In the summer of 1520 the desire of Dürer to secure from Maximilian’s successors a continuance of the patronage and privileges granted during his lifetime, together with an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg, gave occasion to the master’s fourth and last journey from home. Together with his wife and her maid he set out in July for the Netherlands in order to be present at the coronation of the young emperor Charles V., and if possible to conciliate the good graces of the all-powerful regent Margaret. In the latter part of his aim Dürer was but partially successful. His diary of his travels enables us to follow his movements almost day by day. He journeyed by the Rhine, Cologne, and thence by road to Antwerp, where he was handsomely received, and lived in whatever society was most distinguished, including that of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Besides his written notes, interesting traces of his travels exist in the shape of the scattered leaves of a sketch-book filled with delicate drawings in silver-point, chiefly views of places and studies of portrait and costume. Several of his finest portrait-drawings in chalk or charcoal, including those of his brother artists Lucas Van Leyden and Bernard Van Orley, as well as one of two fine portrait paintings of men, belong to the period of this journey. So does a magnificent drawing of a head of a nonagenarian with a flowing beard who sat to him at Antwerp, together with a picture from the same head in the character of St Jerome; the drawing is now at Vienna, the picture at Lisbon. Dürer’s interest and curiosity, both artistic and personal, were evidently stimulated by his travels in the highest degree. Besides going to Aachen for the coronation, he made excursions down the Rhine from Cologne to Nijmwegen, and back overland by ’s Hertogenbosch; to Brussels; to Bruges and Ghent; and to Zealand with the object of seeing a natural curiosity, a whale reported ashore. The vivid account of this last expedition given in his diary contrasts with the usual dry entries of interviews and disbursements. A still more striking contrast is the passionate outburst of sympathy and indignation with which, in the same diary, he comments on the supposed kidnapping of Luther by foul play on his return from the diet of Worms. Without being one of those who in his city took an avowed part against the old ecclesiastical system, and probably without seeing clearly whither the religious ferment of the time was tending—without, that is, being properly speaking a Reformer—Dürer in his art and his thoughts was the incarnation of those qualities of the German character and conscience which resulted in the Reformation; and, personally, with the fathers of the Reformation he lived in the warmest sympathy.
On the 12th of July 1521 Dürer reached home again. Drawings of this and the immediately following years prove that on his return his mind was full of schemes for religious pictures. For a great group of the Madonna surrounded with saints there are extant two varying sketches of the whole composition and a number of finished studies for individual heads and figures. Less abundant, but still sufficient to prove the artist’s intention, are the preliminary studies to a picture of the Crucifixion. There exist also fine drawings for a “Lamentation over the body of Christ,” an “Adoration of the Kings,” and a “March to Calvary”; of the last-named composition, besides the beautiful and elaborate pen-and-ink drawing at Florence, three still more highly-wrought versions in green monochrome exist; whether any of them are certainly by the artist’s own hand is matter of debate. But no religious paintings on the grand scale, corresponding to these drawings of 1521-1524, were ever carried out; perhaps partly because of the declining state of the artist’s health, but more because of the degree to which he allowed his time and thoughts to be absorbed in the preparation of his theoretical works on geometry and perspective, proportion and fortification. Like Leonardo, but with much less than Leonardo’s genius for scientific speculation and divination, Dürer was a confirmed reasoner and theorist on the laws of nature and natural appearances. He himself attached great importance to his studies in this kind; his learned friends expected him to give their results to the world; which accordingly, though having little natural gift or felicity in verbal expression, he laboured strenuously to do. The consequence was that in the last and ripest years of his life he produced as an artist comparatively little. In painting there is the famous portrait of Hieronymus Holtzschuher at Berlin, in which the personality and general aspect of the sitter assert themselves with surprising power. This and the Antwerp head of Jerome are perhaps the most striking examples of Dürer’s power of forcing into subordination to a general impression such a multiplicity of insistent detail as would have smothered any weaker conception than his. No other hand could