Prints: A Brief Review of Their Technique and History

by Emil H. Richter

CARDINAL ALBRECHT OF MAYENCE

Albrecht Dürer

From this brief glance at the great Nuremberg artist, we must turn now to his Northern contemporary, Lucas van Leyden, likewise a painter-engraver, and a solitary figure in the Netherlands at that period. Bred in the realistic maxims of the fifteenth century, his Northern origin asserts itself in the careful detail and truthful presentation of nature, in the characteristic types of his figures. Truthful rendering of natural facts—as has been mentioned before—is a quality common to Northern artists. Dürer, in his fondness for psychological themes, is in tune with the humanists of his time. Leyden, though strongly influenced by the German master, has not Dürer’s depth of thought. He does not infuse that deeper meaning into his plates. Following the bent of his Germanic mind, he reverts to the simple, daily scenes of life, and when he undertakes to render scenes from other times and from distant places, he transforms them into events of his own day and his own surroundings. He can thus express himself with the directness of an eye-witness, and therein lies much of the charm of his work, which was much appreciated even in Italy. One of the few large plates of Lucas van Leyden will illustrate his artistic and technical powers. The “Adoration of the Magi,” broad in composition, sober and harmonious in the handling of the graver, typically Northern in feeling, is perhaps the finest of his achievements. Later in life his restless, searching mind was diverted to the allurements of Italian grace of form, and gave itself up to its influence without reserve.

ADORATION OF THE MAGI

Lucas van Leyden

A great wave of enthusiasm for Southern ideals swept over the entire North about the third decade of the sixteenth century. It established the supremacy of Italian standards of artistic merit, which—as we know—were not such as to give new life to the graphic arts. This wave of Italian influence was felt in the immediate following of Dürer, in that group of painter-engravers, known to us as the “little masters,” though little only in the size of their plates. A high standard of technique is common to them all, with variations in their perfection. Variations there are also in the measure in which they yielded to Italian influence. Their graver was devoted to the rendering of a great variety of subjects; Northern characteristics are still evident in their portraits, in their Biblical scenes with German types of figures. Northern customs are depicted with Northern minuteness; on the other hand, the study of Southern models has developed in these Northern engravers an appreciation of the beauty of the nude, which is freely introduced in mythological, allegorical, Biblical, and other subjects, and very skillfully handled. We are apt not to appreciate the gravity of this Italian invasion, of this Southern supremacy in Northern art. Ideal perfection of form was a new language to the Germanic artists, accustomed to the realistic, faithful rendering of nature as they saw it, with all its facts, perfections, and imperfections alike. The change often meant that the artist forgot his native tongue, if the expression may be used—a harsh tongue, if you will, but sincere and expressive; in return he acquired, often but imperfectly, a new language in which his expression needs must be imitative, not original.

TOURNAMENT