind

wholly new in northern art and founded upon the impressions received in

Italy, and groups, sometimes bordering on the satirical, of humble folk

and peasants. In the earliest of the Madonnas, the "Virgin with the

Dragon-fly" (1495-1496), Durer has thrown something of his own rugged

energy into a design of the traditional Schongauer type. In examples of

a few years later, like the "Virgin with the Monkey," the design of

Mother and Child clearly betrays the influence of Italy and specifically

of Lorenzo di Credi. The subjects of the "Prodigal Son" and "St Jerome

in the Wilderness" he on the other hand treats in an almost purely

northern spirit. In the nudes of the next four or five years, which

included a "St Sebastian," the so-called "Four Witches" (1497), the

"Dream" or "Temptation," the "Rape of Amymome," and the "Jealousy" or

"Great Hercules," Venetian, Paduan and Florentine memories are found, in

the treatment of the human form, competing somewhat uncomfortably with

his own inherited Gothic and northern instincts. In these early

engravings the highly-wrought landscape backgrounds, whenever they

occur, are generally the most satisfying feature. This feature reaches a

climax of beauty and elaboration in the large print of "St Eustace and

the Stag," while the figures and animals remain still somewhat cramped

and immature. In the first three or four years of the 16th century, we

find Durer in his graver-work still contending with the problems of the

nude, but now with added power, though by methods which in different

subjects contrast curiously with one another. Thus the "Nemesis,"

belonging probably to 1503, is a marvellously wrought piece of quite

unflinching realism in the rendering of a common type of mature,

muscular, unshapely German womanhood. The conception and attributes of

the figure are taken, as has lately been recognized, from a description

in the "Manto" of Politian: the goddess, to whose shoulders are appended

a pair of huge wings, stands like Fortune on a revolving ball, holding

the emblems of the cup and bridle, and below her feet is spread a rich

landscape of hill and valley. In the "Adam and Eve" of the next year, we

find Durer treating the human form in an entirely opposite manner;

constructing it, that is, on principles of abstract geometrical

proportion. The Venetian painter-etcher, Jacopo de Barbari, whom Durer

had already, it would seem, met in Venice in 1494-1495, and by the

example of whose engravings he had already been much influenced, came to

settle for a while in Nuremberg in 1500. He was conversant to some

extent with the new sciences of perspective, anatomy and proportion,

which had been making their way for years past in Italy, and from him it

is likely that Durer received the impulse to similar studies and

speculations. At any rate a whole series of extant drawings enables us

to trace the German gradually working out his own ideas of a canon of

human proportion in the composition of his famous engraving of "Adam and

Eve" (1504); which at first, as a drawing in the British Museum proves,

had been intended to be an Apollo and Diana conceived on lines somewhat

similar to one of Barbari's. The drama of the subject has in this

instance not interested him at all, but only the forms and designs of

the figures, the realization of the quality of flesh surfaces by the

subtlest use of the graving-tool known to him, and the rendering, by

methods of which he had become the greatest of all masters, of the

richness and intricacy of the forest background. Two or three other

technical masterpieces of the engraver's art, the "Coat-of-Arms with the

Skull," the "Nativity," with its exquisite background of ruined

buildings, the "Little Horse" and the "Great Horse," both of 1505,

complete the list of the master's chief productions in this kind before

he started in the last-named year for a second visit to Italy.

The pictures of this earlier Nuremberg period are not many in number and

not very admirable. Durer's powers of hand and eye are already

extraordinary and in their way almost unparalleled, but they are often

applied to the too insistent, too glittering, too emphatic rendering of

particular details and individual forms, without due regard to

subordination or the harmony of the whole. Among the earliest seem to be

two examples of a method practised in Italy especially by the school of

Mantegna, but almost without precedent in Germany, that of

tempera-painting on linen. One of these is the portrait of Frederick the

Wise of Saxony, formerly in the Hamilton collection and now at Berlin;

the second, much disfigured by restoration, is the Dresden altarpiece

with a Madonna and Child in the middle and St Anthony and Sebastian in

the wings. A mythology reminiscent of Italy is the "Hercules and the

Stymphalian Birds" in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg, founded directly

