Part 6

In his later years he designed two other works which rank among the chief monuments of wood-engraving; they were the Car and Gate of Triumph, executed for the Emperor Maximilian, who was then the great patron of the art, and employed it to perpetuate the glory of his reign and realm. The Emperor, although the Italians made a jest of him, was one of the most interesting characters in German history. He illustrates in practical life, as Dürer in artistic and intellectual life, the age that was passing away, and he foreshadows more than Dürer the age that was coming on. He was romantic by nature, a lover of the chivalric and picturesque elements of mediæval life; he was skilful in all the manly sports which belonged to a princely education--a daring hunter, and brave in the lists of the tourney; in affairs of more moment he had always some great adventure in hand, the humbling of France, or the destruction of Venice, or the protection of Luther; at home he was devoted to reform, to internal improvements, to establishing permanently the orderly methods of civilization, to the spread of commerce, and to increasing the safety and facility of communication. He left his empire more civilized than he found it; and if he was unsuccessful in war, he was, in the epigram of the time, fortunate in love, and won by marriage what the sword could not conquer, so that he prepared by the craft of his diplomacy that union of the vast possessions of the House of Austria which made his grandson, Charles V., almost the master of Europe. He was a lover of art and books; and, being puffed up with imperial vanity, he employed the engravers and printers to record his career and picture his magnificence. The great works which by his order were prepared for this purpose were upon a scale unthought of before that time, and never attempted in later days. The Triumphal Car, which he employed Dürer to design, was a richly decorated chariot drawn by six pair of horses; the Emperor is seated in it under a canopy amid female figures, representing Justice, Truth, and other virtues, who offer him triumphal wreaths; the driver symbolizes Reason, and guides the horses by the reins of Nobility and Power; the wheels are inscribed with the words Magnificentia and Dignitas, and the horses are attended by allegoric figures of swiftness, foresight, prudence, boldness, and similar virtues. The whole design was seven feet four inches in length, and about eighteen inches high. The Gate of Triumph was similarly allegoric in conception; it was an arch with three entrances, the central one being the gate of Honor and Power, and those upon the right and left the gates of Nobility and Fame; the body of the arch was ornamented with portraits of the Roman Emperors from the time of Cæsar, shields of arms which indicated the Emperor’s descent and alliances, portraits of his relatives and friends, and representations of his famous exploits. The size of the cut, which was made up of ninety-two separate pieces, was about ten and a half feet by nine and a half feet. In both of these works Dürer was limited by the directions which were given him, and neither of them are equal to his original creations.

The chief of the great works of Maximilian was the Triumphal Procession,[39] which was designed by Hans Burgkmaier, of Augsburg (1473-1531), whose secular and picturesque genius found its most congenial occupation in inventing the figures of this splendid train of nobles, warriors, and commons, on horse, foot, and in chariots, winding along in symbolical representation of the Emperor’s victories and conquests, and in magnificent display of the wealth, power, and resources of all the imperial dominions. The herald of the Triumph (Fig. 44), mounted upon a winged griffin, leads the march; behind him go two led horses supporting a tablet (Fig. 45), on which is written: “This Triumph has been made for the praise and everlasting memory of the noble pleasures and glorious victories of the most serene and illustrious prince and lord, Maximilian, Roman Emperor elect, and Head of Christendom, King and Heir of Seven Christian Kingdoms, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy and of other grand principalities and provinces of Europe;” his fifer Anthony, with his attendants, his falconers, led by Teuschel, their hawks pursuing prey, his hunters of the chamois, the stag, the boar, and the bear, habited for the chase, follow on; behind them richly caparisoned animals, elk, buffalo, and camels, draw finely decorated chariots, in which are seated the Emperor’s favorite musicians (Fig. 46), playing diverse instruments; the jesters (among them that famous Conrad von der Rosen whom Heine tenderly remembered), the fools, the maskers, the fencers, knights of the tourney and the joust, armed foot-soldiers of every service, continue the procession, which lengthens out with cuirassed horsemen (Fig. 47) carrying banners emblazoned with the arms of the Austrian provinces in which the Emperor had waged war, and other horsemen (Fig. 48) in the garb of peace, with standards of the faithful provinces, lasquenets whose pennants are inscribed with the names of the great battles which the Emperor had fought, trophy-cars filled with the armorial shields of the conquered peoples, representations of the Emperor’s marriage and coronation, of the German Empire and the great wars--Flanders, Burgundy, Hungary, Guelders, Naples, Milan, Venice, an unending list--the symbols of military power, artillery, treasure, the statues of the great rulers who were allied by blood to Maximilian or had ruled his dominions before him, prisoners of war in chains, the Imperial Standard, the Sword of the Empire, the counts, lords, and knights who owned the Emperor’s sovereignty--a splendid display of the pomp and pride of mediæval life. Maximilian himself is the central thought of the whole; he is never lost sight of in any smaller figure; his servants are there, as their devices relate, because they served him; his provinces, because he ruled them; his victories, because he won them; his ancestors, because they were of his line. His personality groups the variety of the procession round itself alone; but the real interest of the work does not lie in him or his praise, but in the revelation there made of the secular side of the Middle Ages, the outward aspect of life, the ideal of worldly power and splendor, the spirit of pleasure and festival, shown forth in this marvellously varied march of laurelled horses and horsemen whose trappings and armor have the beauty and glitter of peaceful parade. There is nowhere else a work which so presents at once the feudal spirit and feudal delights in such exuberance of picturesque and truthful display.

