Great as was the distinction and achievement of the Low Countries, at this time it was not so far superior to Southern Germany as to eclipse its brilliancy. What Bruges was to the Low Countries, and especially Flanders as an art capital at the beginning of Columbus' Century, Nuremberg was to Southern Germany. The city well deserves the name of Northern Florence, for all the arts flourished luxuriantly and the monuments attest, even better than any traditions, how much was accomplished here for art. Her greatest artist in this, very like so many of his Italian contemporaries, was not limited in his powers of expression to any one narrow mode, for Albert Dürer was painter, designer, engraver, but also like Leonardo a mathematician, and like Michelangelo a writer. Dürer's place as a painter is too well known to need special description here. He is now acknowledged to be one of the world's greatest artists, worthy to be mentioned in the same breath even with his supremely great contemporaries, Raphael, Leonardo, Titian, Botticelli and Correggio. In recent years he has come to be more generally known. His pious pictures have a certain Teutonic literalness added to their mystical quality that gives them distinction.
He is one of the great group of cultured intellectual people who made Nuremberg so famous at this time. While his art has many essential German characteristics, it is much more than national, though it shows very well the high standard of excellence that the German painters of this time had attained. His visits to Italy and the Netherlands broadened his views, developed his artistic sense, refined his taste and did much for him, yet the essential German character of his painting and his absolute individuality as an artist remained. Some of his Madonnas are quite as charming in their way, though very different from the Italian, as those of the great Renaissance painters in the peninsula. His "Adoration of the Magi" will bear comparison with the masterpieces even of Italy and the Netherlands, and his Madonnas, though of German type, have a sweetness all their own. In his second period some of his [{76}] painting at Venice shows how deeply he was influenced by the Venetian colorists and yet was never merely an imitator.
DÜRER, TITLE PAGE OF LIFE OF BLESSED VIRGIN (WOODCUT, 1511)
Dürer did fine work of real artistic quality, not only in painting, but also in wood engraving, and afterwards in engraving on copper. Prints from his woodcuts or copperplates still command high prices, and indeed it is probable that only those of Rembrandt are valued more highly. He brought these two modes of art to great perfection. He was a fine craftsman, as well as an artist, and both etching and wood [{77}] engraving owe much to his inventive ability and handicraftsmanship.
As might be expected of this intimate friend of Wilibald Pirkheimer, he was a scholar as well as an artist, and we have from him three books, one on the proportions of the human figure, which shows how carefully he studied the essentials of his art; one on geometry and one on the art of fortification. Like Leonardo he felt his ability as an engineer, and like Raphael and Michelangelo was widely interested not only in every mode of art, but all the intellectual interests of his time. No more than the Italians he was not a narrow specialist in any sense of the word, and nothing shows so clearly as his career and achievements how much the spirit of genius was abroad at this time in Europe everywhere, lifting men up to heights of accomplishment that had scarcely been possible before.
Besides Dürer, the great painters of South Germany were the Holbeins, father and son. Hans Holbein the elder first came into prominence at Augsburg as a partner to his brother Sigmund, a painter, none of whose works have come down to us. His early works are nearly all on the Passion and show the influence of his studies of the Passion Plays, so frequently given all over South Germany at this time. Early in the sixteenth century he came under Italian influence and painted some pictures that, while naive and primitive, exhibit evidence of high artistic ability. His fame was eclipsed entirely by his son, Hans Holbein, known as the younger, though there is no doubt at all of the influence exerted by Holbein the father on the art of his period, and his sketchbooks are precious material for the biography and customs of his contemporaries.
His son left Augsburg about 1515 to become an illustrator of books at Basel. The first patron of the younger Holbein is said to have been Erasmus, for whom, shortly after his arrival, he illustrated an edition of the "Encomium Moriae" by pen-and-ink sketches, which are now in the Museum at Basel. After some five years of work as an illustrator, Hans began to attract attention by his portrait drawings. Some of these, as J. A. Crowe in his article on Holbein in the ninth edition of [{78}] the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" says, are "finished with German delicacy and with a power and subtlety of hand seldom rivalled in any school." That he could paint with almost equal distinction his portrait of Boniface Amerbach, painted in 1519, furnishes ample evidence, for it is "acknowledged to be one of the most complete examples of smooth and transparent handling that Holbein ever executed" (Crowe).
Art was gradually being pushed out in the German countries, however, and above all there was no opportunity for religious painting, which used to form the chief source of income and of inspiration, as well as the principal resource of painters before this, as it continued to be in the Latin countries. Besides, the religious revolution had come to occupy men's minds with disputes about religious subjects, and interest in art further declined. How well Holbein could have painted religious pictures is very well illustrated by the famous altar-piece of the Burgomaster Meyer, with his wives and children, in prayer before the Blessed Virgin. Few Madonnas are more impressive than this, but now the beautiful Mother of God was no longer an object of reverence. Holbein could get no further commissions of this kind, and was pitifully reduced, it is said, even to the painting of escutcheons for a living. Erasmus, whose portrait he had so often made in many different positions, compassionated his poverty and lack of occupation and sent him with a note of introduction to Sir Thomas More. More appreciated him at once, had him paint his own portrait and those of his family and engaged the interest of the nobility in him.