Part 19 (1/2)
[Footnote 75: See the exquisite landscape in the collection of Mr. C. S.
Ricketts and Mr. C. H. Shannon, reproduced in the sixth folio of the Durer Society, 1903. Mr. Campbell Dodgson describes the drawing as in a measure spoilt by retouching, but what convinces him that these retouches are not by Durer? The pen-work seems to be at once too clever and too careless to have been added by another hand to preserve a fading drawing.]
[Footnote 76: XII. Discourse.]
[Footnote 77: XIII, Discourse.]
[Footnote 78: Ibid.]
[Footnote 79: Literary Remains of Albrecht Durer, p. I 50.]
CHAPTER IV
DuRER'S METAL ENGRAVINGS
I
For the artist or designer the chief difference between the engraving done on a wood block and that done on metal lies in the thickness of the line. The engraved line in a wood block is in relief, that on a metal plate is entrenched; the ink in the one case is applied to the crest of a ridge, in the other it fills a groove into which the surface of the paper is squeezed. Though lines almost as fine as those possible on metal have been achieved by wood engravers, in doing this they force the nature of their medium, whereas on a copper plate fine lines come naturally. Perhaps no section of Durer's work reveals his unique powers so thoroughly as his engravings on metal. They were entirely his own work both in design and execution; and no expenditure of pains or patience seems to have limited his intentions, or to have hindered his execution or rendered it less vital. And perhaps it is this fact which witnesses with our spirit and bids us recognise the master: rather than the comprehension of natural forms which he evinces, subtle and vigorous though it be; or than the symbols and types which he composed from such forms for the traditional and novel ideas of his day. And this unweariable a.s.siduity of his is continually employed in the discovery of very n.o.ble arabesques of line and patterns in black and white, more varied than the grain in satin wood or the cl.u.s.tering and dispersion of the stars. Intensity of application, constancy of purpose, when revealed to us by beautifully variegated surfaces, the result of human toil, may well impress us, may rightly impress us, more than quaint and antiquated notions about the four temperaments, or about witches and their sabbaths, or about virtues and vices embodied in misconceptions of the characters of pagan divinities, and in legends about them which scholars had just begun to translate with great difficulty and very ill. It is the astonis.h.i.+ng a.s.surance of the central human will for perfection that awes us; this perception that flinches at no difficulty, this perception of how greatly beauty deserves to be embodied in human creations and given permanence to.
II
In the encomium which Erasmus wrote of Albert Durer he dealt, as one sees by the pa.s.sage quoted (p. 186), with Durer's engraved work almost exclusively. Perhaps the great humanist had seen no paintings by Durer, and very likely had heard Durer himself disparage them, as Melanchthon tells us was his wont (p. 187). We know that Durer gave Erasmus some of his engravings, and we may feel sure that he was questioned pretty closely as to what were the aims of his art, and wherein he seemed to himself to have best succeeded. The sentence I underlined (on p. 186) gives us probably some reflection of Durer's reply. We must remember that Erasmus, from his cla.s.sical knowledge as to how Apelles was praised, was full of the idea that art was an imitation, and may probably have refused to understand what Durer may very likely have told him in modification of this view; or he may by citing his Greek and Latin sources have prevented the reverent Durer from being outspoken on the point. But though most of his praise seems mere literary commonplace, the sentence underlined strikes us as having another source.
”He reproduces not merely the natural aspect of a thing, but also observes the laws of perfect symmetry and harmony with regard to the position of it.” How one would like to have heard Durer, as Erasmus may probably have heard him, explain the principles on which he composed! No doubt there is no very radical difference between his sense of composition and that of other great artists. But to hear one so preoccupied with explaining his processes to himself discourse on this difficult subject would be great gain. For though there are doubtless no absolute rules, and the appeal is always to a refined sense for proportion,--yet to hear a creator speak of such things is to have this sense, as it were, washed and rendered delicate once more. We can but regret that Erasmus has not saved us something fuller than this hint. In the same way, how tempting is the criticism that Camerarius gives of Mantegna,--we feel that Durer's own is behind it; but as it stands it is disjointed and absurd, like some of the incomplete and confused parables which give us a glimpse of how much more was lost than was preserved by the reporters of the sayings of Jesus. It is the same thing with the reported sayings of Michael Angelo, and indeed of all other great men.
It is impossible to accept ”his hand was not trained to follow the perception and nimbleness of his mind” as Durer's dictum on Mantegna; but how suggestive is the allusion to ”broken and scattered statues set up as examples of art,” for artists to form themselves upon! Yet the fact that Durer missed coming into contact not only with Mantegna but with t.i.tian, Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, is indeed the saddest fact in regard to his life. We can well believe that he felt it in Mantegna's case. Ah! Why could he not bring himself to accept the overtures made to him, and become a citizen of Venice?
III
The subjects of these engravings are even generally trivial or antiquated, either in themselves or by the way they are approached.
Perhaps alone among them the figure of Jesus, as it is drawn in the various series on copper and wood ill.u.s.trating the Pa.s.sion, is conceived in a manner which touches us to-day with the directness of a revelation; and even this cannot be compared to the same figure in Rembrandt etchings and drawings, either for essential adequacy, or for various and convincing application. No, we must consent to let the expression ”great thoughts” drop out of our appreciation of Durer's works, and be replaced by the ”great character” latent in them.
