Part 5 (1/2)
For us nowadays the pith of history seems no more to be the lives of monarchs, or the fighting of battles, or even the deliberations of councils; these things we have more and more come to regard merely as tools and engines for the creation of societies, homes, and friends. And so, though religion and religious machinery dominated the life of those days, it is not in theological disputes, neither is it in oec.u.menical councils and Popes, nor in sermons, reformers, and synods, that we find the essence of the soul's life. Rather to us, the pictures, the statues, the books, the furniture, the wardrobes, the letters, and the scandals that have been left behind, speak to us of those days; for these we value them. And we are right, the value of the Renaissance lies in these things, I say ”the scandals” of those days; for a part of what comes under that head was perhaps the manifestation of a morality based on a wider experience; though its a.s.sociation with obvious vices and its opposition to the old and stale ideals gave it an illegitimate character; while the re-establishment of the more part of those ideals has perpetuated its reproach. There can be no intellectual charity if the machinery and special sentences of current morality are supposed to be final or truly adequate. Their tentative and inadequate character, which every free intelligence recognises, is what endorses the wisdom of Jesus', saying, ”Judge not that ye be not judged.” Ordinary honest and good citizens do not realise how much that is in every way superior to the gifts of any single one of themselves is yearly sacrificed and tortured for their preservation as a cla.s.s. On what agonies of creative and original minds is the safety of their homes based? These respectable Molochs who devour both the poor and the exceptionally gifted, and are so little better for their meal, were during the Renascence for a time gainsaid and abashed; yet even then their engines, the traditional secular and ecclesiastic policies, were a foreign enc.u.mbrance with which the human spirit was loaded, and which helped to prevent it from reaping the full result of its mighty upheaval.
To see things as they are, and above all to value them for what is most essential in them with regard to the development of our own characters;--that is, I take it, consciously or unconsciously, the main effort of the modern spirit. On the world, the flesh, and the devil, we have put new values; and it was the first a.s.sertion of these new values which caused the Renascence. Fine manners, fine clothes, and varied social interchange make the world admirable in our eyes, not at all a bogey to frighten us. Health, frankness, and abundant exercise make the flesh a pure delight in our eyes; lastly, this new-born spirit has made ”a moral of the devil himself,” and so for us he has lost his terror.
Rabelais was right when he laughed the old outworn values down, and declared that women were in the first place female, men in the first place male; that the written word should be a self-expression, a sincerity, not a task or a catalogue or a penance, but, like laughter and speech, essentially human, making all men brothers, doing away with artificial barriers and distinctions, making the scholar shake in time with the toper, and doubling the divine up with the losel; bidding even the lady hold her sides in company with the harlot. Eating and drinking were seen to be good in themselves; the eye and the nose and the palate were not only to be respected but courted; free love was better than married enmity. No rite, no church, no G.o.d, could annihilate these facts or restrain their influence any more than the sea could be tamed. Durer was touched with this spirit; we see it in his fine clothes, in his collector's rapacity, above all in his letters to his friend Pirkheimer--a man more typical of that Rabelaisian age than Durer and Michael Angelo, who were both of them not only modern men but men conservative of the best that had been--men in travail for the future, absorbed by the responsibility of those who create.
Pirkheimer, one year Durer's senior, was a gross fat man early in life, enjoying the clinking of goblets, the music of fork and knife, and the effrontery of obscene jests. A vain man, a soldier and a scholar, pedantic, irritable, but in earnest; a complimenter of Emperors, a leader of the reform party, a partisan of Luther's, the friend and correspondent of Erasmus, the elective brother of Durer. The man was typical; his fellows were in all lands. Durer was surprised to find how many of them there were at Venice--men who would delight Pirkheimer and delight in him. ”My friend, there are so many Italians here who look exactly like you I don't know how it happens! ... men of sense and knowledge, good lute players and pipers, judges of painting, men of much n.o.ble sentiment and honest virtue; and they show me much honour and friends.h.i.+p.” Something of all this was doubtless in Durer too; but in him it was refined and harmonised by the sense and serious concern, not only for the things of to-day, but for those of to-morrow and yesterday; the sense of solidarity, the pa.s.sion for permanent effect, eternal excellence. These things, in men like Pirkheimer, still more in Erasmus, and even in Rabelais and Montaigne, are not absent; but they are less stringent, less religious, than they are in a Durer or a Michael Angelo.
