Albert Dürer

by T. Sturge Moore

V

Thausing shrewdly remarks, "This love of fame and naïve delight in the glorification of his own person are further proofs that the Emperor Max was the true child of his age. No one was so akin to him in this respect as the painter of his choice, Albert Dürer." This last is a reference to those strutting, finely-dressed portraits of the artist which stand beside the entablatures bearing his name, that of his birthplace, the date, &c., in four out of the five most elaborate pictures which Dürer painted. But I would like to suggest that probably this apparent resemblance to his royal patron is not thus altogether well accounted for. May there not have been something of Homer's invocation of his Muse, or of that sincerity which makes Dante play such a large part in the "Divine Comedy"?--something resembling the ninth verse of the Apocalypse: "I John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation ... was in the isle that is called Patmos ... and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet, saying...." Those little strutting portraits of himself sprung, perhaps, out of this relation to those about him of the man by native gift very superior, who is not made contemptuous or inclined to emphasise his isolation, but who is ever ready to say, "It is I, be not afraid." The man who painted and conceived this is the man you know, whom you have admired because he carried his fine clothes so well in your streets. Here I am even in the midst of this massacre of saints, I have conceived it all and taken a whole year to elaborate it; and since you see me looking so cool and well-dressed in the midst of it, you need not be offended or overwhelmed. Such is ever the naïvety of great souls among those whose culture is primitive. It is like the boasted bravery of the eldest among little children, wholly an act of kindness and consideration, not a selfish vaunt. That they should be admired and trusted is for them a foregone conclusion; and when they call on that admiration and trust, they do it merely for the sake of those whom they would encourage and console, for whose sakes they will even hide whatever in them is really unworthy of such admiration and such trust.

We do not easily realise the corporate character of life in those days. Very much that seems to us quaint and absurd drew proper significance from the practical solidarity that then obtained; what appears to us a strange vanity or parade may have appeared to them respect for the guild, the town, the country to which they belonged. Dürer signed "Noricus,"--of Nuremberg;--and preferred its little lucrative citizenship to those more remunerative offered by Venice and Antwerp. "Let all the world behold how fine the artist of Nuremberg is." Just as he says, "God gave me diligence," so it seems natural to him to attribute a large half of his fame and glory to his native town. In many respects the great man of those days felt less individual than an ordinary man does now; for classes did not so merge one into the other, and their character was more distinct and authoritative. The little portrait of himself added to those wonderful tours-de-force made them something that belonged to Nuremberg and to Germans. Even so it would be with some treasure cup, all gold and jewels, belonging to a village schoolmaster, which none of his neighbours dared look at save in his presence; for he was the son of a great baron whom his elder brothers robbed of everything except this, and his presence among them alone made them able to feel that it really belonged to their village, was theirs in a fashion. These suggestions will not, I think, appear fantastic to those who ponder on the apparently vainglorious address of much of Dürer's work, and keep in mind such a passage from his writings as this:

"I would gladly give everything I know to the light, for the good of cunning students who prize such art more highly than silver and gold. I further admonish all who have any knowledge in these matters that they write it down. Do it truly and plainly, not toilsomely and at great length, for the sake of those who seek and are glad to learn, to the great honour of God and your own praise. If I then set something burning, and ye all add to it skilful furthering, a blaze may in time arise therefrom which shall shine throughout the whole world."[^[22]]

But still, even if such considerations may bring many to accept my explanation of this contrast, I do not want to over-insist on it. I think that wherever men have been superior in character, as well as in gift or rank, to those about them, something of this spirit of the good eldest child in a family is bound to be manifested. But just as such a child may be veritably boastful and vain at other times,--however purely now and then, in crises of apparent difficulty or danger, its vaunt and strut may spring from real kindness and a considerate wish to inspire courage in the younger and weaker;--so doubtless there was a haughtiness, sometimes a fault, in Dürer as in Milton.

VI

But we have been led a long way from Kaiser Max and his portable monument. The reader will re-picture how the court arrived at Nuremberg like a troop of actors, whose performance was really their life, and was taken quite seriously and admired heartily by the good and solid burghers. This old comedy, often farce, entitled "The Importance of Authority," is no longer played with such a telling make-up, or with such showy properties as formerly, but is still as popular as ever; as we Londoners know, since the last few years have given us perhaps an over-dose of processions, illuminations, &c. &c. In this case the chief actors in the show piece were men of mark of an exceptionally entertaining character; with many of them Dürer and Pirkheimer were soon on the best of terms.

Foremost, Johann Stabius, the companion of the Emperor for sixteen years without intermission in war and in peace, who was associated with Dürer to provide the written accompaniment for the monument; a literary jack-of-all-trades of ready wit and lively presence. A contemporary records: "The emperor took constant pleasure in the strange things which Stabius devised, and esteemed him so highly that he instituted a new chair of Astronomy and Mathematics for him at Vienna," in the Collegium Poetarum et Mathematicorum founded in the year 1501, under the presidency of Conrad Celtes.

In all probability there would have been besides the learned protonotary of the supreme court, Ulrich Varenbuler, often mentioned as a friend in the letters of Erasmus and Pirkheimer, and the subject of the largest of Dürer's portrait woodcuts, which shows him to us some ten years later, still a handsome trenchant personality, with a liking for fine clothes, and the self-reliant expression of a man who is conscious that the thought he takes for the morrow is not likely to be in vain.

It may be that Dürer then met for the first time too the Imperial architect, Johannes Tscherte, for whom he afterwards drew two armillary spheres, to take the place of those on which he had cast ridicule; for Pirkheimer wrote to Tscherte: "I wish you could have heard how Albert Dürer spoke to me about your plate, in which there is not one good stroke, and laughed at me. What honour it will do us when it makes its appearance in Italy, and the clever painters there see it!" To which Tscherte replied: "Albert Dürer knows me well, he is also well aware that I love art, though I am no expert at it; let him if he likes despise my plate, I never pretended it was a work of art." And in a later letter he speaks "of the armillary spheres drawn by our common friend Albert Dürer." He was one of those who helped Dürer in his mathematical and geometrical studies; and he, like Pirkheimer, dedicated books to him. Although the mathematics of those times are hardly considered seriously nowadays, they then ranked with verse-making as a polite accomplishment, and had all the charm of novelty. Dürer, no doubt, had some gift that way, as he seems to have made a hobby of them during many years. Besides those who came in the Imperial troop, Dürer had many opportunities of meeting men of this kind, for such were constantly passing through Nuremberg. Dürer has left us what are evidently portraits of some whose names are lost: of others we have both name and likeness, among them the English ambassador, Lord Morley.