Part 17 (1/2)

Durer signed his picture with the same Latin formula as that of the _Coronation_:

”Albrecht Durer of Nureht forth 1511”

VII

Of all Durer's paintings of the Madonna, there is only one which, by its superb design, deserves special notice a his masterpieces This _Madonna with the Iris_ exists in two versions, both unfinished; one the property of Sir Frederick Cook, the other at Prague, in the Rudolphiuson considers to be a poor copy The panel is badly cracked, and weeds and long grasses have been added, apparently with a view to raph alone, many of these additions seem so appropriately placed and freely sketched that I feel it at least to be possibly a work by the master himself On the other hand, Sir Frederick's picture is so sleepy and cluh it is unfinished, and perhaps in part da it as Durer's handiwork

In both cases the n is his, and that alone in either is fully representative of hison ventures to criticise the profusion of drapery as excessive, but , I must confess, endorses Durer's in this, rather than that of his learned critic To ives as a n, is of the very essence of what is ination

The last picture of which it is necessary to speak is that of the _Four Apostles_ or the _Four Preachers_, as they have been more appropriately called; it was perhaps the last he painted, and is in many respects the most successful It is the only one by which the comparison with Raphael, so dear to German critics, seems at all warranted: there is certainly some kinshi+p between Durer's St John and St Paul and apostolic figures in the cartoons or on the Vatican walls The German artist's randiose; and his taste does not so closely border on over-emphasis, but neither is it so conscious or so fluent Technically it seems to e canvases of Jan and Hubert Van Eyck and Hubert Van der Goes which Durer had adthened and directed the bias of his self-culture towards siht to coravings after Raphael which he obtained in Antwerp His increasing sickness may probably account for the fact that the white mantle of St Paul is the only portion quite finished The assertion of the writing-master, Johann Neudorffer, who in his youth had known Durer, that the four figures are typical of the four teories an ay arbitrarily divided human characters,--is as likely to be correct as it is certain that it adds nothing to the power and beauty of the presentation Though Durer in his work on human proportions describes the physical build of these different types, we do not know exactly what degree of precision he i them, or to what extent their names were merely convenient handles for certain types which he had chosen aesthetically To us to-day this classification is merely a trace of an obsolete pedantry, which it would be a vain curiosity to atteinary bases

The four preachers have all the air of being striking likenesses of actual people which it is possible for work so broadly and grandly conceived to have These panels are interesting, evenus what a scholar Durer was to the end; how he learned from every defeat as well as every victory, and constantly approached a conception and a rendering of human beauty which seems intimately connected with man's fullest intellectual and spiritual freedo of human beauty which Raphael hielo The work has suffered, it is supposed, from restorers, and also from the Munich e 177) which Durer had inscribed beneath the two panels sawn off in order to spare the feelings of the Jesuits, ere doion did not consist with terrors to coovernors and directors of mankind

Lastly, mention must be made of Durer's monochrome masterpiece, The Road to Calvary 1527 (see illus), in the collection of Sir Frederick Cook

A poor copy of this work is at Dresden, a better one at Bergans of the same class, is akin to the peculiar richness of chased ures

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 73: The original, now in the Monastery of Strahow-Prague, is very ed, and in part repainted There are copies in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna (No 1508), and in the possession of A W

Miller, Esq, of Sevenoaks It is to be regretted that the Durer Society published a photogravure of this latter work, which, though till then unknown, is far less interesting than the original, of which they only gave a reproduction in the text, an exhaustive history of its fortunes froson This picture, which is so frequently referred to in the letters from Venice, contains portraits of the Eh neither of theround those of Durer and Pirkheimer]

[Footnote 74: See what Melanchthon says, p 187]

CHAPTER II

DuRER'S PORTRAITS

I

If Durer's pictures are as a whole the least satisfactory section of his work, in his portraits he ht otherwise have been reproached for wasting to obtain a vain ment

Unfortunately it is probable that many even of these have been lost or destroyed, while of his s He did not paint his friend, the boisterous and learned Pirkheiive for a painted portrait of Erasmus, or a portrait of Kratzer, the astronomer royal, to compare with the two masterpieces by Holbein in the Louvre? Even the posthumous portrait of his Is fro the time to spare for so sensible a monument

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST Pen drawing in dark brown ink at Erlangen (This drawing has been cut down for reproduction)]

II

However, Durer had one sitter as perhaps the most beautiful of all the sons of men, whose features combined in an equal measure nobleness of character, intellectual intensity and physical beauty; and, finding him also most patient and accessible, he painted him frequently The two earliest portraits of hies of thirteen and nineteen(?) respectively (see illustration) Then, as a youngchin, we have the picture till recently at Leipzig of which Goethe's enthusiastic description has already been quoted (p 62) It is probable that neither titian nor Holbein could have shown at so early an age a portrait so admirably conceived and executed It is a masterpiece, even now that the inevitable ienius rarely lack the opportunity, never the inclination, to add to aof the eyes, and reduced the bloom and delicacy that the features traced by a master hand, even when they become an almost complete wreck, often retain; for time and fortune are not so conscientiously destructive as the imbecility of the incapable Next we have a portrait of Durer when only five years older, in perfect preservation,--that in the Prado at Madrid This char picture must certainly have drawn a sonnet from the Shakespeare rote _Love's Labour Lost_, could he have seen it For it presents a young dandy, the delicacy and sensitiveness of whose features seem to demand and warrant the butterfly-like display of the white and black costuold, and of a cap worthy to crown those flowing honey-coloured locks

There is a good copy of this delightful work in the Uffizi, where, in a congregation of self-painted artists, it does all but justice to the inal has never been surpassed by any hand of European or even Chinese th portraits which Durer inserted in his chief paintings He stands beside his friend Pirkhei crowd in the _Feast of the Roses_, and again in the midst of the mountain slope, where on all sides of them the ten thousand saints suffer entle pastoral landscape beneath the vision of the Virgin's assuaze up in rapture; and again he is alone beside a broad peaceful river beneath the vision of the Holy Trinity and All Saints I know of no parallel to these little portraits

Rembrandt and Botticelli and ious pictures, but always in disguise, as a personage in the crowd or an actor in the scene Only the ood looks, has had the kindness, in spite of every incongruity, to present himself before us on all important occasions, like the court beauty in whom it is charity rather than vanity to appear in public It is expected that the very beautiful be gracious thus Eo the Town Council of Montpelier passed a law to constrain two beautiful sisters to sit for a certain tiht enjoy the sight of as racious traits of Jeanne d'Arc's character that she liked to wear beautiful clothes, because it pleased the poor people to see her thus And Palrace and truth Durer's face had a striking rese to it just that element of individual peculiarity, the absence of which makes it ever liable to appear a little vacant and unconvincing The perception of this would see portrait of himself, that at Munich dated 1500 (see illus), ”Before which” (Mr

Ricketts writes in his recently published voluets all other portraits whatsoever, in the sense that this perfect realisation of one of the world's greatest men is equal to the occasion” The most exhaustive visual power and executive capacity meet in this picture, which would seem to have traversed the many perils to which it has been exposed without really suffering sotells us: