Masters of Art - Albrecht Dürer

by Dürer, Albrecht

  In Germany, as in Italy, the studio of the artist, full of pure and lofty ideals, had hardly yet evolved itself from the workshop of the picture-manufacturer. Nuremberg’s chief artists at this time were Michael Wohlgemuth, Dürer’s master; Lucas Kornelisz, also called Ludwig Krug, who, though a most skilful engraver, was sometimes forced to adopt the profession of a cook in order to support himself; and Matthias Zagel, who was expert in both painting and engraving. Still another was the Venetian Jacopo de’ Barbari, or Jacob Walch, “the master of the Caduceus,” a dexterous engraver and designer, whom Dürer alludes to in his Venetian and Netherland writings. The art of engraving had been invented early in the fifteenth century, and was developing rapidly and richly toward perfection. The day of versatile artists had arrived, when men combined the fine and industrial arts in one life, and devoted themselves to making masterpieces in each department. The northern nations, unaided by classic models and traditions, were developing a new and indigenous æsthetic life, slow of growth, but bound to succeed in the long run.

  The literary society of Dürer’s epoch at Nuremberg was grouped in the Sodalitas Literaria Rhenana, under the learned Conrad Celtes, who published a book of Latin comedies, pure in Latinity and lax in morals, which he mischievously attributed to the Abbess Roswitha. Pirkheimer and the monk Chelidonius also belonged to this sodality. Other contemporary literati of the city were Cochläus, Luther’s satirical opponent; the Hebraist Osiander; Venatorius, who united the discordant professions of poetry and mathematics; the Provost Pfinzing, for whose poem of Tewrdannkh, Dürer’s pupil Schäuffelein made 118 illustrations; Baumgärtner, Melanchthon’s friend; Veit Dietrich, the reformer; and Joachim Camerarius, the Latinist. But the most illustrious of Nuremberg’s authors at that time was the cobbler-poet, Hans Sachs, a radical in politics and religion, who scourged the priests and the capitalists of his day in songs and satires which were sung and recited by the workmen of all Germany. He himself tells us that he wrote 4,200 master-songs, 208 comedies and tragedies, 73 devotional and love songs, and 1,007 fables, tales, and miscellaneous poems; and others say that his songs helped the Reformation as much as Luther’s preaching.

  Thus the activities of mechanics, art, and literature pressed forward with equal fervor in the quaint old Franconian city, while Albert Dürer’s life was passing on. “Abroad and far off still mightier things were doing; Copernicus was writing in his observatory, Vasco di Gama was on the Southern Seas.”

  “I, Albrecht Dürer the younger, have sought out from among my father’s papers these particulars of him, where he came from, and how he lived and died holily. God rest his soul! Amen.” In this manner the pious artist begins an interesting family history, in which it is stated that the Dürers were originally from the romantic little Hungarian hamlet of Eytas, where they were engaged in herding cattle and horses. Anthony Dürer removed to the neighboring town of Jula, where he learned the goldsmith’s art, which he taught to his son Albrecht, or Albert, while his other sons were devoted to mechanical employments and the priesthood. Albert was not content to stay in sequestered Jula, and, wandering over Germany and the Low Countries, at last came to Nuremberg, where he settled in 1455, in the service of the goldsmith Hieronymus Haller. This worthy Haller and his wife Kunigund, the daughter of Oellinger of Weissenberg, at that time had an infant daughter; and as she grew up Albert endeared himself to her to such purpose that, in 1467, when Barbara had become “a fair and handy maiden of fifteen,” he married her, being forty years old himself. During the next twenty-four years she bore him eighteen children, seven daughters and eleven sons, of whose births, names, and godparents the father made careful descriptions. Three only, Albert, Andreas, and Hans, arrived at years of maturity. It may well be believed that the poor master-goldsmith was forced to work hard and struggle incessantly to support such a great family; and his portrait shows that the hand-to-mouth existence of so many years had told heavily and left its imprint on his weary and careworn face. Yet he had certain sources of peace and gentleness in his life, and never sank into moroseness or selfishness. Let us quote the tender and reverent words of his son: “My father’s life was passed in great struggles and in continuous hard work. With my dear mother bearing so many children, he never could become rich, as he had nothing but what his hands brought him. He had thus many troubles, trials, and adverse circumstances. But yet from every one who knew him he received praise, because he led an honorable Christian life, and was patient, giving all men consideration, and thanking God. He indulged himself in few pleasures, spoke little, shunned society, and was in truth a God-fearing man. My dear father took great pains with his children, bringing them up to the honor of God. He made us know what was agreeable to others as well as to our Maker, so that we might become good neighbors; and every day he talked to us of these things, the love of God and the conduct of life.”

