The earliest in date of Dürer’s engraved portraits is likewise the best. Albert of Brandenburg was twenty-nine years of age, in 1519, when Dürer engraved this plate. There is a concentration upon the purely portrait element lacking in some of the later prints. The burin work is singularly delicate and beautiful. Indeed, nothing better, from a technical standpoint, has ever been done on copper than Dürer’s six portrait plates; and if he at times succumbs to the temptation of rendering each minor detail with the same loving care which he bestows upon the face itself, he remains, notwithstanding, one of the greatest masters of the burin the world has seen.
Dürer engraved a second plate of Albert of Brandenburg, in 1523. The intervening four years had left their mark upon the Cardinal, and neither as a portrait nor as an engraving is it as pleasing as the earlier one. In the following year, 1524, there are two portraits—Frederic the Wise, Elector of Saxony and Wilibald Pirkheimer. The former was one of the earliest patrons of Dürer and likewise one of the most liberal-minded princes of his time. The plate is executed in Dürer’s painstaking and careful manner, nor does it lack, as a portrait, the directness and immediacy of appeal of the silver-point drawing, which may have served as its original. Wilibald Pirkheimer, the celebrated patrician and humanist, was Dürer’s life-long and most intimate friend, and it is to him that Dürer’s letters from Venice were addressed.
Philip Melanchthon is the simplest in treatment and the most satisfying, in its elimination of unnecessary detail, of Dürer’s portrait engravings, and is the best likeness of the mild reformer. The inscription reads: “Dürer could depict the features of the living Philip, but the skilled hand could not depict his mind.” Here Dürer does himself less than justice, for it is the portrait-like character which makes this engraving still noteworthy after the lapse of four centuries.
To the same year, 1526, belongs Erasmus of Rotterdam. It is a technical masterpiece. Dürer has lavished all his skill upon this plate. It is magnificent; but from a purely portrait standpoint, it is a magnificent failure.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. PHILIP MELANCHTHON
Size of the original engraving, 6⅞ × 5 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANTHONY VAN DYCK. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF (First State)
Size of the original etching, 9½ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston