Dürer: The Little White Horse.
A touch of what appeals to us as a younger naïveté, and a touch of what appeals to us as elegance, are especially discernible in the earlier artist’s work; and that work too, or much of it, has often the additional attractiveness of exceptional scarcity. Likewise, it is to most of us less familiar. But when all these elements of attraction have been allowed for, the genius of Albert Dürer—so much deeper and so much broader, at once more philosophical and more dramatic, and expressed by a craftsmanship so much more changeful and more masterly—the genius of Albert Dürer dominates. If our allegiance has wavered, if we have been led astray for a period, by Martin Schöngauer himself, it may be, or by somebody less worthily illustrious, we shall return, wearily wise, to the author of the Melancholia and the Nativity, of the Knight of Death and of The Virgin by the City Wall. To study long and closely the work of the original engravers, is to come, sooner or later, quite certainly to the conclusion that there are two artists standing above all the rest, and that it was theirs, pre-eminently, to express, in the greatest manner, the greatest mind. One of these two artists, of course, is Rembrandt. And the other is Dürer.
Adam Bartsch, working at Vienna, in the beginning of this century, upon those monumental books of reference which, as authorities upon their wide subject, are even now only partially displaced, catalogued about a hundred and eight metal plates as Albert Dürer’s contribution to the sum of original engraving. The Rev. C. H. Middleton-Wake, working in 1893—and profiting by the investigations, all of them more or less recent, of Passavant and G. W. Reid, of Thausing, Dürer’s biographer, and Mr Koehler, the Keeper of the Prints at Boston, Massachusetts—has catalogued one hundred and three. The number—not so considerable as Schöngauer’s, by about a couple of score—does not, as first thought, seem enormous for one the greater portion of whose life was given to original engraving; but then, it must be remembered, Dürer’s life, though not exactly a short, was scarcely a long one. And, again, whatever may have been the processes he employed, and even if, as Mr Middleton-Wake supposes, etched work, as well as burin-work, helped him greatly along his way, the elaboration of his labour was never lessened; the order of completeness he strove for and attained had nothing in common with the completeness of the sketch. His German pertinacity and dogged joy in work for mere work’s sake, never permitted him to dismiss an endeavour until he had carried it to actual realisation. Each piece of his is not so much a page as a volume. The creations of his art have the lastingness and the finality of a consummate Literature, and of those three material things with which such literature has been compared—
“marbre, onyx, émail,”—
as the phrase goes, of one who wrought on phrases as Cellini on the golden vase, and Dürer on the little sheet of burnished copper.
Of the hundred and three prints which, in the Fitz-William Museum, Mr Middleton-Wake placed in what he believes to be their chronological order—many, of course, their author himself dated, but many afford room for the exercise of critical ingenuity and care—sixteen belong to the series known as “The Passion upon Copper,” which is distinguished by that title from the series of seven-and-thirty woodcuts known generally as “The Little Passion.” The “Passion upon Copper,” executed between the year 1507 and the year 1513, are pronounced “unequal in their execution,” “not comparing favourably with Dürer’s finer prints,” and “engraved for purposes of sale.” Now most of Dürer’s work was “engraved for purposes of sale”—that is, it was meant to be sold—but what the critic may be supposed to mean, in this case, is, that the designs were due to no inspiration; the execution, to no keen desire. Four much later pieces—including two St Christophers—are spoken of with similar disparagement. I am unable to perceive the justice of the reproach when it is applied to the Virgin with the Child in Swaddling Clothes—a print of which it is remarked that it, like certain others, is “without any particular charm or dignity; being taken quite casually from burgher-life, and only remarkable for the soft tone of the engraving.” No doubt the Virgin with the Child in Swaddling Clothes is inspired by the human life—and that was “burgher-life” necessarily—which Dürer beheld; and it is none the worse for that. It is not one of the very finest of the Virgins, but it is simple, natural, healthy, and it is characteristic, as I seem to see, not only in its technique, but in its conception. What more fascinating than the little bit of background, lavished there, so small and yet so telling?—a little stretch of shore, with a town placed on it, and great calm water: a reminiscence, it may be, of Italy—a décor from Venice—a bit of distance too recalling the distance in the Melancholia itself. But we must pass on, to consider briefly two or three points in Dürer’s work: points which we shall the better illustrate by reference to the greater masterpieces.