upon the "Hercules and Centaur Nessus" of Pollaiuolo, now at New Haven,

Connecticut, U.S.A. Of portraits, besides that of his father already

mentioned as done in 1497, there is his own of 1498 at Madrid. Two

totally dissimilar portraits of young women, both existing in duplicate

examples (one pair at Augsburg and Frankfort, the other pair in the

collections of M. Hengel in Paris and Baron Speck von Sternburg at

Lutzschema, for each of which has been claimed the name Furlegerin, that

is, a member of the Furleger family at Nuremberg), belong to nearly the

same time. Other panel portraits of the period are three small ones of

members of the Tucher family at Weimar and Cassel, and the striking,

restlessly elaborated half-length of Oswald Krell at Munich. In some

devotional pictures of the time Durer seems to have been much helped by

pupils, as in the two different compositions of the Maries weeping over

the body of Christ preserved respectively at Munich and Nuremberg. In an

altarpiece at Ober St Veit and in the scattered wings of the Jabach

altarpiece severally preserved at Munich, Frankfort and Cologne, the

workmanship seems to be exclusively that of journeymen working from his

drawings. The period is closed, so far as paintings are concerned, by

two examples of far higher value than those above named, that is to say

the Paumgartner altarpiece at Munich, with its romantically attractive

composition of the Nativity with angels and donors in the central panel,

and the fine armed figures of St George and St Eustace (lately freed

from the over-paintings which disfigured them) on the wings; and the

happily conceived and harmoniously finished "Adoration of the Magi" in

the Uffizi at Florence.

In the autumn of 1505 Durer journeyed for a second time to Venice, and

stayed there until the spring of 1507. The occasion of this journey has

been erroneously stated by Vasari. Durer's engravings, both on copper

and wood, had by this time attained great popularity both north and

south of the Alps, and had begun to be copied by various hands, among

others by the celebrated Marcantonio of Bologna, then in his youth.

According to Vasari, Marcantonio, in copying Durer's series of the

Little Passion on wood, had imitated the original monogram, and Durer,

indignant at this fraud, set out for Italy in order to protect his

rights, and having lodged a complaint against Marcantonio before the

signory of Venice, carried his point so far that Marcantonio was

forbidden in future to add the monogram of Durer to copies taken after

his works. This account will not bear examination. Chronological and

other proofs show that if such a suit was fought at all, it must have

been in connexion with another set of Durer's woodcuts, the first

seventeen of the Life of the Virgin. Durer himself, a number of whose

familiar letters written from Venice to his friend Pirkheimer at

Nuremberg are preserved, makes no mention of anything of the kind.

