Dürer / Artist-Biographies

by M. F. Sweetser

He says of his father, “For me, I think, he had a particular affection; and, as he saw me diligent in learning, he sent me to school. When I had learned to write and read, he took me home again, with the intention of teaching me the goldsmith’s work. In this I began to do tolerably well.” He was taken into the goldsmith’s workshop in his thirteenth year, and remained there two years, receiving instruction which was not without value in his future life, in showing him the elements of the arts of modelling and design. The accuracy and delicacy of his later plastic works show how well he apprehended these ideas, and how far he acquired sureness of expression. The elder Albert was a skilful master-workman, highly esteemed in his profession, and had received several important commissions. It is said that the young apprentice executed under his care a beautiful piece of silver-work representing the Seven Agonies of Christ.

“But my love was towards painting, much more than towards the goldsmith’s craft. When at last I told my father of my inclination, he was not well pleased, thinking of the time I had been under him as lost if I turned painter. But he left me to have my will; and in the year 1486, on St. Andrew’s Day, he settled me apprentice with Michael Wohlgemuth, to serve him for three years. In that time God gave me diligence to learn well, in spite of the pains I had to suffer from the other young men.” Thus Dürer describes his change in life, and the embarkation on his true vocation, as well as the reluctance of the elder Albert to allow his noble and beloved boy to pass out from his desolated household into other scenes, and away from his companionship.

Wohlgemuth was one of the early religious painters who stood at the transition-point between the school of Cologne and that of the Van Eycks, or between the old pietistic traditions of Byzantine art and the new ideas of the art of the Northern Reformation. The conventionalisms of the Rhenish and Franconian paintings were being exchanged for a fresher originality and a truer realism; and the pictures of this time curiously blended the old and the new. Wohlgemuth seems to have considered art as a money-getting trade rather than a high vocation, and his workroom was more a shop than a studio. He turned out countless Madonnas and other religious subjects for churches and chance purchasers, and also painted chests and carved and colored images of the saints, many of which were executed by his apprentices. A few of his works, however, were done with great care and delicacy, and show a worthy degree of sweetness and simplicity. Evidently the young pupil gained little besides a technical knowledge of painting from this master,—the mechanical processes, the modes of mixing and applying colors, the chemistry of pigments, and a certain facility in using them. It was well that the influences about him were not powerful enough to warp his pure and original genius into servile imitations of decadent methods. His hands were taught dexterity; and his mind was left to pursue its own lofty course, and use them as its skilful allies in the new conquests of art.

Wood-engraving was also carried on in Wohlgemuth’s studio, and it is probable that Dürer here learned the rudiments of this branch of art, which he afterwards carried to so high a perfection. Some writers maintain that his earliest works in this line were done for the famous “Nuremberg Chronicle,” which was published in 1493 by Wohlgemuth and Pleydenwurf.

The three years which were spent in Wohlgemuth’s studio were probably devoted to apprentice-work on compositions designed by the master, who was then about fifty years old, and at the summit of his fame. But few of Dürer’s drawings now existing date from this epoch, one of which represents a group of horsemen, and another the three Swiss leaders, Fürst, Melchthal, and Staufacher. The beautiful portrait of Dürer’s father, which is now at Florence, was executed by the young artist in 1490, probably to carry with him as a souvenir of home. Mündler says, “For beauty and delicacy of modelling, this portrait has scarcely been surpassed afterwards by the master, perhaps not equalled.”

It was claimed by certain old biographers that the eminent Martin Schongauer of Colmar was Dürer’s first master; but this is now contested, although it is evident that his pictures had a powerful effect on the youth. Schongauer was the greatest artist and engraver that Germany had as yet produced, and exerted a profound influence on the art of the Rhineland. He renewed the fantastic conceits and grotesque vagaries which the Papal artists of Cologne had suppressed as heathenish, and prepared the way for, or perhaps even suggested, the weird elements of Dürer’s conceptions. At the same time he passed back of his Netherland art-education, and studied a mystic benignity and dreamy spirituality suggestive of the Umbrian painters, with whose chief, the great Perugino, Martin was acquainted. Herein Dürer’s works were in strong contrast with Schongauer’s, and showed the new spirit that was stirring in the world.

Next to Schongauer, the great Italian artist Mantegna exercised the strongest influence upon Dürer, who studied his bold and austere engravings with earnest admiration, showing his traits in many subsequent works. Probably he met the famous Mantuan painter during the Wander-jahre, in Italy; and at the close of his Venetian journey he was about to pay a visit of homage to him, when he heard of his death.

During his three years of study we have seen that the delicate and sensitive youth suffered much from the reckless rudeness and jeering insults of his companions, rough hand-workers who doubtless failed to understand the poignancy of the torments which they inflicted on the sad-eyed son of genius. But his home was near at hand, and the tender care of his parents, always beloved. How often he must have wandered through the familiar streets of Nuremberg, with his dreamy artist-face and flowing hair, and studied the Gothic palaces, the fountains adorned with statuary, and the rich treasures of art in the great churches! Beyond the tall-towered town, danger lurked on every road; but inside the gray walls was peace and safety, and no free lances nor marauding men-at-arms could check the aspiring flight of the youth’s bright imagination.