The vivid Oswolt Krel at Munich shows the peculiarity of Dürer's caligraphic touch better than perhaps any other of his portraits. The finish is not carried so far as in the Madrid portrait of himself, where even the texture of the gloves has been softened by touches of the thumb, and the absence of these extra refinements leaves it the most spontaneous and vigorously bold of all Dürer's paintings. The concentrated energy of the sitter's features demanded such a treatment; he seems to burn with the inconsiderate atheism of a Marlowe. Young, and less surprised than indignant to be alone awake in a sleepy and bigoted world, he seems convinced of a mission to chastise, even to scandalise his easy-going neighbours. Let us hope he met with better luck than the Marlowes, Shelleys, and Rimbauds, whose tragedies we have read; for one can but regret, as one meets his glance so much fiercer than need be, that he is not known to history.
[Illustration: Oil Portrait of a Lady seen against the Sea In the Berlin Gallery]
[Illustration: Oil portrait, dated 1506, at Hampton Court]
The fine portrait of Hans Tucher, 1499, in the Grand Ducal Museum at Weimar should, judging from a photograph alone, be mentioned here. It has obvious affinities with the Oswolt Krel, but the caligraphic method is again modified in harmony with the character of the sitter's features. The companion piece, representing Felicitas Tucherin, would seem at some period to have been restored to the insignificance and obscurity that belonged to the sitter before Dürer painted her.
IV
The portraits which Dürer painted at Venice, or soon after his return, betray the influence of other masterpieces on his own. Mr. Ricketts has pointed to that of Antonello da Messina in the portraits of young men at Vienna (1505) and at Hampton Court (1506). The former of these has an allegorical sketch of Avarice, painted on the back in a thick impasto, such as seems almost a presage of after developments of the Venetian school, and may possibly show the influence of some early experiment by Giorgione which Dürer wished to show that he could imitate if he liked. The latter represents a personage who appears on the left of the Feast of Rose Wreaths in exactly the same cap and with the same fastening to his jerkin, crossing his white shirt (see illustration opposite).
Not improbably Dürer may have painted separate portraits of nearly all the members of the German Guild at Venice who appear in the Rose Garlands. In any case much of his work during his stay there has disappeared. It was here that he painted that beautiful head of a woman (No. 557 G in the Berlin Gallery) with soft, almost Leonardesque shadows, seen against the luminous hazy sea and sky, which remains absolutely unique in method and effect among his works, and makes one ask oneself unanswerable questions as to what might not have been the result if he could but have brought himself to accept the offered citizenship and salary, and stop on at Venice. A Dürer, not only secluded from Luther and his troubling denunciations, but living to see Titian and Giorgione's early masterpieces, perhaps forming friendships with them, and later visiting Rome, standing in the Sistine Chapel, seated in the Stanze between the School of Athens and the Disputa! I at least cannot console myself for these missed opportunities, as so many of his critics and biographers have done, by saying that doubtless had he stayed he would have been spoiled like those second-class German and Dutch painters, for whom the siren art of Italy proved a baneful influence. One could almost weep to think of what has been probably lost to the world because Dürer could not bring himself to stay on at Venice. It was here he painted the tiny panel representing the head of a girl in gay apparel dated 1507 (in the Berlin Gallery), that makes one think, even more than do Holbein's Venus and Lais at Basle, of the triumphs that were reserved for Italians in the treatment of similar subjects.
After his return the influence of Venetian methods gradually waned, till we find in the masterly and refined portrait of Wolgemut (1516) (see illustration); something of a return to the caligraphic method so noticeable in the Oswolt Krel. About the same time Dürer recommenced painting in tempera in a manner resembling the early Dresden Madonna and the Hercules, as we see by the rather unpleasant heads of Apostles in the Uffizi and the tine one of an old man in a vermilion cap in the Louvre, &c. &c.
[Illustration: Bruckmann--"Albrecht Dürer took this likeness of his master, Michael Wolgemut, in the year 1516, and he was 82 years of age, and lived to the year 1519, and then departed on Saint Andrew's Day, very early before sunrise"--Oil-painting. Alt Pinakothek, Munich]
[Illustration: HANS IMHOF (?)--From the painting in the Royal Gallery at Madrid--(By permission of Messrs. Braun, Clément & Co., Dornach (Alsace), Paris and New York)]