12. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;
13. And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
14. His head and hairs white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes as a flame of fire;
15. And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
16. And he had in his right hand many stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
17. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.
Assuming that a passage such as this can be illustrated, and that without the use of colour, is his a good illustration? Does it reproduce the spirit and meaning of St. John, or only the words? Look at the two-edged sword glued to the mouth, look at the eyes "as a flame of fire"; can you admit more than that it pretends to be a literal translation? But it is not even literal; verse 17 says distinctly, "And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead." But St. John is here represented as one praying. Then what is the inference? That Dürer was unimaginative in the higher sense of the word; that he, like the Spirit of the Reformation, sought salvation in the WORD. Throughout Dürer's Art we feel that it was constrained, hampered by his inordinate love of literal truthfulness; not one of his works ever rises even to the level of Raphael's "Madonna della Seggiola." Like German philosophy, his works are so carefully elaborated in detail that the glorious whole is lost in more or less warring details. His Art suffers from insubordination—all facts are co-ordinated. He himself knew it, and towards the end of this life hated its complexity, caused by the desire to represent in one picture the successive development of the spoken or written word; a desire which even in our days has not completely disappeared.
Dürer therefore appeals to us of to-day more through such conceptions as the wings of the Paumgaertner altar-piece, or the four Temperaments (St. Peter, St. John, St. Mark, and St. Paul), than through the crowded centre panels of his altar-pieces; and the strong appeal of his engravings, such as the "Knight of the Reformation" (1513) or the "Melancholia" (1514), is mainly owing to the predominant big note of the principal figures, whilst in the beautiful St. Jerome ("Hieronymus im Gehäus") it is the effect of sunshine and its concomitant feeling of well-being—Gemüthlichkeit, to use an untranslatable German word—which makes us linger and dwell with growing delight on every detail of this wonderful print.
In spite of appearances to the contrary, Dürer was, as I have said, unimaginative. He needed the written word or another's idea as a guide; he never dreamt of an Art that could be beautiful without a "mission"—he never "created." Try to realise for a moment that throughout his work—in accordance with the conception of his age—he mixes purely modern dress with biblical and classical representation, as if our Leightons, Tademas, Poynters, were to introduce crinolines, bustles, or "empire" gowns amongst Venuses and Apollos. In the pathetic "Deposition from the Cross" the Magdalen is just a "modern" Nuremberg damsel, and the Virgin's headwrap is slung as the northern housewife wore it, and not like an Oriental woman's; Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are clad as Nuremberg burghers, and only in the figure of John does he make concession to the traditional "classic" garment. Such an anachronistic medley could only appear logical so long as the religious spirit and the convictions of the majority were at one. I dare scarcely hint at, much less describe, the feelings that would be stirred in you if a modern painter represented the Crucifixion with Nicodemus and the man from Arimathea in frock-coats, Mary and the Magdalen in "walking costume," and a company of Horse-guards in attendance. The abyss of over four centuries divides us from Dürer; my suggestion sounds blasphemous almost, yet it is a thought based on fact and worthy of most careful note.
Owing to a convention—then active, now defunct—Dürer grasped the hands of all the living, bade them stop and think. Not one of those who beheld his work could pass by without feeling a call of sympathy and understanding. "Everyman" Dürer!—that is his grandeur. To this the artists added their appreciation; what he did was not only truly done, but on the testimony of all his brothers in Art well done. So with graver, pen, and brush he gave his world the outlines of Belief. In his pictures the illiterate saw, as by revelation, that which they could not read, and the literate, the literati—Erasmus, Pirkheimer, Melanchthon amongst the most prominent—saw the excellence of the manner of his revelations.
I cannot think of any better way of explaining the effect of Dürer's Art as an illustrator upon his time, than to beg you to imagine the delight a short-sighted man experiences when he is given his first pair of spectacles. Everything remains where it is; he has not lost his sense of orientation, but on a sudden he sees everything more clearly, more defined, more in detail: and where he previously had only recognised vague effects he begins to see their causes. Such was the effect of Dürer's Art: features, arms, hands, bodies, legs, feet, draperies, accessories, tree-trunks and foliage, vistas, radiance and light, not suggested but present, truly realised. When I say Dürer was not imaginative I mean to convey that imagination was characteristic of the age, not of him alone, but the materialisation, the realisation of fancy, that is his strength.
All these considerations can find, unfortunately, no room for discussion in these pages, for it were tedious to refer the reader to examples which are not illustrated.
We must perforce accept the limitations of our programme, and devote our attention to his paintings—far the least significant part of his activity.
Dürer was the great master of line—he thinks in line. This line is firstly the outline or contour in its everyday meaning; secondly, it is the massed army of lines that go to make shadow; thirdly, it is line in its psychical aspect, as denoting direction, aim, tendency, such as we have it in the print of the "Melancholia." No one before him had ever performed such wonderful feats with "line," not even Mantegna with his vigorous but repellent parallels.
This line was the greatest obstacle to his becoming a successful painter. For his line was not the great sweep, not the graceful flow, not the spontaneous dash, not the slight touch, but the heavy, determined, reasoned move, as of a master-hand in a game of chess.