The designs for this work were first painted upon parchment, and were afterward reproduced by engraving in wood; but the reproduction varied from the originals in important particulars. The series was far from completion at the time of Maximilian’s death, and was left unfinished; it was never published until 1796, when the first edition appeared at Vienna, whither the lost wood-blocks had found their way in 1779. In its present shape the series consists of one hundred and thirty-five large cuts, extending for a linear distance of over one hundred and seventy-five feet; all but sixteen of these are reproductions of the designs on vellum, which numbered two hundred and eighteen in all, and these sixteen are so different in style from the others as to suggest a doubt whether they belong to the Triumph or to some other unknown work. Hans Burgkmaier is believed to be the designer of all except the few that are ascribed to Dürer; but, owing to their being engraved by different hands, they vary considerably in merit.

Maximilian also ordered two curious books to be prepared and adorned with woodcuts in his own honor, a prose work entitled The Wise King, and a poem entitled The Adventures of Sir Tewrdannckh. In these volumes the example of his own life is offered for the instruction of princes, and the history of his deeds, amours, courtship, perils, and temptations is written, once for the edification, but now for the amusement, of the world. The woodcuts in The Adventures of Sir Tewrdannckh are one hundred and eighteen in number, and are principally, if not entirely, the work of Hans Schäuffelin (1490?-1540); they show how Sir Tewrdannckh, attended by his squire, started out upon his travels, and what moving dangers he encountered in his hunting, voyaging, tilting, and fighting, under the guidance and instigation of his three great enemies, Envy, Daring, and Curiosity, who at last, when he is happily at the end of his troubles, are represented as meeting their own fate by the gallows, the block, and the moat. The engravings are marked by spirit, and due attention is given to landscape; but they are not infrequently too near caricature to be pleasing, and cannot pretend to rank beside the other works of Maximilian. This volume was printed during the Emperor’s lifetime, and was the only one of his works of which he saw the completion. The Wise King was illustrated by two hundred and thirty-seven cuts, of which several bear Burgkmaier’s mark, one the mark of Schäuffelin and one that of Hans Springinklee (1470?-1540). They picture the journey of the Emperor’s father to Rome, the youth and education of the young prince, his gradual acquirement of the liberal arts--kingcraft, the black-art, medicine, the languages, painting, architecture, music, cookery, dancing, shooting, falconry, angling, fencing, tilting, gunnery, the art of fortification, and the like; and they represent, in conclusion, his political career by means of obscure allegory. They are similar to the illustrations in Sir Tewrdannckh in general character, and, like them, are inferior to the other works of Maximilian. In the composition of this volume Maximilian is supposed to have had a considerable share; it was not printed entire until 1775.