have ventured to render the hair and beard of a sitter, as it was the habit of this inveterate linearist to do, not by indication of masses, but by means of an infinity of single lines swept, with a miraculous certainty and fineness of touch, in the richest and most intricate of decorative curves. To the same period belong a pleasing but somewhat weak “Madonna and Child” at Florence; and finally, still in the same year 1526, the two famous panels at Munich embodying the only one of the great religious conceptions of the master’s later years which he lived to finish. These are the two pairs of saints, St John with St Peter in front and St Paul with St Mark in the background. The John and Paul are conceived and executed really in the great style, with a commanding nobility and force alike in the character of the heads, the attitudes, and the sweep of draperies; they represent the highest achievement of early German art in painting. In copper-engraving Dürer’s work during the same years was confined entirely to portraits, those of the cardinal-elector of Mainz (“The Great Cardinal”), Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, Willibald Pirkheimer, Melanchthon and Erasmus. To the tale of his woodcuts, besides a few illustrations to his book on measurements (that is, geometry and perspective), and on fortification, he only added one Holy Family and one portrait, that of his friend Eoban Hesse. Of his theoretical books, he only succeeded in getting two finished and produced during his lifetime, that on geometry and perspective or measurement, to use his own title—which was published at Nuremberg in 1525, and that on fortification, published in 1527; the work on human proportions was brought out shortly after his death in 1528. His labours, whether artistic or theoretic, had for some time been carried on in the face of failing health. In the canals of the Low Countries he had caught a fever, of which he never shook off the effects. We have the evidence of this in his own written words, as well as in a sketch which he drew to indicate the seat of his suffering to some physician with whom he was in correspondence, and again in the record of his physical aspect which is preserved by a portrait engraved on wood just after his death, from a drawing made no doubt not long before in this portrait we see his shoulders already bent, the features somewhat gaunt, the old pride of the abundant locks shorn away. The end came on the night of the 6th of April 1528, so suddenly that there was no time to call his dearest friends to his bedside. He was buried in a vault which belonged to his wife’s family, but was afterwards disturbed, in the cemetery of St John at Nuremberg. An appropriate Requiescat is contained in the words of Luther, in a letter written to their common friend Eoban Hesse:—“As for Dürer, assuredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the best of men, yet you may well hold him happy that he has made so good an end, and that Christ has taken him from the midst of this time of trouble and from greater troubles in store, lest he, that deserved to behold nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold the worst. Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers: Amen.”
The principal extant paintings of Dürer, with the places where they are to be found, have been mentioned above. Of his drawings, which for students are the most vitally interesting part of his works, the richest collections are in the Albertina at Vienna, the Berlin Museum and the British Museum. The Louvre also possesses some good examples, and many others are dispersed in various public collections, as in the Musée Bonnat at Bayonne, at Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Dresden, Basel, Milan, Florence and Oxford, as well as in private hands all over Europe.
The principal editions of Dürer’s theoretical writings are these:—
Geometry and Perspective.—Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt, in Linien, Ebnen und ganzen Corporen (Nuremberg, 1525, 1533, 1538). A Latin translation of the same, with a long title (Paris, Weichel, 1532) and another ed. in 1535. Again in Latin, with the title Institutionum geometricarum libri quatuor (Arnheim, 1605).
Fortification.—Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloss und Flecken (Nuremberg, 1527), and other editions in 1530, 1538 and 1603 (Arnheim). A Latin translation, with the title De urbibus, arcibus, castellisque muniendis ac condendis (Paris, Weichel, 1535). See the article [Fortification].
Human Proportion.—Hierinnen sind begriffen vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Nuremberg, 1582, and Arnheim, 1603). Latin translation: De symetria partium in rectis formis humanorum corporum libri in latinum conversi, de varietate figurarum, &c. libri ii. (Nuremberg, 1528, 1532 and 1534); (Paris, 1535, 1537, 1557). French translation (Paris, 1557, Arnheim, 1613, 1614). Italian translation (Venice, 1591, 1594); Portuguese translation (1599); Dutch translation (Arnheim, 1622, 1662).
The private literary remains of Dürer, his diary, letters, &c., were first published, partially in Von Murr’s Journal zur Kunstgeschichte (Nuremberg, 1785-1787); afterwards in Campe’s Reliquien von A. Dürer (Nuremberg, 1827); again edited by Thausing, in the Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik (Vienna, 1872), but most completely in Lange and Fuhse’s Dürers schriftlicher Nachlass (Halle, 1893); W.M. Conway’s Literary Remains of A. Dürer (London, 1889) contains extensive transcripts from the MSS. in the British Museum.
The principal remaining literature of the subject will be found in the following books and treatises—Johann Neudörfer, Schreib- und Rechenmeister zu Nürnberg, Nachrichten über Künstlern und Werkleuten daselbst (Nuremberg, 1547); republished in the Vienna Quellenschrift (1875); C. Scheurl, Vita Antonii Kressen (1515, reprinted in the collection of Pirkheimer’s works, Frankfort 1610); Wimpheling, Epitome rerum Germanicarum, ch. 68 (Strassburg, 1565); Joachim von Sandrart, Deutsche Academie (Nuremberg, 1675); Doppelmayr, Historische Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematicis und Künstlern (Nuremberg, 1730); C.G. von Murr, Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, as above; Adam Bartsch, Le Peintre-Graveur, vol. vii. (Vienna, 1808); J.P. Passavant, Le Peintre-Graveur, vol. iii. (Leipzig, 1842); J.F. Roth, Leben Albrecht Dürers (Leipzig, 1791); Heller, Das Leben und die Werke Albrecht Dürers, vol. ii. (Bamberg, 1827-1831); B. Hausmann, Dürers Kupferstiche, Radirungen, Holzschnitte und Zeichnungen (Hanover, 1861); R. von Rettberg, Dürers Kupferstiche und Holzschnitte (Munich, 1876); M. Thausing, Dürer, Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Kunst (Leipzig, 1876, 2nd ed., 1884), English translation (from the 1st ed. by F.A. Eaton, London, 1882); W. Schmidt in Dohme’s Kunst und Künstler des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Leipzig, 1877); Œuvre de Albert Dürer reproduit et publié par Amand-Durand, texte par Georges Duplessis (Paris, 1877); C. Ephrussi, A. Dürer et ses dessins (Paris, 1882); F. Lippmann, Zeichnungen von A. Dürer in Nachbildungen (5 vols. Berlin, 1883-1905); A. Springer, Albrecht Dürer (Berlin, 1892); D. Burckhardt, Dürers Aufenthalt in Basel, 1492-1494 (Munich, 1892); G. von Terey, A Dürers venezianischer Aufenthalt, 1494-1495 (Strassburg, 1892); S.R. Koehler, A Chronological Catalogue of the Engravings, Dry Points and Etchings of A. Dürer (New York, 1894); L. Cust, A. Dürer, a Study of his Life and Works (London, 1897); Dürer Society’s Publications (10 vols., 1898-1907), edited by C. Dodgson and S.M. Peartree; H. Knackfuss, Dürer (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 6th ed., 1899), English translation, 1900; B. Haendcke, Die Chronologie der Landschaften A. Dürers (Strassburg, 1899); M. Zucker, Albrecht Dürer (Halle, 1899-1900); L. Justi, Konstruierte Figuren und Köpfe unter den Werken Albrecht Dürers (Leipzig, 1902); A. Pelzer, A. Dürer und Friedrich II. von der Pfalz (Strassburg, 1905); H. Wölfflin, Die Kunst A. Dürers (Munich, 1905); W. Weisbach, Der junge Dürer (Leipzig, 1906); V. Scherer, A. Dürer (Klassiker der Kunst, iv.), (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1906).
Apart from books, a large and important amount of the literature on Dürer is contained in articles scattered through the leading art periodicals of Germany, such as the Jahrbücher of the Berlin and Vienna museums, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, &c. A comprehensive survey of this literature is afforded by Prof. H.W. Singer’s Versuch einer Dürer-Bibliographie (Strassburg, 1903); articles published more recently will be found completely enumerated in A. Jellinek’s Internationale Bibliographie der Kunstwissenschaft (Berlin).