Though Durer was most famous as an engraver, yet he executed many large
paintings, which occupy a distinguished place in the royal collections
of Germany, and other European countries. In the imperial collection at
Munich are some of the most celebrated, as Adam and Eve, the Adoration
of the Magi, the Crucifixion--a grand composition--the Crowning of the
Virgin, the Battle between Alexander and Darius, and many other great
works. Durer painted the Wise Men's Offering, two pictures of the
Passion of Christ, and an Assumption of the Virgin, for a monastery of
Frankfort, which proved a source of income to the monks, from the
presents they received for exhibiting them. The people of Nuremberg
still preserve, in the Town Hall, his portraits of Charlemagne and some
Emperors of the House of Austria, with the Twelve Apostles, whose
drapery is remarkable for being modern German, instead of Oriental. He
sent his own portrait to Raffaelle, painted on canvas, without any
coloring or touch of the pencil, only heightened with shades and white,
yet exhibiting such strength and elegance that the great artist to whom
it was presented expressed the greatest surprise at the sight of it.
This piece, after the death of Raffaelle, fell into the possession of
Giulio Romano, who placed it among the curiosities of the palace of
Mantua. Besides the pictures already mentioned, there is by him an Ecce
Homo at Venice, his own portrait, and two pictures representing St.
James and St. Philip, and an Adam and Eve in the Florentine Gallery.
There are also some of his works in the Louvre, and in the royal
collections in England. As a painter, it has been observed of Durer that
he studied nature only in her unadorned state, without attending to
those graces which study and art might have afforded him; but his
imagination was lively, his composition grand, and his pencil delicate.
He finished his works with exact neatness, and he was particularly
excellent in his Madonnas, though he encumbered them with heavy
draperies. He surpassed all the painters of his own country, yet he did
not avoid their defects--such as dryness and formality of outline, the
want of a just degradation of the tints, an expression without
agreeableness, and draperies broad in the folds, but stiff in the forms.
He was no observer of the propriety of costume, and paid so little
attention to it that he appears to have preferred to drape his saints
and heroes of antiquity in the costume of his own time and country.
Fuseli observes that "the coloring of Durer went beyond his age, and in
his easel pictures it as far excelled the oil color of Raffaelle in
juice, and breadth, and handling, as Raffaelle excelled him in every
other quality."