These five great works, apart from their value as artistic productions and their interest as historic records, have a farther importance because of their influence upon the art, both in the way of encouragement and of instruction. Although there has been much dispute about the matter, it must now be acknowledged that the artists themselves did not ordinarily engrave their designs, but left the actual cutting of the block to the professional workmen; at most they only occasionally corrected the lines after the engraver had cut them. The works of Maximilian employed a number of these engravers, who practised the art only as a craft; the experience these workmen gained in such labor as they were now called upon to do, under the superintendence of artists like Dürer and Burgkmaier, who knew what engraving ought to be, and who held up a high standard of excellence, was most valuable to them, and made itself felt in a general improvement of the technical part of the art everywhere. The standard of the engraver’s craft was permanently raised. The engravers’ names now became known; and sometimes the engraver received hardly less admiration for his skill in technique than the artist for his power of design.

Other distinguished artists united with Dürer and the designers of Maximilian’s works in making this period of wood-engraving the most illustrious in the German practice of the art. Lukas van Leyden (1494-1533), whose youthful works in copperplate were wonderful, left some woodcuts in Dürer’s bold, broad manner, which illustrate the attempt of German art to acquire classical taste, and show so much the more clearly the incapacity of the Germans in the perception of beauty. The Cranachs, father (1472-1553) and son (1515-1586), who are interesting because of the share they had in the Reformation, produced some very striking works, such as the charming scene of the Repose in Egypt, and were the first to practise chiaro-scuro engraving in the North. Hans Baldung (1470-1552?), although his designs are sometimes characterized by exaggeration and too great violence of action, ranks with the best of the secondary artists of the time; and Hans Springinklee, who has been already mentioned, reached a high degree of excellence in his illustrations to the Hortulus Animæ, which are still valued.

The works of these men, however, were only the most important and the best of a vast number of woodcuts which, during the first half of the sixteenth century, appeared in Germany during this period of the greatest popularity of the art. Under the personal influence of Dürer, or under the influence of the numerous and widely-spread prints by himself and his associates, many other artists of merit acquired skill in engraving, both on metal and in wood, and employed it upon a great variety of subjects. The devotion of mediæval art wholly to church decoration and to the representation of religious scenes had passed away in all quarters of the world; in Italy the artists had come to treat the subjects of pagan imagination, the beings and scenes of classical mythology; in Germany the people had homelier tasks, and religious art there yielded to the interest which men felt in the incidents and objects of common life; in both countries wealth took the place of religion as the patron of art; and, although art still dealt with the story of the Scriptures and the martyrs, because these filled so important a place in the imagination of the people, still it had become secularized. This change was naturally shown in the arts of engraving more than in painting, because engraving in copper and on wood had a far greater sphere of influence, and came into more intimate relations with the popular life, and because the illustration of books offered a greater variety of subject. In German engraving, from this time, the actual life of the town and the peasantry was represented almost as often as the history of the Saviour and the saints; the village festival, the procession of the wedding-guests, the fêtes of the town, the employments and costumes of the citizens, recur with the same frequency as the passion of the Lord and the Old Testament stories; the joy and sorrow of ordinary life, the objects of ordinary observation and thought, the humorous, the humble, and the satirical, sometimes strangely mingled with ill-understood mythology and badly-caricatured classicism, are the constant theme of the engravers.

