The picture which Dürer painted for the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi was until recently supposed to be a “St. Bartholomew;” but it is now believed that it was the renowned “Feast of Rose Garlands,” which is now at the Bohemian Monastery of Strahow. He worked hard on this picture for seven months, and was proud of its beauty and popularity. The Emperor Rudolph II. bought it from the church in which it was set up, and had it carried on men’s shoulders all the way from Venice to Prague, to avoid the dangers attending other modes of conveyance. When Joseph II. sold his pictures, in 1782, this one was bought by the Abbey of Strahow, and remained buried in oblivion for three-quarters of a century. The picture shows the Virgin sitting under a canopy and a star-strewn crown held by flying cherubs, with the graceful Child in her lap. She is placing a crown of roses on the head of the Emperor Maximilian, while Jesus places another on the head of the Pope; and a monk on one side is similarly honored by St. Dominic, the founder of the Feast of the Rose Garlands. A multitude of kneeling men and women on either side are being crowned with roses by merry little child-angels, flying through the air; while on the extreme right, Dürer and Pirkheimer are seen standing by a tree.
Pirkheimer and Agnes had both been urging the master to return; but he seemed reluctant to exchange the radiance of Italy for the quietness of his home-circle, and mournfully exclaims, “Oh, how I shall freeze after this sunshine! Here I am a gentleman, at home only a parasite!” A brilliant career was open before him at Venice, whose Government offered him a pension of 200 ducats; but his sense of duty compelled him to return to Germany, though in bitterness of spirit. Before turning Northward he rode to Bologna, “because some one there will teach me the secret art of perspective” (Francesco Francia); and met Christopher Scheurl, who greatly admired him. A year later Raphael also came to Bologna, and saw some works left there by Dürer, from which arose an intimate correspondence and exchanges of pictures between the artists. The master had been invited to visit the venerable Mantegna, at Mantua; but that Nestor of North-Italian art died before the plan was carried out. Dürer afterwards told Camerarius that this death “caused him more grief than any mischance that had befallen him during his life.”
Art-critics agree in rejoicing that Dürer conquered the temptations which were held out to him from the gorgeous Italian city, and returned to his plain life in the cold North. He escaped the danger of sacrificing his individualism to the glowing and sensuous Venetian school of art, and preserved the quaintness and vigor of his own Gothic inspirations for the joy of future ages.
The marine backgrounds in many of Dürer’s later pictures are referred by Ruskin to the artist’s pleasant memories of Venice, “where he received the rarest of all rewards granted to a good workman; and, for once in his life, was understood.” Other and wilder landscapes in his woodcuts were reminiscences of the pastoral regions of the Franconian Switzerland.
The personal history of Dürer between 1507 and 1520 was barren of details, but evidently full of earnest work, as existing pictures bear witness. It was the golden period of his art-life, abounding in productiveness. His workshop was the seat of the chief art-school in Nuremberg, and contained many excellent young painters and engravers, to whom the master delivered his wise axioms and earnest thoughts in rich profusion.
During this period, also, he probably executed certain of his best works in carving, which are hereinafter described. Dr. Thausing denies that Dürer used the chisel of the sculptor to any extent, and refuses to accept the genuineness of the carvings which the earlier biographers have attributed to him. Scott is of the opinion that in most cases these rich and delicate works were executed by other persons, either from his drawings or under his inspection.
On his return from Venice, Dürer painted life-sized nude figures of Adam and Eve, representing them with the fatal apple in their hands, at the moment of the Fall. They are well designed in outline, but possess a certain anatomical hardness, lacking in grace and mobility. They were greatly admired by the Nurembergers, in whose Rath-haus they were placed; but were at length presented to the Emperor Rudolph II. He replaced them with copies, which Napoleon, in 1796, supposed to be Dürer’s original works, and removed to Paris. He afterwards presented them to the town of Mayence, where they are still exhibited as Dürer’s. The true originals passed into Spain, where they were first redeemed from oblivion by Passavant, about the year 1853. A copy of the Adam and Eve, which was executed in Dürer’s studio and under his care, is now at the Pitti Palace.
In the spring of 1507 Dürer met at the house of his brother-in-law Jacob Frey, the rich Frankfort merchant Jacob Heller, who commissioned him to paint an altar-piece. He was delayed by a prolonged attack of fever in the summer, and by the closing works on the Elector’s picture.
Between 1507 and 1514 (inclusive) Dürer made forty-eight engravings and etchings, and over a hundred woodcuts, bespeaking an iron diligence and a remarkable power of application. The rapid sale of these works in frequent new editions gave a large income to their author, and placed him in a comfortable position among the burghers of Nuremberg. The religious excitement then prevailing throughout Europe, on the eve of the Reformation, increased the demand for his engravings of the Virgin, the saints, and the great Passion series.