CHAPTER III
DuRER AT VENICE
I
There are several reasons which may possibly have led Durer to visit Venice in 1505. The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, or Exchange of the German Merchants at Venice, had been burned down the winter before, and they were in haste to complete a new one. Durer may have received a.s.surance that the commission to paint the altar-piece for the new chapel would be his did he desire it. At any rate he seems to have set to work on such a picture almost as soon as he arrived there. It is strange to think that Giorgione and t.i.tian probably began to paint the frescoes on the facade while he was still at work in the chapel, or soon after he left. The plague broke out in Nuremberg before he came away; but this is not likely to have been his princ.i.p.al motive for leaving home, as many richer men, such as his friend Pirkheimer, from whom he borrowed money for the journey, stayed where they were. Nor do Durer's letters reveal any alarm for his friend's, his mother's, his wife's, or his brother's safety. He took with him six small pictures, and probably a great number of prints, for Venice was a first-rate market.
II
The letters which follow are like a glimpse of a distant scene in a _camera obscura_, and, like life itself, they are full of repet.i.tions and over-insistence on what is insignificant or of temporary interest.
To-day they call for our patience and forbearance, and it will depend upon our imaginative activity in what degree they repay them; even as it depends upon our power of affectionate a.s.similation in what degree and kind every common day adds to our real possessions.
I have made my citations as ample as possible, so as to give the reader a just idea of their character while making them centre as far as possible round points of special interest.
_To the honourable, wise Master Wilibald Pirkheimer, Burgher of Nurberg, my kind Master_. VENICE, _January 6, 1506._
I wish you and yours many good, happy New Years. My willing service, first of all, to you dear Master Pirkheimer! Know that I am in good health; I pray G.o.d far better things than that for you. As to those pearls and precious stones which you gave me commission to buy, you must know that I can find nothing good or even worth its price. Everything is snapped up by the Germans who hang about the Riva. They always want to get four times the value for anything, for they are the falsest knaves alive. No one need look for an honest service from any of them. Some good fellows have warned me to beware of them, they cheat man and beast.
You can buy better things at a lower price at Frankfurt than at Venice.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Wilibald Pirkheimer--Charcoal Drawing, Dumesnil Collection, Paris _Face p._ 80]
About the books which I was to order for you, the Imhofs have already seen after them; but if there is anything else you want, let me know and I will attend to it for you with all zeal. Would to G.o.d I could do you a right good service! gladly would I accomplish it, seeing, as I do, how much you do for me. And I pray you be patient with my debt, for indeed I think much oftener of it than you do. When G.o.d helps me home I will honourably repay you with many thanks; for I have a panel to paint for the Germans for which they are to pay me a hundred and ten Rhenish florins--it will not cost me as much as five. I shall have sc.r.a.ped it and laid on the ground and made it ready within eight days; then I shall at once begin to paint and, if G.o.d will, it shall be in its place above the altar a month after Easter.
VENICE, _February 17_, 1506.
How I wish you were here at Venice! There are so many nice men among the Italians who seek my company more and more every day--which is very pleasing to one--men of sense and knowledge, good lute-players and pipers, judges of painting, men of much n.o.ble sentiment and 'honest virtue, and they show me much honour and friends.h.i.+p. On the other hand there are also amongst them some of the most false, lying, thievish rascals; I should never have believed that such were living in the world. If one did not know them, one would think them the nicest men the earth could show. For my own part I cannot help laughing at them whenever they talk to me. They know that their knavery is no secret but they don't mind.
Amongst the Italians I have many good friends who warn me not to eat and drink with their painters. Many of them are my enemies and they copy my work in the churches and wherever they can find it; and then they revile it and say that the style is not _antique_ and so not good. But Giovanni Bellini has highly praised me before many n.o.bles. He wanted to have something of mine, and himself came to me and asked me to paint him something and he would pay well for it. And all men tell me what an upright man he is, so that I am really friendly with him. He is very old, but is still the best painter of them all. And that which so well pleased me eleven years ago pleases me no longer, if I had not seen it for myself I should not have believed any one who told me. You must know too that there are many better painters here than Master Jacob (Jacopo de' Barbari) is abroad (_wider darvsen Meister J._), yet Anton Kolb would swear an oath that no better painter lives than Jacob. Others sneer at him, saying if he were good he would stay here, and so forth.
I have only to-day begun to sketch in my picture, for my hands were so scabby (_grindig_) that I could do no work with them, but I have got them cured.
Now be lenient with me and don't get in a pa.s.sion so easily, but be gentle like me. I don't know why you will not learn from me. My friend!
I should like to know if any one of your loves is dead--that one close by the water for instance, or the one called [Ill.u.s.tration] or [Ill.u.s.tration] or a [Ill.u.s.tration] so that you might supply her place by another. ALBRECHT DuRER.
VENICE, February 28, 1506.
I wish you had occasion to come here, I know you would not find time hang on your hands, for there are so many nice men in this country, right good artists. I have such a throng of Italians about me that at times I have to shut myself up. The n.o.bles all wish me well, but few of the painters.