  Albert Dürer was the third child of Albert the Elder and Barbara Hallerin, and was born on the morning of the 21st of May, 1471. The house in which the Dürers then lived was a part of the great pile of buildings owned and in part occupied by the wealthy Pirkheimer family, and was called the Pirkheimer Hinterhaus. It fronted on the Winkler Strasse of Nuremberg, and was an ambitious home for a craftsman like Albert. The presence of Antonius Koberger, the famous book-printer, as godfather to the new-born child, shows also that the Dürers occupied an honorable position in the city.

  The Pirkheimers were then prominent among the patrician families of Southern Germany, renowned for antiquity, enormously wealthy through successful commerce, and honored by important offices in the State. The infant Willibald Pirkheimer was of about the same age as the young Albert Dürer; and the two became close companions in all their childish sports, despite the difference in the rank of their families. When the goldsmith’s family moved to another house, at the foot of the castle-hill, five years later, the warm intimacy between the children continued unchanged.

  The instruction of Albert in the rudiments of learning was begun at an early age, probably in the parochial school of St. Sebald, and was conducted after the singular manner of the schools of that day, when printed books were too costly to be intrusted to children. He lived comfortably in his father’s house, and daily received the wise admonitions and moral teachings of the elder Albert. His friendship for Willibald enabled him to learn certain elements of the higher studies into which the young patrician was led by his tutors; and his visits to the Pirkheimer mansion opened views of higher culture and more refined modes of life.

  Albert was enamoured with art from his earliest years, and spent many of his leisure hours in making sketches and rude drawings, which he gave to his schoolmates and friends. The Imhoff Collection had a drawing of three heads, done in his eleventh year; the Posonyi Collection claimed to possess a Madonna of his fifteenth year; and the British Museum has a chalk-drawing of a woman holding a bird in her hand, whose first owner wrote on it, “This was drawn for me by Albert Dürer before he became a painter.” The most interesting of these early works is in the Albertina at Vienna, and bears the inscription: “This I have drawn from myself from the looking-glass, in the year 1484, when I was still a child. — Albert Dürer.” It shows a handsome and pensive boy-face, oval in shape, with large and tender eyes, filled with solemnity and vague melancholy; long hair cut straight across the forehead, and falling over the shoulders; and full and pouting lips. It is faulty in design, but shows a considerable knowledge of drawing, and a strong faculty for portraiture. The certain sadness of expression tells that the schoolboy had already become acquainted with grief, probably from the straitened circumstances of his family, and the melancholy deaths of so many brothers and sisters. The great mystery of sorrow was full early thrown across the path of the solemn artist. This portrait was always retained by Dürer as a memorial of his childhood.

  He says of his father, “For me, I think, he had a particular affection; and, as he saw me diligent in learning, he sent me to school. When I had learned to write and read,
he took me home again, with the intention of teaching me the goldsmith’s work. In this I began to do tolerably well.” He was taken into the goldsmith’s workshop in his thirteenth year, and remained there two years, receiving instruction which was not without value in his future life, in showing him the elements of the arts of modelling and design. The accuracy and delicacy of his later plastic works show how well he apprehended these ideas, and how far he acquired sureness of expression. The elder Albert was a skilful master-workman, highly esteemed in his profession, and had received several important commissions. It is said that the young apprentice executed under his care a beautiful piece of silver-work representing the Seven Agonies of Christ.

