MASTER OF THE PLAYING CARDS. MAN OF SORROWS
Size of the original engraving, 7¾ × 5⅛ inches
In the British Museum
St. George and the Dragon is in his early manner. Here are plainly to be seen the characteristics of this first period—the broken, stratified rocks, the isolated and conventionalized plants, and the peculiar drawing of the horse, especially its slanting and half-human eyes. The Playing Cards, from which he takes his name, may safely be assigned to his middle period. The suits are made up of Flowers (roses and cyclamen), Wild Men, Birds, and Deer, with a fifth, or alternative suit of Lions and Bears. Like all the early German designers of playing cards, he has given free rein to his fancy and inventiveness. The position of the different emblems is varied for each numeral card; and each flower, wild man, bird, or beast, has an attitude and character of its own, no two being identical. No engraver has surpassed him in truthfulness and subtlety of observation and in the delineation of birds few artists have equalled him. His rendering of the growth and form of flowers would have delighted John Ruskin. In the King of Cyclamen and the Queen of Cyclamen the faces have an almost portrait-like individuality. The hands are well drawn and do not yet display that attenuation which is characteristic of nearly all fifteenth century German masters and is a noticeable feature in engravings by Martin Schongauer himself. The clothing falls in natural folds, and in the King of Cyclamen the representation of fur could hardly be bettered.
To his latest and most mature period must be assigned the Man of Sorrows—in some ways his finest, and certainly his most moving, plate. Not only has he differentiated between the textures of the linen loin-cloth and the coarser material of the cloak; but the column, the cross with its beautiful and truthful indication of the grain of the wood, and the ground itself, all are treated with a knowledge and a sensitiveness that is surprising. The engraver’s greatest triumph, however, is in the figure of Christ. There is a feeling for form and structure, sadly lacking in the work of his successors, and his suggestion of the strained and pulsing veins, which throb through the Redeemer’s tortured limbs, is of a compelling truth.
Chief among the engravers who show most clearly the influence of the Master of the Playing Cards is the Master of the Year 1446, so named from the date which appears in the Flagellation. His prints present a more or less primitive appearance, and were it not for this date, one might be tempted, on internal evidence, to assign them to an earlier period. In the Passion series, in particular, many of the figures are more gnome-like than human. Such creatures as the man blowing a horn, in Christ Nailed to the Cross, and the man pulling upon a rope, in the same print, recall to our minds, by an association of ideas, the old German fairy tales.
Contemporary with the Master of 1446, and belonging to the Burgundian-Netherlands group, to which also belong the two anonymous engravers known as the Master of the Mount of Calvary and the Master of the Death of Mary, is the Master of the Gardens of Love. His figures are crude in drawing and stiff in their movements. His knowledge of tree forms is rudimentary; but his animals and birds show real observation and seem to have been studied from life.
MASTER OF THE YEAR 1446. CHRIST NAILED TO THE CROSS
Size of the original engraving, 4⅛ × 3¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin