also of Reuchlin and Erasmus. A martyr to gout, he was naturally choleric, but he had the humour to write a poem in praise of gout. His quick temper and vehement opinions led to his quarrelling in time with every friend except the gentle Durer. Coarse and caustic was his wit: and it is only under his influence that Durer ever shows these qualities. Pirkheimer was, in fact, a great man, a very great man, in his day; but he lives now through his friendship with Durer, and through the portrait, that marvellous engraving so full of character, which Durer published in 1524.
Besides copper-engraving and painting Durer also turned his attention to wood-engraving, and by his admirable work and designs began to give it its place among the pictorial arts. One of his earliest woodcuts is entitled The Men’s Bath. It represents a group of nude male figures in one of those open-air public baths in the Pegnitz, which are still used in Nuremberg, and of which an old writer says: “A solicitude particularly attentive to the needs of the working classes and to the health and well-being of artisans, servants and the poor, has established baths in the towns and villages: it is a habit very praiseworthy and profitable to the health to take a bath at least once a fortnight.” There were a dozen such public baths at Nuremberg, often visited by Durer no doubt in his pursuit of the study of the nude. He continued to pour forth works drawn from mythology and church history, until in 1498 he produced that “great trumpet-call of the Reformation,” the famous series of wood-cut illustrations to the Apocalypse. In this series, so full of artistic skill and imagination, Durer not only reveals to us the aspirations of his own mind, but he also expresses the thoughts and emotions of the age in which he lived. The Apocalypse, in which under the veil of religious symbolism are made to appear the terrible judgments of the Lord and the peace of his saints, was followed by that sweet and tender poem, The Life of Mary, and by the Great and the Little Passion, two sublime tragedies that leave nothing to be desired in truth of expression and vigour of design. Durer put his whole soul into these religious works—the same deeply penitent, simply trusting soul which he reveals to us in his prayers, his diaries, and his books. How real his subjects were to him, how homely his religion, is indicated by the inevitable manner in which he transfers the scenes of Holy Writ to the ordinary surroundings of his daily life in Nuremberg. Deeply imbued with the religious spirit, he tells this pictorial history of the Christian faith as one to whom it was indeed a living reality and a very intimate part of his life.
But before this immortal series was finished various important events occurred in the life of the artist. In 1502 his father died.
“O all you who are my friends,” writes Albert, in words that remind us of St. Augustine, “I pray you for the love of God, when you read the account of my good father’s death, remember his soul, and say for him a Pater and an Ave. Do so too for your own salvation, that we may all obtain the grace of truly serving God, and that it may be granted to us to lead a holy life and to make a good end. No, it is not possible that he who has lived a good life should leave this world with regret or fear, for God is full of mercy.”
In the following year were produced the tender Virgin and Child, and in 1504 the Adam and Eve, in which the fruits of his study of the nude were given to the world in ideal figures of man before the Fall. Next year another break occurred in Durer’s career. Whether, as Vasari says, to secure himself against the piracy of his engravings, or merely in search of fresh knowledge, towards which “his lofty mind was ever striving,” Durer paid another visit to Venice in 1505. Here he painted for the German colony, as an altar-piece in the Church of St. Bartolommeo, the Madonna del Rosario, now at Prague. This picture contains portraits of Maximilian, Julius II., Durer, Pirkheimer, and several German merchants. So great was the admiration roused by it that the Doge visited the artist and endeavours were made to induce him to live permanently in Venice. But in 1507, in spite of all temptations, he returned to his native town and proceeded to execute many commissions. In 1508 he obtained an injunction from the Council to prevent the fraudulent copying of his prints. In the same year a Nuremberg worthy, Matthäus Landauer, added a chapel to the almshouses (Zwölfbrüderhaus or Landauerkloster) he had founded in 1501. The chapel was dedicated to All Saints, and Durer was invited to paint an altar-piece for it, representing “The Adoration of the Trinity by all Saints.” The result, the Allerheiligenbild, is one of the artist’s noblest and most famous compositions, but it too has left Nuremberg. For in 1585 the Rat sold it to Emperor Rudolph II., replacing it by a copy for which they retained the original frame.
In 1509 Durer bought the Durer-haus and took his aged mother to live with him there. He also bought his father’s house in the Burgstrasse off his brother. This in itself shows that the stories of his poverty have been much exaggerated. On his death he left 6858 gulden—a very good fortune in those days. His connection with Maximilian, to which we have already referred,[43] no doubt brought him something, though he had difficulty in procuring the payment of the pension allowed him by the Emperor. The Council, in 1510, at last gave a sign that they were aware of the presence of a great artist in their city by ordering Durer to paint the portraits of Charlemagne and Sigismund, to be displayed at the festival when the Imperial insignia and sacred relics—many of which were introduced into the pictures—were shown to the people. These portraits, into the former of which Durer introduced the features of Stabius, Maximilian’s poet-laureate, are now in the German Museum, much restored and over-daubed with repaintings.
The illness and death of his mother in 1514 caused Albert Durer very great grief. Most touching is his description of that event.