Size of the original engraving, 4½ × 2¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In Adam and Eve Dürer has summed up the knowledge obtained by actual observation and by a series of drawings and studies extending over a number of years, and combined with it his theoretical working out of the proportions of the human figure, male and female. In no other plate has he lavished such loving care upon the representation of the human form. The flesh is, so to speak, caressed with the burin, as though, once and for all, the artist wished to prove to his contemporaries that the graver sufficed for the rendering of the most beautiful, the most subtle and scientific problems. That Dürer himself was satisfied with the result of his labors at this time is made manifest by the detailed inscription, ALBERTUS DURER NORICUS FACIEBAT, on the tablet, followed by his monogram and the date 1504. This plate proclaimed him indisputably the greatest master of the burin of his time; and along the lines which he laid down for himself it remains unsurpassed until our own day.
Adam and Eve is followed by a group of prints which, though interesting in treatment and charming in subject, such as the Nativity, Apollo and Diana, and the first four plates of the Small Passion, reveal nothing new in Dürer’s development as an artist or a man. In the year 1510, however, is made his first experiment in dry-point. Of the very small plate of St. Veronica with the Sudarium two impressions only have come down to us, neither of them showing much burr. The Man of Sorrows, dated 1512, likewise must have been very delicately scratched upon the copper, all existing impressions being pale and delicate in tone. Whether Dürer’s desire was to produce engravings which should entail less labor and be more quickly executed than was possible by the slower and more laborious method of the burin, or whether, as seems much more likely, he was influenced by an acquaintanceship with the dry-point work of the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, cannot be asserted with any degree of assurance. Dürer’s third dry-point, the St. Jerome by the Willow Tree (like the Man of Sorrows dated 1512), is treated in so much bolder and more painter-like a manner, is so rich in burr and so satisfying as a composition, that one can hardly account for such remarkable development unaided by any outside influence or stimulation. The British Museum’s impression of the first state, before the monogram,—the richest impression known—yields nothing in color effect even to Rembrandt. Thausing is inclined to think that Rembrandt must have been inspired by this plate to himself take up the dry-point—an interesting speculation and one which would do honor to both of these great masters.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. ST. JEROME BY THE WILLOW TREE
(First State)
Size of the original dry-point 8⅛ × 7 inches
In the British Museum
ALBRECHT DÜRER. HOLY FAMILY
Size of the original dry-point, 8¼ × 7¼ inches
The Holy Family, though without monogram and undated, belongs so unmistakably, from internal evidence, to this period, that we may safely assign it to the year 1512. The background and landscape to the left are indicated in outline only. Did Dürer intend to carry the plate further? We can never know. It is his fourth and, unfortunately, his last dry-point. There is a beauty in St. Jerome by the Willow Tree and in this Holy Family which leads us to read in these two masterpieces certain Italian influences. There is the largeness of conception of the Venetian School, and both St. Jerome and St. Joseph show strong traces of such a master as Giovanni Bellini.