In 1506 and 1507 he visited Venice, as already stated, gracefully received by the nobles and Giovanni Bellini, but disliked by the other painters.
He returned home apparently uninfluenced by the great Venetians, Titian, remember, amongst them. Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio were then the only painters at Venice who saw the realistic side of Nature; but they were prosaic, whilst our Dürer imbued a wooden bench or a tree trunk with a personal and human interest. Those of my readers who can afford the time to linger on this aspect of Dürer's activity should compare Carpaccio's rendering of St. Jerome in his study with Dürer's engraving of the same subject.
Dürer the craftsman referred in everything he painted or engraved to Nature. But of course it was Nature as he and his times saw it; neither Hals, Rembrandt, neither Ribera, Velazquez, neither Chardin nor Constable, neither Monet nor Whistler had as yet begun to ascend the rungs of progress towards truthful—that is, "optical sight."
Dürer's reference to Nature means an intricate study of theoretical considerations, coupled with the desire to record everything he knew about the things he wished to reproduce.
His was an analytical mind, and every piece of work he produced is a careful dovetailing of isolated facts. Consequently his pictures must not be looked at, but looked into—must be read.
Again an obvious truth may here mislead us. The analytical juxtaposition of facts was a characteristic of the age. Dürer's Art was a step forward; he—like Raphael, like Titian—dovetailed, where earlier men scarcely joined. Dürer has as yet not the power that even the next generation began to acquire—he never suggests anything; he works everything out, down to the minutest details. There are no slight sketches of his but such as suggest great travail of sight, encumbranced by an over-thoughtful mind.
To understand Dürer you require time; each print of the "Passions," "The Life of Mary," the "Apokalypse," should be read like a page printed in smallest type, with thought and some eye-strain. That of course goes very much against the grain of our own age; we demand large type and short stories.
The study of his work entails considerable self-sacrifice. Your own likes and dislikes you have to suppress, and try to see with eyes that belong to an age long since gone. Do not despise the less self-sacrificing, who refuse the study of old Art; and distrust profoundly those others who laud it beyond measure. The green tree is the tree to water; the dead tree—be its black branches and sere leaves never so picturesque—is beyond the need of your attentions.
The Scylla and Charybdis of æsthetic reformers is praise of the old, and poor appraising of the new.
PLATE IV.—PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S FATHER