Nevertheless some such grievance may possibly have been among the causes

which determined his journey. Other causes, of which we have explicit

record, were an outbreak of sickness at Nuremberg; Durer's desire, which

in fact was realized, of finding a good market for the proceeds of his

art; and the prospect, also realized, of a commission for an important

picture from the German community settled at Venice, who had lately

caused an exchange and warehouse--the _Fondaco de' Tedeschi_--to be

built on the Grand Canal, and who were now desirous to dedicate a

picture in the church of St Bartholomew. The picture painted by Durer on

this commission was the "Adoration of the Virgin," better known as the

"Feast of Rose Garlands"; it was subsequently acquired by the emperor

Rudolf II., and carried as a thing beyond price upon men's shoulders to

Vienna; it now exists in a greatly injured state in the monastery of

Strahow at Prague. It shows the pope and emperor, with a lute-playing

angel between them, kneeling to right and left of the enthroned Virgin

and Child, who crown them with rose garlands, with a multitude of other

kneeling saints disposed with free symmetry in the background, and

farther in the background portraits of the donor and the painter, and a

flutter of wreath-carrying cherubs in the air. Of all Durer's works, it

is the one in which he most deliberately rivalled the combined splendour

and playfulness of certain phases of Italian art. The Venetian painters

assured him, he says, that they had never seen finer colours. They were

doubtless too courteous to add that fine colours do not make fine

colouring. Even in its present ruined state, it is apparent that in

spite of the masterly treatment of particular passages, such as the robe

of the pope, Durer still lacked a true sense of harmony and

tone-relations, and that the effect of his work must have been restless

and garish beside that of a master like the aged Bellini. That veteran

showed the German visitor the most generous courtesy, and Durer still

speaks of him as the best in painting ("_der pest im gemell_") in spite

of his advanced years. A similar festal intention in design and

colouring, with similar mastery in passages and even less sense of

harmonious relations in the whole, is apparent in a second important

picture painted by Durer at Venice, "The Virgin and Child with the

Goldfinch," formerly in the collection of Lord Lothian and now at

Berlin. A "Christ disputing with the Doctors" of the same period, in the

Barberini Gallery at Rome, is recorded to have cost the painter only

five days' labour, and is an unsatisfying and ill-composed congeries of

heads and hands, both of such strenuous character and individuality as

here and there to pass into caricature. The most satisfying of Durer's

paintings done in Venice are the admirable portrait of a young man at

Hampton Court (the same sitter reappears in the "Feast of Rose

Garlands"), and two small pieces, one the head of a brown Italian girl

modelled and painted with real breadth and simplicity, formerly in the

collection of Mr Reginald Cholmondeley and now at Berlin, and the small

and very striking little "Christ Crucified" with the figure relieved

against the night sky, which is preserved in the Dresden Gallery and has

served as model and inspiration to numberless later treatments of the

theme. An interesting, rather fantastic, portrait of a blonde girl

wearing a wide cap, now in the Berlin museum, is dated 1507 and may

have been done in the early months of that year at Venice. It is

possible, though not certain, that to this date also belongs the famous

portrait of himself at Munich bearing a false signature and date, 1500;

in this it has been lately shown that the artist modified his own

lineaments according to a preconceived scheme of facial proportion, so

that it must be taken as an ideal rather than a literal presentment of

himself to posterity as he appeared in the flower of his early middle

age. From Venice Durer kept up a continuous correspondence, which has

been published, with his bosom friend Pirkheimer at Nuremberg. He tells

of the high position he holds among the Venetians; of the jealousy shown

him by some of the meaner sort of native artist; of the honour and

wealth in which he might live if he would consent to abandon home for

Italy; of the northern winter, and how he knows that after his return it

will set him shivering for the south. Yet he resisted all seductions and

was in Nuremberg again before the summer of 1507. First, it seems, he

had made an excursion to Bologna, having intended to take Mantua on the

way, in order to do homage to the old age of that Italian master, Andrea

Mantegna, from whose work he had himself in youth learned the most. But

the death of Mantegna prevented his purpose.

From the spring of 1507 until the summer of 1520, Durer was again a

settled resident in his native town. Except the brilliant existences of

Raphael at Rome and of Rubens at Antwerp and Madrid, the annals of art

present the spectacle of few more honoured or more fortunate careers.

His reputation had spread all over Europe. From Flanders to Rome his

distinction was acknowledged, and artists of less invention, among them

some of the foremost on both sides of the Alps, were not ashamed to

borrow from his work this or that striking combination or expressive

type. He was on terms of friendship or friendly communication with all

the first masters of the age, and Raphael held himself honoured in

exchanging drawings with Durer. In his own country, all orders of men,

from the emperor Maximilian down, delighted to honour him; and he was

the familiar companion of chosen spirits among the statesmen, humanists

and reformers of the new age. The burgher life of even Nuremberg, the

noblest German city, seems narrow, quaint and harsh beside the grace and

opulence and poetical surroundings of Italian life in the same and the

preceding generation. The great cities of Flanders also, with their

world-wide commerce and long-established eminence in the arts, presented

aspects of more splendid civic pomp and luxury. But among its native

surroundings the career of Durer stands out with an aspect of ideal

elevation and decorum which is its own. His temper and life seem to have

been remarkably free from all that was jarring, jealous and fretful;

unless, indeed, we are to accept as true the account of his wife's

character which represents her as having been no fit mate for him, but

an incorrigible shrew and skinflint. The name of Agnes Durer was for

centuries used to point a moral, and among the unworthy wives of great

men the wife of Durer became almost as notorious as the wife of

Socrates. The source of the traditions to her discredit is to be found

in a letter written a few years after Durer's death by his life-long

intimate, Willibald Pirkheimer, who accuses her of having plagued her

husband to death by her meanness, made him overwork himself for money's

sake, and given his latter days no peace. No doubt there must have been

some kind of foundation for Pirkheimer's charges; and it is to be noted

that neither in Durer's early correspondence with this intimate friend,

nor anywhere in his journals, does he use any expressions of tenderness

or affection for his wife, only speaking of her as his housemate and of

her helping in the sale of his prints, &c. That he took her with him on

his journey to the Netherlands shows at any rate that there can have

been no acute estrangement. And it is fair to remember in her defence

that Pirkheimer when he denounced her was old, gouty and peevish, and

that the immediate occasion of his outbreak against his friend's widow

was a fit of anger because she had not let him have a pair of antlers--a

household ornament much prized in those days--to which he fancied

himself entitled out of the property left by Durer. We have evidence

that after her husband's death Agnes Durer behaved with generosity to

his brothers.

The thirteen or fourteen years of Durer's life between his return from

Venice and his journey to the Netherlands (spring 1507-midsummer 1520)

can best be divided according to the classes of work with which, during

successive divisions of the period, he was principally occupied. The

first five years, 1507-1511, are pre-eminently the painting years of his

life. In them, working with infinite preliminary pains, as a vast number

of extant drawings and studies testify, he produced what have been

accounted his four capital works in painting, besides several others of

minor importance. The first is the "Adam and Eve" dated 1507, in which

both attitudes and proportions are as carefully calculated, though on a

somewhat different scheme, as in the engraving of 1504. Two versions of

the picture exist, one in Florence at the Pitti palace, the other, which

is generally allowed to be the original, at Madrid. To 1508 belongs the

life-sized "Virgin with the Iris," a piece remarkable for the fine

romantic invention of its background, but plainly showing the hand of an

assistant, perhaps Hans Baldung, in its execution: the best version is

in the Cook collection at Richmond, an inferior one in the Rudolphinum

at Prague. In 1508 Durer returned to a subject which he had already

treated in an early woodcut, the "Massacre of the Ten Thousand Martyrs

of Nicomedia." The picture, painted for the elector Frederick of Saxony,

is now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna; the overcrowded canvas (into

which Durer has again introduced his own portrait as a spectator

alongside of the elector) is full of striking and animated detail, but

fails to make any great impression on the whole, and does not do justice

to the improved sense of breadth and balance in design, of clearness and

dignity in composition, which the master had undoubtedly brought back

with him from his second visit to Italy. In 1509 followed the

"Assumption of the Virgin" with the Apostles gathered about her tomb, a

rich altarpiece with figures of saints and portraits of the donor and

his wife in the folding wings, executed for Jacob Heller, a merchant of

Frankfort, in 1509. This altarpiece was afterwards replaced at Frankfort

(all except the portraits of the donors, which remained behind) by a

copy, while the original was transported to Munich, where it perished by

fire in 1674. The copy, together with the many careful and highly

finished preparatory studies for the heads, limbs and draperies which

have been preserved, shows that this must have been the one of Durer's

pictures in which he best combined the broader vision and simpler habits

of design which had impressed him in the works of Italian art with his

own inherited and ingrained love of unflinchingly grasped fact and

rugged, accentuated character. In 1511 was completed another famous

painting, multitudinous in the number of its figures though of very

moderate dimensions, the "Adoration of the Trinity by all the Saints," a

subject commissioned for a chapel dedicated to All Saints in an

almshouse for decayed tradesmen at Nuremberg, and now at the Imperial

Gallery at Vienna. Nothing can exceed the fulness and variety of

invention, or the searching force and precision of detail in this

picture; nor does it leave so much to desire as several of the master's

other paintings in point of colour-harmony and pleasurable general

effect.

In the meantime Durer had added a few to the number of his

line-engravings and had completed the two woodcut series of the Great

Passion, begun about 1498-1499, and the Life of the Virgin. The new

subjects compared with the old show some falling off in dramatic stress

and intensity of expression, but on the other hand a marked gain in

largeness of design and clearness of composition. In 1511 these two

works were brought out for the first time, and the Apocalypse series in

a second edition; and for the next three years, 1511-1514, engraving

both on wood and copper, but especially the latter, took the first place

among Durer's activities. Besides such fine single woodcuts as the "Mass

of St Gregory," the "St Christopher," the "St Jerome," and two Holy

Families of 1511, Durer published in the same year the most numerous and

popularly conceived of all his woodcut series, that known from the

dimensions of its thirty-seven subjects as the "Little Passion" on wood;

and in the next year, 1512, a set of fifteen small copper-engravings on

the same theme, the "Little Passion" on copper. Both of these must

represent the labour of several preceding years: one or two of the

"Little Passion" plates, dating back as far as 1507, prove that this

series at least had been as long as five years in his mind. In thus

repeating over and over on wood and copper nearly the same incidents of

the Passion, or again in rehandling them in yet another medium, as in

the highly finished series of drawings known as the "Green Passion" in

the Albertina at Vienna, Durer shows an inexhaustible variety of

dramatic and graphic invention, and is never betrayed into repeating an

identical action or motive.

