MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. CRUCIFIXION
Size of the original engraving, 6 × 5¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Amsterdam
The Ecstasy of St. Mary Magdalen is one of his earliest plates and is a free translation of the same subject by the Master E. S. It would seem as though his dry-point was the immediate original of Dürer’s woodcut. The position of the Magdalen’s hands is the same in both compositions, but Dürer has added a landscape which, admirable though it be, detracts from the main interest of his print.
The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, in a second rendering, herewith reproduced, has eliminated all superfluous or distracting details and imparted a surprising degree of grace and purity to the lovely design. Anything like a chronological arrangement of the master’s work would be difficult, but one may safely assume that this beautiful engraving belongs to the latest and most mature period of his art, to which period we also may assign the Two Lovers.
As a rule, his least successful engravings are those dealing with religious themes. At times, however, as in the Crucifixion, he rises to heights of dramatic intensity, and Dürer may be indebted more than we realize to this rendering of the divine tragedy. Aristotle and Phyllis and Solomon’s Idolatry are satirical illustrations of the follies of sages in love. Both plates are illumined by a truly modern sense of humor, while the arrangement of the figures within the spaces to be filled is admirable.
Such subjects as The Three Living and the Three Dead Kings and Young Man and Death are variations upon a theme which was uppermost in the minds of many men at this time, when the Ars Moriendi and the Dance of Death were constant reminders of man’s mortality. In agreeable contrast is the dry-point of Two Lovers—a little masterpiece—one of his most charming designs. “The sweet shyness of the maiden, the tender glances of the lover and the soft pressure of their hands are rendered with an inimitable grace, and the work is altogether of such exceptional quality that we may count this delightful picture as one of the rarest gems of German engraving in the fifteenth century.”[7]
[7] The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet. By Max Lehrs. International Chalcographical Society, 1893 and 1894. p. 7.
The Stag Hunt is filled with the spirit of outdoor life, the exhilaration of the chase, and the joy of the hounds in pursuing their quarry. No other engraver of the fifteenth century has left us any such truthful rendering of a hunting scene, and the life-enhancing quality of this little dry-point makes even Dürer’s rendering of animal forms seem cold and relatively lifeless.
MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. STAG HUNT