That this system had faults, economically, is undeniable. That it produced good work and engendered in the craftsmen a personal interest and pride in their work, is equally certain. Among the craftsmen of Nuremberg in her golden age were Albert Durer, Peter Vischer, Adam Krafft, Veit Stoss, and a host of others eminent in their line. It was under the conditions we have sketched that they learned and laboured.
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Among the most treasured of Nuremberg’s relics is the low-ceilinged, gabled house near the Thiergärtnerthor, in which Albert Durer lived and died, in the street now called after his name. The works of art which he presented to the town, or with which he adorned its churches, have unfortunately, with but few exceptions, been sold to the stranger. It is in Vienna and Munich, in Dresden and Berlin, in Florence, in Prague, or the British Museum, that we find splendid collections of Durer’s works. Not at Nuremberg. But here at any rate we can see the house in which he toiled—no genius ever took more pains—and the surroundings which impressed his mind and influenced his inspiration. If, in the past, Nuremberg has been only too anxious to turn his works into cash, to-day she guards Albert Durer’s house with a care and reverence little short of religious. She has sold, in the days of her poverty and foolishness, the master’s pictures and drawings, which are his own best monument; but she has set up a noble monument to his memory (by Rauch, 1840) in the Durer Platz, and his house is opened to the public (on payment of 50 pfennige) between the hours of 8 A.M. and 1 P.M., and 2 and 6 P.M. on week days. The Albert-Durer-Haus Society has done admirable work in restoring and preserving the house in its original state with the aid of Professor Wanderer’s architectural and antiquarian skill. Reproductions of Durer’s works are also kept here.
The most superficial acquaintance with Durer’s drawings will have prepared us for the sight of his simple, unpretentious house and its contents. In his “Birth of the Virgin” he gives us a picture of the German home of his day, where there were few superfluous knick-knacks, but everything which served for daily use was well and strongly made and of good design. Ceilings, windows, doors and door-handles, chests, locks, candlesticks, banisters, waterpots, the very cooking utensils, all betray the fine taste and skilled labour, the personal interest of the man who made them. So in Durer’s house, as it is preserved to-day, we can still see and admire the careful simplicity of domestic furniture, which distinguishes that in the “Birth of the Virgin.” The carved coffers, the solid tables, the spacious window-seats, the well-fitting cabinets let into the walls, the carefully wrought metal-work we see there are not luxurious; their merit is quite other than that. In workmanship as in design, how utterly do they put to shame the contents of the ordinary “luxuriously furnished apartments” of the present day! Simplex munditiis is the note struck here.
The artists of those days gave themselves no airs: they were content to regard themselves merely as successful workmen. The same hands that carved the most splendid cathedral stalls were ready to lavish equal care on the most insignificant domestic utensil: whilst the simplest artisan was filled with the ambition to turn out work truly artistic. He aimed at perfection, sharing in his master’s toil and triumphs, and hoping, no doubt, to produce some day a masterpiece himself.
And what manner of man was he who lived in this house that nestles beneath the ancient castle? In the first place a singularly loveable man, a man of sweet and gentle spirit, whose life was one of high ideals and noble endeavour.[41] In the second place an artist who, both for his achievements and for his influence on art, stands in the very front rank of artists, and of German artists is facile princeps. At whatever point we may study Durer and his works we are never conscious of disappointment. As painter, as author, as engraver or simple citizen, the more we know of him the more we are morally and intellectually satisfied. Fortunately, through his letters and writings, his journals and autobiographical memoirs we know a good deal about his personal history and education.
Durer’s grandfather came of a farmer race in the village of Eytas in Hungary. Durer, it has been plausibly suggested, is a Nuremberg rendering of the Hungarian word Ajtó = door = Eytas. The Open Door, Azure, in his canting coat of arms seems to confirm this. The grandfather turned goldsmith, and his eldest son, Albrecht Durer the elder, came to Nuremberg in 1455 and settled in the Burgstrasse (No. 27). He became one of the leading goldsmiths of the town: married and had eighteen children, of whom only three, boys, grew up. Albrecht, or as we call him Albert Durer, was the eldest of these. He was born May 21, 1471, in his father’s house, and Anthoni Koberger, the printer and bookseller, the Stein of those days, stood godfather to him. The maintenance of so large a family involved the father, skilful artist as he was, in unremitting toil.