  “But my love was towards painting, much more than towards the goldsmith’s craft. When at last I told my father of my inclination, he was not well pleased, thinking of the time I had been under him as lost if I turned painter. But he left me to have my will; and in the year 1486, on St. Andrew’s Day, he settled me apprentice with Michael Wohlgemuth, to serve him for three years. In that time God gave me diligence to learn well, in spite of the pains I had to suffer from the other young men.” Thus Dürer describes his change in life, and the embarkation on his true vocation, as well as the reluctance of the elder Albert to allow his noble and beloved boy to pass out from his desolated household into other scenes, and away from his companionship.

  Wohlgemuth was one of the early religious painters who stood at the transition-point between the school of Cologne and that of the Van Eycks, or between the old pietistic traditions of Byzantine art and the new ideas of the art of the Northern Reformation. The conventionalisms of the Rhenish and Franconian paintings were being exchanged for a fresher originality and a truer realism; and the pictures of this time curiously blended the old and the new. Wohlgemuth seems to have considered art as a money-getting trade rather than a high vocation, and his workroom was more a shop than a studio. He turned out countless Madonnas and other religious subjects for churches and chance purchasers, and also painted chests and carved and colored images of the saints, many of which were executed by his apprentices. A few of his works, however, were done with great care and delicacy, and show a worthy degree of sweetness and simplicity. Evidently the young pupil gained little besides a technical knowledge of painting from this master, — the mechanical processes, the modes of mixing and applying colors, the chemistry of pigments, and a certain facility in using them. It was well that the influences about him were not powerful enough to warp his pure and original genius into servile imitations of decadent methods. His hands were taught dexterity; and his mind was left to pursue its own lofty course, and use them as its skilful allies in the new conquests of art.

  Wood-engraving was also carried on in Wohlgemuth’s studio, and it is probable that Dürer here learned the rudiments of this branch of art, which he afterwards carried to so high a perfection. Some writers maintain that his earliest works in this line were done for the famous “Nuremberg Chronicle,” which was published in 1493 by Wohlgemuth and Pleydenwurf.

  The three years which were spent in Wohlgemuth’s studio were probably devoted to apprentice-work on compositions designed by the master, who was then about fifty years old, and at the summit of his fame. But few of Dürer’s drawings now existing date from this epoch, one of which represents a group of horsemen, and another the three Swiss leaders, Fürst, Melchthal, and Staufacher. The beautiful portrait of Dürer’s father, which is now at Florence, was executed by the young artist in 1490, probably to carry with him as a souvenir of home. Mündler says, “For beauty and delicacy of modelling, this portrait has scarcely been surpassed afterwards by the master, perhaps not equalled.”

  It was claimed by certain old biographers that the eminent Martin Schongauer of Colmar was Dürer’s first master; but this is now contested, although it is evident that his pictures had a powerful effect on the youth. Schongauer was the greatest artist and engraver that Germany had as yet produced, and exerted a profound influence on the art of the Rhineland. He renewed the fantastic conceits and grotesque vagaries which the Papal artists of Cologne had suppressed as heathenish, and prepared the way for, or perhaps even suggested, the weird elements of Dürer’s conceptions. At the same time he passed back of his Netherland art-education, and studied a mystic benignity and dreamy spirituality suggestive of the Umbrian painters, with whose chief, the great Perugino, Martin was acquainted. Herein Dürer’s works were in strong contrast with Schongauer’s, and showed the new spirit that was stirring in the world.

  Next to Schongauer, the great Italian artist Mantegna exercised the strongest influence upon Dürer, who studied his bold and austere engravings with earnest admiration, showing his traits in many subsequent works. Probably he met the famous Mantuan painter during the Wander-jahre, in Italy; and at the close of his Venetian journey he was about to pay a visit of homage to him, when he heard of his death.

  During his three years of study we have seen that the delicate and sensitive youth suffered much from the reckless rudeness and jeering insults of his companions, rough hand-workers who doubtless failed to understand the poignancy of the torments which they inflicted on the sad-eyed son of genius. But his home was near at hand, and the tender care of his parents, always beloved. How often he must have wandered through the familiar streets of Nuremberg, with his dreamy artist-face and flowing hair, and studied the Gothic palaces, the fountains adorned with statuary, and the rich treasures of art in the great churches! Beyond the tall-towered town, danger lurked on every road; but inside the gray walls was peace and safety, and no free lances nor marauding men-at-arms could check the aspiring flight of the youth’s bright imagination.