In 1513 and 1514 appeared the three most famous of Durer's works in

copper-engraving, "The Knight and Death" (or simply "The Knight," as he

himself calls it, 1513), the "Melancolia" and the "St Jerome in his

Study" (both 1514). These are the masterpieces of the greatest mind

which ever expressed itself in this form of art. Like other

masterpieces, they suggest much more than they clearly express, and

endless meanings have been, rightly or wrongly, read into them by

posterity. Taken together as a group, they have been supposed to be

three out of an uncompleted series designed to illustrate the four

"temperaments" and complexions of men. Again, more reasonably, they have

been taken as types severally of the moral, the intellectual and the

theological virtues. The idea at the bottom of the "Knight and Death"

seems to be a combination of the Christian knight of Erasmus's

_Enchiridion militis Christiani_ with the type, traditional in medieval

imagery, of the pilgrim on his way through the world. The imaginative

force of the presentation, coming from a man of Durer's powers, is

intense; but what consciously occupied him most may well have been the

problem how to draw accurately the proportions and action of a horse in

motion. This problem he here solves for the first time, with the help of

an Italian example: at least his design so closely repeats that of

Leonardo da Vinci's famous and early destroyed equestrian statue of

Francesco Sforza that we must certainly suppose him to have seen either

the model itself or such a drawing of it as is still preserved by

Leonardo's own hand. The face of the rider seems to recall that of the

statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni at Venice; for the armour Durer had

recourse to an old drawing of his own, signed and dated in 1498. The

"Melancolia," numbered "1" as though intended to be the first of a

series, with its brooding winged genius sitting dejectedly amidst a

litter of scientific instruments and symbols, is hard to interpret in

detail, but impossible not to recognize in general terms as an

embodiment of the spirit of intellectual research (the student's

"temperament" was supposed to be one with the melancholic), resting

sadly from its labours in a mood of lassitude and defeat. Comparatively

cheerful beside these two is the remaining subject of the student saint

reading in his chamber, with his dog and domestic lion resting near him,

and a marvellous play of varied surface and chequered light on the floor

and ceiling of his apartment and on all the objects which it contains.

Besides these three masterpieces of line-engraving, the same years,

1512-1515, found Durer occupied with his most important experiments in

etching, both in dry-point ("The Holy Family and Saints" and the "St

Jerome in the Wilderness") and with the acid bath. At the same time he

was more taken up than ever, as is proved by the contents of a

sketch-book at Dresden, with mathematical and anatomical studies on the

proportions and structure of the human frame. A quite different kind of

study, that of the postures of wrestlers in action, is illustrated by a

little-known series of drawings, still of the same period, at Vienna.

