ALBERT DÜRER: HIS WORKS, HIS COMPATRIOTS, AND HIS TIMES.
Dürer is the one great name which represents early German art in its pure nationality. In his works we see all its peculiarities and may study all its merits. It is not without its defects also, but as they may be honestly considered a part of the whole, it becomes a necessary thing to consider them with the beauties to which they may be conjoined; nor must we be deterred in our search for the latter quality by such occasional drawbacks, if we would investigate the efforts of the artist-mind toward excellence, for that was its characteristic feature from the fall of Rome to the period in which Dürer flourished. In the somewhat gaudy glories of the Byzantine school, we can trace only the failing powers of a great empire conscious of its old dignity but not fully able to display it. In the barbaric night which succeeded, we find art sunk to the most childish attempt at imitating simple nature; which was “copied most vilely.” In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we trace the latent wish for the delineation of beauty struggling again into life; but it was simply the wish rather than the power to delineate the graceful, that we find displayed in the contorted figures which the artists of these days attempted to picture as graceful beings. Still, crude and strange, or even grotesque, as they may appear, they are not to be despised. Amid much that is repulsive to modern cultivated taste, we occasionally find naïve delineations of simple beauty, natural expression, and touches of human pathos, which tell how honestly and how eagerly these old artists worked; how truly they wished to do more than they had power to accomplish; and though clogged to the earth by the dark age they lived in, how earnestly they wished to soar above that position. The archaisms of old Greece are not better than such works; and as we can trace the onward course of those ancient masters of art from the rude outlines on the vases of Etruria, to the glorious works of Phidias and Praxiteles—even so, if we wish to know the true course of the revival of modern art, must we trace it in the sculpture, wall-painting, and missal-drawing, of the middle ages, until we find it assume a more definite and better-regulated style in the fifteenth century; that period of the revival of classical tastes, and bright day-spring of art in Italy, from which we ourselves still drink inspiration as from the “well undefiled.”
The influence of the Italian school after the era of Raffaelle may be said to be paramount. As his works became known and studied, they gave laws to other artists; and the mannerisms and peculiarities of earlier schools were softened down and disappeared. Gothic art—if such a term may be applied to the art which was the hand-maiden of Gothic architecture (the term Gothic being by no means understood as meaning barbaric)—had run its course by aid of its own experience alone, possessing qualifications of its own, but being in some degree more remarkable for its strength of feeling than grace of expression. The Italian school inoculated it with elegance; but it naturally possessed an independent power, together with a vigour and native grace which rewarded those who sought for it, rather than courted them by its palpable display. Gothic art in its native strength, as it had grown gradually and achieved its own position, may be seen in the works of the northern contemporaries of Raffaelle; the study of its rise and progress is no unworthy study of the human mind in its onward course toward excellence, nor should we allow prejudice to weigh with us in contemplating these labours. It has been well observed that “in art as in many other branches of human knowledge and industry, exclusiveness, or the tendency to depreciate that which does not conform to our own taste and feelings, is a fertile source of error and mischief. Such a disposition deprives mankind of the free and unrestrained enjoyment of much that is calculated to cheer and improve them. The naïveté of the early German and Italian painters, the earnest simplicity with which they conceived and expressed the devotional subjects treated by them, and the moral beauty of the subjects themselves, may excite our admiration, without disqualifying us for duly admiring the brilliant breadth of light and shadow of Rembrandt, or the genuine truth and humour of Wilkie.”[190-*] In this spirit must we study the works of the early native artists of the northern schools, and in this way comprehend their true philosophic position, and the æsthetics of their style.
Germany, a great and powerful nation, was in the fifteenth century the home of northern intelligence; and nowhere was it more fully made visible than in the old town of Nürnberg; it was the centre of trade, the abode of opulence, the patron of literature and the arts. Here, amid congenial spirits, lived Albert Dürer—“in him,” says Dr. Kügler, “the style of art already existing attained its most peculiar and its highest perfection. He became the representative of German art at this period.” To himself and his works, therefore, must we look for a true knowledge of the German school; and to Nürnberg, as it was in his epoch, for an acquaintance with the characteristics of the refined life of the German people. It is no unprofitable labour to unveil these ancient and forgotten times; much in man’s history, great and good, is hidden in the pages of old chronicles, and it is a worthy task to call back forgotten glories that may induce modern emulation, or at least vindicate the true position of the great departed.
“From the barred visor of antiquity,
Reflected, shines the eternal light of truth
As from a mirror.”[191-*]
The modern traveller who visits Nürnberg will see an old city most singularly unaltered. For the last two centuries it would seem to have remained almost stationary; its inhabitants succeeding each other without a wish for change, living in the old houses of their progenitors, and quietly retaining a certain stolid position which has neither lost nor won in the great battle of life around them. On approaching its walls it is difficult at first to believe that a city so quaint and peculiar still exists intact. It is precisely like looking at a pictured town in an old missal, with its series of square towers, and long curtain wall embracing its entire circumference; its old castle perched on the rock, and its great massive round towers proudly protecting its chief gates upon all sides. There is a strange “old-world” look about everything within these walls also, and we scarcely feel that we have arrived at the nineteenth century as we indulge in the thoughts they call forth. It is a place to dream in over the past, to carry one’s mind away from the bustle of modern life to the thoughtful contemplation of that once enjoyed here by generations long departed. It seems no place for the actual realities of our railroad days, and there is a sort of impertinence in bringing us by such means close to its quiet old walls; you feel thrown, as it were, from the go-a-head rapidities of modern times into the calm, heavy, slow-going days of Kaiser Maximilian, without time to consider the change. It is a place for a poet, one imbued with a love of old cities and their denizens, like Longfellow,—and how admirably in a few lines has he described the feeling it engenders, and the aspect of the city and its suburbs!—