V
It would be idle to attempt to say something about every masterpiece in Dürer's splendidly copious work on metal plates. There is perhaps not one of these engravings that is not vital upon one side or another, amazingly few that are not vital upon many. One other work, however, which has been much criticised and generally misunderstood, it may be as well to examine at more length, especially as it illustrates what was often Dürer's practice in regard to his theories about proportion, with which my next Part will deal. I speak of the Great Fortune or Nemesis (B. 77). His practice at other times is illustrated by the splendid Adam and Eve (B. 1), over the production of which the nature of the canon he suggested was perhaps first thoroughly worked out. But before this and afterwards too he no doubt frequently followed the advice he gives in the following passage.
To him that setteth himself to draw figures according to this book, not being well taught beforehand, the matter will at first become hard. Let him then put a man before him, who agreeth, as nearly as may be, with the proportions he desireth; and let him draw him in outline according to his knowledge and power. And a man is held to have done well if he attain accurately to copy a figure according to the life, so that his drawing resembleth the figure and is like unto nature. And in particular if the thing copied as beautiful; then is the copy held to be artistic, and, as it deserveth, it is highly praised.
Dürer himself would seem to have very often followed his own advice in this. The Great Fortune or Nemesis is a case in point. The remarks of critics on this superb engraving are very strange and wide. Professor Thausing said, "Embodied in this powerful female form, the Northern worship of nature here makes its first conscious and triumphant appearance in the history of art." With the work of the great Jan Van Eyck in one's mind's eye, of course this will appear one of those little lapses of memory so convenient to German national sentiment. "Everything that, according to our aesthetic formalism based on the antique, we should consider beautiful, is sacrificed to truth." (I have already pointed out that this use of the word "truth" in matters of art constitutes a fallacy)[[83]] "And yet our taste must bow before the imperishable fidelity to nature displayed in these forms, the fulness of life that animates these limbs." Of course, "imperishable fidelity to nature" and "taste that bows before it" are merely the figures of a clumsy rhetoric. But the idea they imply is one of the most common of vulgar errors in regard to works of art. In the first place one must remind our enthusiastic German that it is an engraving and not a woman that we are discussing; and that this engraving is extremely beautiful in arabesque and black and white pattern, rich, rhythmical and harmonious; and that there is no reason why our taste should be violated in having to bow submissively before such beauties as these, which it is a pleasure to worship. Now we come to the subject as presented to the intelligence, after the quick receptive eye has been satiated with beauty. Our German guide exclaims, "Not misled by cold definite rules of proportion, he gave himself up to unrestrained realism in the presentation of the female form." Our first remark is, that though the treatment of this female form may perhaps be called realistic, this adjective cannot be made to apply to the figure as a whole. This massively built matron is winged; she stands on a small globe suspended in the heavens, which have opened and are furled up like a garment in a manner entirely conventional. She carries a scarf which behaves as no fabric known to me would behave even under such exceptional and thrilling circumstances.
Dr. Carl Giehlow has recently suggested that this splendid engraving illustrates the following Latin verses by Poliziano:
Est dea, quse vacuo sublimis in aëre pendens
It nimbo succincta latus, sed candida pallam,
Sed radiata comam, ac stridentibus insonat alis.
Haec spes immodicas premit, haec infesta superbis
Imminet, huic celsas hominum contundere mentes
Incessusque datum et nimios turbare paratus.
Quam veteres Nemesin genitam de nocte silenti
Oceano discere patri. Stant sidera fronti.
Frena manu pateramque gerit, semperque verendum
Ridet et insanis obstat contraria coeptis.
Improba vota domans ac summis ima revolvens
Miscet et alterna nostros vice temperat actus.
Atque hue atque illuc ventorum turbine fertur.
There is a goddess, who, aloft in the empty air, advances girdled about with a cloud, but with a shining white cloak and a glory in her hair, and makes a rushing with her wings. She it is who crushes extravagant hopes, who threatens the proud, to whom is given to beat down the haughty spirit and the haughty step, and to confound over-great possessions. Her the men of old called Nemesis, born to Ocean from the womb of silent Night. Stars stand upon her forehead. In her hand she bears bridles and a chalice, and smiles for ever with an awful smile, and stands resisting mad designs. Turning to nought the prayers of the wicked and setting the low above the high she puts one in the other's place and rules the scenes of life with alternation. And she is borne hither and thither on the wings of the whirlwind.
If this suggestion is a good one it shows us that Dürer was no more consistently literal than he was realistic. The most striking features of his illustration are just those to which his text offers no counterpart, i.e., the nudity and physical maturity of his goddess. Neither has he girdled her about with cloud nor stood stars upon her forehead. I must confess that I find it hard to believe that there was any close connection present to his mind between his engraving and these verses.
In a former chapter I have spoken of the fashion in female dress then prevalent; how it underlined whatever is most essential in the physical attributes of womanhood, and how probably something of good taste is shown in this fashion (see pp. 92 and 93). What I there said will explain Dürer's choice in this matter; and also that what Thausing felt bow in him was not taste, but his prejudices in regard to womanly attractiveness, and his misconception as to where the beauty of an engraving should be looked for and in what it consists. These same prejudices and misconceptions render Mrs. Heaton (as is only natural in one of the weaker sex) very bold. She says, "A large naked winged woman, whose ugliness is perfectly repulsive." This object, I must confess, appears to me, a coarse male, "welcome to contemplation of the mind and eye." The splendid Venus in Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, or his Ariadne at Madrid; or Raphael's Galatea; or Michael Angelo's Eve (on the Sistine vault) are all of them doubtless far more akin to the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, or to her who crouches in the Louvre, than is this Nemesis; but we must not forget that they are works on a scale more comparable with a marble statue; and that in works of which the scale is more similar to that of our engraving, Greek taste was often far more with Dürer than with Thausing. This is an important point, though one which is rarely appreciated. However, there is no reason why we should condemn "misled by cold definite rules of taste" even such pictures as Rembrandt's Bathing Woman in the Louvre, though here the proportions of the work are heroic. Oil painting was an art not practised by the Greeks, and this medium lends itself to beauties which their materials put entirely out of reach. Besides, Rembrandt appealed to an audience who had been educated by Christian ideals to appreciate a pathos produced by the juxtaposition of the fact with the ideal, and of the creature with the creator, to appeal to which a Greek would have had to be far more circumspect in his address--even if he had, through an exceptional docility and receptiveness of character, come under its influence himself. These considerations when apprehended will, I believe, suffice to dispel both prejudice and misconception in regard to this matter; and we shall find in Professor Thausing's remarks relative to the treatment of the "female form divine" in this engraving no additional reason for considering it a comparatively early work. And we shall only smile when he tells us "The Nemesis to a certain degree (sic) marks the extreme point (sic) reached by Dürer in his unbiased study of the nude. His further progress became more and more influenced by his researches into the proportions of the human body." The bias will appear to us of rather more recent date, and we shall be ready to consider with an open mind how far Dürer's practice was influenced for good or evil by his researches into the proportions of the human body.
FOOTNOTES:
See page 258.
See page 260.
See Frontispiece.
See page 19.