Almost the only well-authenticated painting of the time is a "Virgin and

Child" in the Imperial Museum at Vienna. The portraits of the emperors

Charles the Great and Sigismund (1512), in their present state at any

rate, can hardly be recognized as being by the master's hand. An

interval of five years separates the Vienna "Madonna" from the two fine

heads of the apostles Philip and James in the Uffizi at Florence, the

pair of boys' heads painted in tempera on linen in the Bibliotheque

Nationale at Paris, the "Madonna with the Pink" at Augsburg, and the

portrait of Wolgemut at Munich, all of 1516. Among engravings of the

same time are three Madonnas, the apostles Thomas and Paul, a bagpiper

and two peasants dancing, and three or four experiments in etching on

plates of iron and zinc. In wood-engraving his energies were almost

entirely given to bearing a part--which modern research has proved to

have been not nearly so large as was traditionally supposed--in the

great decorative schemes commanded by the Emperor Max in his own honour,

and devised and carried out by a whole corps of men of letters and

artists: namely, the Triumphal Gate and the Triumphal March or

Procession. A third and smaller commemorative design, the Triumphal Car,

originally designed to form part of the second but in the end issued

separately, was entirely Durer's own work. A far more successful and

attractive effort of his genius in the same service is to be found in

the marginal decorations done by him in pen for the emperor's

prayer-book. This unequalled treasure of German art and invention has in

later times been broken up, the part executed by Durer being preserved

at Munich, the later sheets, which were decorated by other hands, having

been transported to Besancon. Durer's designs, drawn with the pen in

pale lilac, pink and green, show an inexhaustible richness of invention

and an airy freedom and playfulness of hand beyond what could be

surmised from the sternness of those studies which he made direct from

life and nature. They range from subjects of the homeliest and most

mirthful realism to others serious and devout, and from literal or

almost literal transcripts of natural form to the most whimsically

abstract combinations of linear pattern and tendril and flourish.

All these undertakings for his imperial friend and patron were stopped

by the emperor's death in 1519. A portrait-drawing by the master done at

Augsburg a few months previously, one of his finest works, served him as

the basis both of a commemorative picture and a woodcut. Other paintings

of this and the succeeding year we may seek for in vain; but in line

engravings we have four more Madonnas, two St Christophers, one or two

more peasant subjects, the well-known St Anthony with the view of

Nuremberg in the background, and the smaller of the two portraits of the

Cardinal-Elector of Mainz; and in wood-engraving several fine heraldic

pieces, including the arms of Nuremberg.

In the summer of 1520 the desire of Durer to secure from Maximilian's

successors a continuance of the patronage and privileges granted during

his lifetime, together with an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg, gave

occasion to the master's fourth and last journey from home. Together

with his wife and her maid he set out in July for the Netherlands in

order to be present at the coronation of the young emperor Charles V.,

and if possible to conciliate the good graces of the all-powerful regent

Margaret. In the latter part of his aim Durer was but partially

successful. His diary of his travels enables us to follow his movements

almost day by day. He journeyed by the Rhine, Cologne, and thence by

road to Antwerp, where he was handsomely received, and lived in whatever

society was most distinguished, including that of Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Besides his written notes, interesting traces of his travels exist in

the shape of the scattered leaves of a sketch-book filled with delicate

drawings in silver-point, chiefly views of places and studies of

portrait and costume. Several of his finest portrait-drawings in chalk

or charcoal, including those of his brother artists Lucas Van Leyden and

Bernard Van Orley, as well as one of two fine portrait paintings of men,

belong to the period of this journey. So does a magnificent drawing of a

head of a nonagenarian with a flowing beard who sat to him at Antwerp,

together with a picture from the same head in the character of St

Jerome; the drawing is now at Vienna, the picture at Lisbon. Durer's

interest and curiosity, both artistic and personal, were evidently

stimulated by his travels in the highest degree. Besides going to Aachen

for the coronation, he made excursions down the Rhine from Cologne to

Nijmwegen, and back overland by 's Hertogenbosch; to Brussels; to Bruges

and Ghent; and to Zealand with the object of seeing a natural curiosity,

a whale reported ashore. The vivid account of this last expedition given

in his diary contrasts with the usual dry entries of interviews and

disbursements. A still more striking contrast is the passionate outburst

of sympathy and indignation with which, in the same diary, he comments

on the supposed kidnapping of Luther by foul play on his return from the

diet of Worms. Without being one of those who in his city took an avowed

part against the old ecclesiastical system, and probably without seeing

clearly whither the religious ferment of the time was tending--without,

that is, being properly speaking a Reformer--Durer in his art and his

thoughts was the incarnation of those qualities of the German character

and conscience which resulted in the Reformation; and, personally, with

the fathers of the Reformation he lived in the warmest sympathy.

On the 12th of July 1521 Durer reached home again. Drawings of this and

the immediately following years prove that on his return his mind was

full of schemes for religious pictures. For a great group of the Madonna

surrounded with saints there are extant two varying sketches of the

whole composition and a number of finished studies for individual heads

and figures. Less abundant, but still sufficient to prove the artist's

intention, are the preliminary studies to a picture of the Crucifixion.