The year 1497 was reached before the master of Nuremberg affixed a date to any one of his plates. That is the not quite satisfactory composition, curiously ugly in the particular realism it affects—and yet, in a measure, interesting—A Group of Four Naked Women. Thausing doubts, or does more than doubt, the originality of the design. Mr Middleton-Wake holds that in execution, at least, it shows distinct advance upon Dürer’s earlier work, and amongst earlier work he includes no less than three-and-twenty of the undated plates: putting the Ravisher first, with 1494 as its probable year, and putting last before the Group of Naked Women, a piece which he maintains to be the finest of the earlier prints, the Virgin and Child with the Monkey.
Looking along the whole line of Dürer prints, in what he deems to be their proper sequence, Mr Middleton-Wake observes, as all observe indeed, wonderful variations—differences in execution so marked that at first one might hesitate to assign to the same master, pieces wrought so differently. He argues fully how their dissimilarity is due “either to a marked progression in their handling” or to an alteration in their actual method. For quick perception of such partly voluntary change, the student is referred to an examination of the Coat of Arms with a Skull, the Coat of Arms with the Cock, the Adam and Eve, the St Jerome, and the Melancholia. The year 1503 was probably the date of the two Coats of Arms; the great print of the Adam and Eve carries its date of “1504”; the St Jerome is of 1512; the Melancholia of 1514. The practical point established for the collector by such differences as are here visible, and which a study of these particular examples by no means exhausts, is that he must most carefully avoid the not unnatural error of judging an impression of a Dürer print by its attainment or its non-attainment of the standard established by some other Dürer print he knows familiarly already. The aims technically were so very different, he must know each print to say with any certainty—save in a few most obvious cases—whether a given impression, that seems good, is, or is not, desirable. The “silver-grey tone,” for example, so charming in one print, may be unattainable in, or unsuitable to, another.
Upon the question of the meaning of certain prints of Dürer, any amount of ingenious, interesting conjecture has been expended in the Past. One of Mr Stopford Brooke’s sermons—I heard it preached, now many years ago, in York Street—is a delightful essay on the Melancholia. For suggestions as to the allegorical meaning of The Knight of Death, it may be enough to refer the reader to Thausing (vol. ii. page 225) and to Mrs Heaton’s Life of Dürer (page 168). The Jealousy, Dürer speaks of, in his Netherlands Diary, as a “Hercules.” The Knight and the Lady, Thausing says, is one of those Dance of Death pictures so common in the Middle Age. Of the Great Fortune, Thausing holds that its enigmatical design, with the landscape below, has direct reference to the Swiss War of 1499, and this we may agree with; but, explaining, it may be, too far, he writes in detail, “The winged Goddess of Justice and Retribution stands, smiling, on a globe; carrying in one hand a bridle and a curb for the too presumptuous fortunate ones; in the other, a goblet for unappreciated worth.” Mr Middleton-Wake, wisely less philosophical, urges a simpler meaning. The city of Nuremberg, he reminds us, had, in compliance with Maximilian’s demand, furnished four hundred foot soldiers and sixty horse, for the campaign in Switzerland, and at the head of these troops was Pirkheimer, to whom on his return his fellow-citizens offered a golden cup. “We assume,” says Mr Middleton-Wake, “that it is this cup which Dürer places in the hand of the Goddess.” With the Swiss War are also associated the Coat of Arms with the Cock and the even rarer (certainly not finer) Coat of Arms with a Skull. The one may symbolise the anticipated success, the other the failure, of the campaign into Switzerland.