  “And when the three years were out, my father sent me away. I remained abroad four years, when he recalled me; and, as I had left just after Easter in 1490, I returned home in 1494 just after Whitsuntide.” Thus Albert describes the close of his Lehr-jahre, or labor-years, and the entrance upon his Wander-jahre, or travel-years. According to a German custom, still prevalent in a modified degree, the youth was obliged to travel for a long period, and study and practise his trade or profession in other cities, before settling for life as a master-workman. Unfortunately all that Dürer records as to these eventful four years is given in the sentences above; and we can only theorize as to the places which he visited, and his studies of the older art-treasures of Europe. Some authors believe that a part of the Wander-jahre was spent in Italy, and Dr. Thausing, Dürer’s latest and best biographer, clearly proves this theory by a close study of his notes and sketches. Others claim with equal positiveness, and less capability of proof, that they were devoted to the Low Countries. It is certain that he abode at Colmar in 1492, where he was honorably received by Gaspar, Paul, and Louis, the three brothers of Martin Schongauer. The great Martin had died some years before; but many of his best paintings were preserved at Colmar, and were carefully studied by Dürer. At a later day he wandered through the Rhineland to Basle, and spent his last year at Strasbourg. His portraits of his master and mistress in the latter city were dated in 1494, and pertained to the Imhoff Collection.

  His portrait painted by himself in 1493 was procured at Rome by the Hofrath Beireis, and described by Goethe. It shows a bright and vigorous face, full of youthful earnestness and joy, rich, harmonious, and finely executed, though thinly colored. He is attired in a blue-gray cloak with yellow strings, an embroidered shirt whose sleeves are bound with peach-colored ribbons, and a purple cap; and holds a piece of the blue flower called Manns-treue, or Man’s-faith.

  CHAPTER II.

  Dürer marries Agnes Frey. — Her Character. — Early Engravings. — Portraits.— “The Apocalypse.” — Death of Dürer’s Father. — Drawings.

  “And when my Wander-jahre was over, Hans Frey treated with my father, and gave me his daughter, by name the Jungfrau Agnes, with a dowry of 200 guldens. Our wedding was held on the Monday before St. Margaret’s Day (in July), in the year 1494.” This dry statement of the most importan
t event of the artist’s life illustrates the ancient German custom of betrothal, where the bond of wedlock was considered as a matter-of-fact copartnership, with inalienable rights and duties, devoid of sentiment or romance. Since the relatives of the contracting parties were closely affected by such transactions, they usually managed the negotiations themselves; and the young people, thus thrown by their parents at each other’s heads, were expected to, and usually did, accept the situation with submissiveness and prudent obedience. In this case it appears that the first overtures came from the family of the lady; and perhaps the order for Albert to return from his wanderings was issued for this reason. Hans Frey was a burgher with large possessions in Nuremberg and the adjacent country; and his daughter was a very beautiful maiden. Her future husband does not appear to have seen her until the betrothal was made.

  Most of Dürer’s biographers have dwelt at great length on the malign influence which Agnes exercised upon his life, representing her as a jealous virago, imbittering the existence of the noble artist. But Dr. Thausing, in his new and exhaustive history of Dürer’s life, vindicates the lady from this evil charge; and his position is carefully reviewed and sustained by Eugéne Müntz. He points out the fact that the long story of Agnes’s uncongeniality rests solely on Pirkheimer’s letter, and then shows that that ponderous burgher had reasons for personal hostility to her. The unbroken silence which Dürer preserves as to home-troubles, throughout his numerous letters and journals, is held as proof against the charges; and none of his intimate friends and contemporaries (save Pirkheimer) allude to his domestic trials, though they wrote so much about him. The accusation of avarice on her part is combated by several facts, among which is the cardinal one of her self-sacrificing generosity to the Dürer family after her husband’s death, and the remarkable record of her transferring to the endowment of the Protestant University of Wittenberg the thousand florins which Albert had placed in the hands of the Rath for her support. Pirkheimer’s acrimonious letter (see ) gives her credit at least for virtue and piety; and perhaps we may regard her aversion to the doughty writer as a point in her favor.