There exist also fine drawings for a "Lamentation over the body of

Christ," an "Adoration of the Kings," and a "March to Calvary"; of the

last-named composition, besides the beautiful and elaborate pen-and-ink

drawing at Florence, three still more highly-wrought versions in green

monochrome exist; whether any of them are certainly by the artist's own

hand is matter of debate. But no religious paintings on the grand scale,

corresponding to these drawings of 1521-1524, were ever carried out;

perhaps partly because of the declining state of the artist's health,

but more because of the degree to which he allowed his time and thoughts

to be absorbed in the preparation of his theoretical works on geometry

and perspective, proportion and fortification. Like Leonardo, but with

much less than Leonardo's genius for scientific speculation and

divination, Durer was a confirmed reasoner and theorist on the laws of

nature and natural appearances. He himself attached great importance to

his studies in this kind; his learned friends expected him to give their

results to the world; which accordingly, though having little natural

gift or felicity in verbal expression, he laboured strenuously to do.

The consequence was that in the last and ripest years of his life he

produced as an artist comparatively little. In painting there is the

famous portrait of Hieronymus Holtzschuher at Berlin, in which the

personality and general aspect of the sitter assert themselves with

surprising power. This and the Antwerp head of Jerome are perhaps the

most striking examples of Durer's power of forcing into subordination to

a general impression such a multiplicity of insistent detail as would

have smothered any weaker conception than his. No other hand could have

ventured to render the hair and beard of a sitter, as it was the habit

of this inveterate linearist to do, not by indication of masses, but by

means of an infinity of single lines swept, with a miraculous certainty

and fineness of touch, in the richest and most intricate of decorative

curves. To the same period belong a pleasing but somewhat weak "Madonna

and Child" at Florence; and finally, still in the same year 1526, the

two famous panels at Munich embodying the only one of the great

religious conceptions of the master's later years which he lived to

finish. These are the two pairs of saints, St John with St Peter in

front and St Paul with St Mark in the background. The John and Paul are

conceived and executed really in the great style, with a commanding

nobility and force alike in the character of the heads, the attitudes,

and the sweep of draperies; they represent the highest achievement of

early German art in painting. In copper-engraving Durer's work during

the same years was confined entirely to portraits, those of the

cardinal-elector of Mainz ("The Great Cardinal"), Frederick the Wise,

elector of Saxony, Willibald Pirkheimer, Melanchthon and Erasmus. To the

tale of his woodcuts, besides a few illustrations to his book on

measurements (that is, geometry and perspective), and on fortification,

he only added one Holy Family and one portrait, that of his friend Eoban

Hesse. Of his theoretical books, he only succeeded in getting two

finished and produced during his lifetime, that on geometry and

perspective or measurement, to use his own title--which was published at

Nuremberg in 1525, and that on fortification, published in 1527; the

work on human proportions was brought out shortly after his death in

1528. His labours, whether artistic or theoretic, had for some time been

carried on in the face of failing health. In the canals of the Low

Countries he had caught a fever, of which he never shook off the

effects. We have the evidence of this in his own written words, as well

as in a sketch which he drew to indicate the seat of his suffering to

some physician with whom he was in correspondence, and again in the

record of his physical aspect which is preserved by a portrait engraved

on wood just after his death, from a drawing made no doubt not long

before in this portrait we see his shoulders already bent, the features

somewhat gaunt, the old pride of the abundant locks shorn away. The end

came on the night of the 6th of April 1528, so suddenly that there was

no time to call his dearest friends to his bedside. He was buried in a

vault which belonged to his wife's family, but was afterwards disturbed,

in the cemetery of St John at Nuremberg. An appropriate _Requiescat_ is

contained in the words of Luther, in a letter written to their common

friend Eoban Hesse:--"As for Durer, assuredly affection bids us mourn

for one who was the best of men, yet you may well hold him happy that he

has made so good an end, and that Christ has taken him from the midst of

this time of trouble and from greater troubles in store, lest he, that

deserved to behold nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold

the worst. Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers: Amen."

The principal extant paintings of Durer, with the places where they are

to be found, have been mentioned above. Of his drawings, which for

students are the most vitally interesting part of his works, the richest

collections are in the Albertina at Vienna, the Berlin Museum and the

British Museum. The Louvre also possesses some good examples, and many

others are dispersed in various public collections, as in the Musee

Bonnat at Bayonne, at Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Dresden,

Basel, Milan, Florence and Oxford, as well as in private hands all over

Europe.