However, one among Durer's engravings on copper stands out from among the rest, and indeed from all his works. In the _Melancholy_ the composition is not more dignified in its s.p.a.cing and proportion; the arabesque of line is not richer or sweeter, the variations from black to white are not more handsome, than in some half dozen of his other engravings. No, by its conception alone the _Melancholy_ attains to its unique impressiveness. And it is the impressiveness of an image, not the impressiveness of an idea or situation, as in the case of the _Knight, Death, and the Devil_, by which almost as much bad literature has been inspired. There is nothing to choose between the workmans.h.i.+p of the two plates; both are absolutely impeccable, and outside the work of Durer himself, unrivalled. The _Melancholy_ is the only creation by a German which appears to me to invite and sustain comparison with the works of the greatest Italian. In it we have the impressiveness that belongs only to the image, the thing conceived for mental vision, and addressed to the eye exclusively. If there was an allegory, or if the plate formed (as has been imagined) one of a series representative of the four temperaments, the eye and the visual imagination are addressed with such force and felicity that the inquiries which attempt to answer these questions must for ever appear impertinent. They may add some languid interest to the contemplation which is sated with admiring the impeccable mastery of the Knight; for that plate always seems to me the mere ill.u.s.tration of a literary idea, a sheer statement of items which require to be connected by some story, and some of which have the crude obviousness of folk-lore symbols, without their racy and genial navety.
They have not been fused in the rapture of some unique mood, not focussed by the intensity of an emotion. With the _Melancholy_ all is different; perhaps among all his works only Durer's most haunting portrait of himself has an equal or even similar power to bind us in its spell. For this reason I attempt the following comparison between the _Sibyls_ of the Sistine Chapel and the _Melancholy_ a comparison which I do not suppose to have any other value or force than that of a stimulant to the imagination which the works themselves address.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MELANCHOLIA Copper engraving, B. 74]
The impetuosity of his Southern blood drives Michael Angelo to betray his intention of impressing in the pose and build of his Sibyls. Large and exceptional women, ”limbed” and thewed as G.o.ds are, with an habitual command of gesture, they lift down or open their books or unwind their scrolls like those accustomed to be the cynosure of many eyes, who have lived before crowds of inferiors, a spectacle of dignity from their childhood upwards. On the other hand, the pose and build of the _Melancholy_ must have been those of many a matron in Nuremberg. It is not till we come to the face that we find traits that correspond with the obvious symbolism of the wings and wreath, or the serious richness of the black and white effect of the composition; but that face holds our attention as not even the Sibylla Delphica cannot by beauty, not by conscious inspiration, but by the spell of unanswerable thought, by the power to brood, by the patience that can and dare go unresolved for many years. Everything is begun about her; she cannot see unto the end; she is powerful, she is capable in many works, she has borne children, she rests from her labours, and her thought wanders, sleeps or dreams. The spirit of the North, with its industry, its cool-headed calculation, its abundance in contrivance, its elaboration of duty and acc.u.mulation of possessions--there she sits, absorbed, unsatisfied. Impetuosity and the frank avowal of intention are themselves an expression of the will to create that which is desirable; they can but form the habit of every artist under happy circ.u.mstances. They proceed on the expectation of immediate effectiveness, they belong to power in action; while, if beauty be not impetuous, she is frank, and adds to the avowal of her intention the promise of its fulfilment. The work of art and the artist are essentially open; they promise intimacy, and fulfil that promise with entirety when successful. Nor is anything so impressive as intimacy which implies a perfect sincerity, a complete revelation, a gift without reserve, increase without let. But the circ.u.mstances of the artist never are happy: even Michael Angelo's were not. An intense brooding melancholy arises from the repressed and baffled desire to create; and in some measure this gloom of failure underlying their success is a necessary character of all lovely and spiritual creations in this world.
Now Michael Angelo's works, because of their Southern impetuosity and volubility, are not so instinct with this divine sorrow, this immobility of the soul face to face with evil, as is Durer's _Melancholy_. He inspires and exhilarates us more, but takes us out of ourselves rather than leads us home.
Here is Durer's success: let and hindered as it really is, he makes us feel the inalienable constancy of rational desire, watching adverse circ.u.mstance as one beast of prey watches another. She keeps hold on the bird she has caught, the ideal that perhaps she will never fully enjoy.
Michael Angelo pictures for us freedom from trammels, the freedom that action, thought and ecstasy give, the freedom that is granted to beauty by all who recognise it; Durer shows us the constancy that bridges the intervals between such free hours, that gives continuity to man's necessarily spasmodic effort. Thus he typifies for us the Northern genius: as Michael Angelo's athletes might typify by their naked beauty and the unexplained impressiveness of their gestures, the genius of the sudden South--sudden in action, sudden in thought, suddenly mature, suddenly asleep--as day changes to night and night to day the more rapidly as the tropics are approached.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Detail enlarged from the ”Agony in the Garden.” Etching on Iron, B. 19 _Between_ pp. 250 & 251]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ANGEL WITH THE SUDARIUM Engraving in Iron, 1516. B. 26 _Between_ pp. 250 & 251]
Instances of the highest imaginative power are rare in Durer's work. The _Melancholy_ has had a world-wide success. The _Knight, Death and the Devil_ has one almost equal, but which is based on the facility with which it is a.s.sociated with certain ideas dear to Christian culture, rather than on the creation of the mood in which these ideas arise. It does not move us until we know that it is an ill.u.s.tration of Erasmus's Christian Knight. Then all its dignity and mastery and the supremacy of the gifts employed on it are brought into touch with the idea, and each admirer operates, according to his imaginativeness, something of the transformation which Durer had let slip or cool down before realising it.