The famous painting of “The Adoration of the Trinity” was finished in 1511, and represents God the Father holding up His crucified Son for the worship of an immense congregation of saints, while overhead is the mystic Dove, surrounded by a circle of winged cherubs’ heads. The kneeling multitude includes princes, prelates, warriors, burghers, and peasants, equally accepting the Athanasian dogma. On the left is a great group of female saints, led by the sweet and stately Virgin Mary; and on the right are the kneeling prophets and apostles, Moses with the tables of the Law, and David with his harp. On the broad terrestrial landscape, far below, Dürer stands alone, by a tall tablet bearing the Latin inscription of his name and the date of the picture. The whole scene is full of light and splendor, delicate beauty of angels, and exquisite minuteness of finish. A century later the Rath of Nuremberg removed this picture from the sepulchral chapel of its founder, and presented it to the Emperor Rudolph II. It is now one of the gems of the Vienna Belvedere.
About this time the master’s brother Andreas, the goldsmith, returned to Nuremberg after his long wanderings, and eased the evident anxiety of his family by settling respectably in life. Hans was still in his brother’s studio, where he learned his art so well that he afterwards became court-painter to the King of Poland.
In 1511 Dürer published a third edition of the engravings of the Apocalypse, with a warning to piratical engravers that the Emperor had forbidden the sale of copies or impressions other than those of the author, within the Empire, under heavy penalties to transgressors. To the same year belong three of the master’s greatest works in engraving on wood.
“The Great Passion” contains twelve folio woodcuts, unequal in their execution, and probably made by different workmen of varying abilities. The vignette is an “Ecce Homo;” and the other subjects are, the Last Supper, Christ at Gethsemane, His Betrayal, the Scourging, the Mockery, Christ Bearing the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Descent into Hell, the Maries Mourning over Christ’s Body, the Entombment, and the Resurrection. These powerful delineations of the Agony of Our Lord are characterized by rare originality of conception, pathos, and grandeur. They were furnished with Latin verses by the monk Chelidonius, and bore the imperial warning against imitation. Four large editions were printed from these cuts, and numerous copies, especially in Italy, where the Emperor’s edict was inoperative.
“The Little Passion” was a term applied by Dürer himself to distinguish his series of thirty-seven designs from the larger pictures of “The Great Passion.” It is the best-known of the master’s engravings; and has been published in two editions at Nuremberg, a third at Venice in 1612, and a fourth at London in 1844. The blocks are now in the British Museum, and show plainly that they were not engraved by Dürer. This great pictorial scene of the fall and redemption of man begins with the sin of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Eden, and follows with thirty-three compositions from the life and passion of Christ, ending with the Descent of the Holy Ghost and the Last Judgment. Its title was Figuræ Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi; and it was furnished with a set of the Latin verses of Chelidonius.
The third of Dürer’s great works in wood-engraving was “The Life of the Virgin,” with explanatory Latin verses by the Benedictine Chelidonius. This was published in 1511, and contains twenty pictures, full of realistic plainness and domestic homeliness, yet displaying marvellous skill and power of invention. To the same year belong the master’s engravings of the Trinity, St. Christopher, St. Gregory’s Mass, St. Jerome, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, the Holy Family with the Guitar, Herodias and the Head of John the Baptist, and the Adoration of the Magi; and the copper-plates of the Crucifixion and the Virgin with the Pear.
Dürer was much afflicted by the boldness of many imitators, who plagiarized his engravings without stint, and flooded the market with pictures from his designs. His rights were protected but poorly by the edicts of the Emperor and the city of Nuremberg; and a swarm of parasitical copyists reproduced every fresh design as soon as it was published. Marc Antonio Raimondi, the great Italian engraver who worked so many years with Raphael, was the most dangerous of these plagiarists, and reproduced “The Little Passion” and “The Life of the Virgin” in a most exquisite manner, close after their publication. Vasari says, “It happened that at this time certain Flemings came to Venice with a great many prints, engraved both in wood and copper by Albert Dürer, which being seen by Marc Antonio in the Square of St. Mark, he was so much astonished by their style of execution, and the skill displayed by Albert, that he laid out on those prints almost all the money he had brought with him from Bologna, and amongst other things purchased ‘The Passion of Jesus Christ,’ engraved on thirty-six wooden blocks.... Marc Antonio therefore, having considered how much honor as well as advantage might be acquired by one who should devote himself to that art in Italy, resolved to attend to it with the greatest diligence, and immediately began to copy these engravings of Albert, studying their mode of hatching, and every thing else in the prints he had purchased, which from their novelty as well as beauty, were in such repute that every one desired to possess them.”
It appears that Marc Antonio was afterwards enjoined from using Dürer’s monogram on his copies of the Nuremberger’s engravings, either by imperial diplomatic representations to the Italian courts, or else as the result of a visit which some claim that Dürer made to Italy for that purpose. Many of the copies of Marc Antonio were rather idealized adaptations than exact reproductions of the German’s designs, but were furnished with the forged monogram A. D., and sold for Dürer’s works. Sixty-nine of our artist’s engravings were copied by the skilful Italian, profoundly influencing Southern art by the manual dexterity of the North. This wholesale piracy was carried on between 1505 and 1511, and before Marc Antonio passed under Raphael’s overmastering influence.
In later years the Rath of Nuremberg warned the booksellers of the city against selling false copies of Dürer’s engravings, and sent letters to the authorities of Augsburg, Leipsic, Frankfort, Strasbourg, and Antwerp, asking them to put a stop to such sales within their jurisdictions. His works have been copied by more than three hundred artists, the best of whom were Solis, Rota, the Hopfers, Wierx, Vischer, Schön, and Kraus.
In 1512 Dürer made most of the plates for “The Passion in Copper,” a series of sixteen engravings on copper, which was begun in 1507 and finished in 1513. These plates show the terrible scenes of the last griefs of the Saviour, surrounded with uncouth German men and women, buildings and landscapes, yet permeated with mysterious reverence and solemn simplicity. The series was never published in book form, with descriptive text, but the engravings were put forth singly as soon as completed. The prints of “Christ Bound” and “St. Jerome” were published this same year.