Chief among the successors of Dürer who shared in this vast production were the group of artists known as the Little Masters, although the name is one of ill-defined and incomplete application; they were so called because they chiefly engraved small designs; but they also engraved large designs, and their number, which is usually limited to seven, excludes some whose works are on the same small scale. The first of them was Albrecht Altdorfer (1488-1538), said to have been the pupil of Dürer and the inventor of engraving in this manner; in his day he was more celebrated as an architect and painter than as an engraver, but his fame now rests on his works on copper and in wood. The best known of his sixty-five woodcuts is the series of forty designs, scarcely three inches by two in size, entitled the Fall and Redemption of Man, in depicting which he had the Smaller Passion of Dürer to guide him. In these he attempted to obtain effects by the use of fine and close lines, such as were employed in copperplate-engraving; but, although his success was certainly remarkable, considering the rude mechanical processes of the time, yet his method clearly produced results of inferior artistic value in comparison with the works in the bold, broad manner of Dürer. All of his woodcuts, excepting four, are representations of religious subjects; they are marked, like his other works, by an attention to landscape, that truly modern object of art, of which he probably learned the value from Dürer, who was the first to treat landscape with real appreciation. In Hans Sebald Behaim (1500-1550?) the spirit of the age is revealed with great clearness and variety (Fig. 49); both his life and his art were inspired by it. In his early manhood he was banished from Nuremberg for denying the doctrines of transubstantiation and the efficacy of baptism, and for entertaining some vague socialistic and communistic opinions; but it is not clear to what extent he held them, if he held them at all. He seems to have been one of the most advanced of the religious Reformers, and he employed his art in their service, as, for example, in a book entitled The Papacy, which he illustrated with a series of seventy-four figures of the different orders of monks in their peculiar costumes, beneath each of which satirical lines were written. He is best known by his eighty-one Bible-cuts, which were the most popular, perhaps, of the many series published in that century, not excepting the impressive Bible figures of Holbein; they passed through many editions, and were widely copied. The first English Bible was illustrated by them. Besides these two series, and one other in illustration of the Apocalypse, he designed many separate prints, both in the small manner of the Little Masters and in imitation of the large works of Maximilian, such as his Military Fête, in honor of Charles V., his Fountain of Youth, and the prints of the Marauding Soldiers, which measured four or five feet in length. His representations of peasant life are peculiarly attractive, because of the force of realism displayed in them, whether he depicted the marriage festival, or mere jollity or drunken brawl. In the breadth of his interests, in the variety of his subjects, and in his sympathy with the special movements of his age, he was as an engraver more characteristic of the civilization in which he lived than any other of the Little Masters who gave their attention to wood-engraving. Of the rest of this group none, excepting Hans Brosamer (1506-1552), left works in wood-engraving of any consequence; he designed in a free and bold manner, and his engravings are to be found in books of the third quarter of the century.

Other artists of this period devoted their attention to wood-engraving; but as they did not mark any new progress in the art, or reflect any aspect of German civilization which has not already been illustrated, they need not be treated in any detail. Virgil Solis (1514-1562), a very productive designer, who was employed by the Nuremberg printers to illustrate the books by which they attempted to rival the productions of the Lyonese press; Jobst Amman (1539-1591), whose excellent engravings of costumes and trades are well known; Erhard Schön (d. 1550), Melchior Lorch (1527-1586), whose works were of little merit; and Tobias Stimmer (1539-1582), a popular designer for book illustration, are all who deserve mention. Their engravings are inferior to the productions of previous artists, and after their death the art in Germany fell into speedy and irretrievable decay.

The work of the wood-engravers who were imbued with the German spirit exhibits the same excellences and defects as other German work in art. It is characterized by vigor principally, and in its higher range it has great value, because of the imaginative and reflective spirit by which it was animated; in its lower range, as a portrayal of life and manners, it derives from its realism an extraordinary interest. Its great deficiency is its lack of beauty, and is due to the inborn feebleness of the sense of beauty in the German race; but, notwithstanding this deformity, German wood-engraving was invaluably useful in its day in the cities where it became so popular, because it was so widely and variously practised, and entered into the life of the people in so many ways with an effective influence of which it is difficult to form an adequate conception. It facilitated the spread of literature and helped on the progress of the Reformation to a degree which is little recognized; it disseminated ideas and standards of art, and made them common property; and, finally, it prepared the way for the great master who was to embody in wood-engraving the highest excellence of art and thought.

VI.

HANS HOLBEIN.

Germany produced one artist who freed himself from the limitations of taste and interest which the place of his birth imposed upon him, and took rank with the great masters who seem to belong rather to the race than to their native country. Hans Holbein was neither German nor Italian, neither classical nor mediæval. The ideal of his art was not determined by the culture of any single school, at home or abroad; far less was it a jarring compromise between the aims and methods of different schools; it grew out of a faithful study of all, and in it were rationally blended the elements which were right in each. In style, theme, and spirit he advanced so far beyond his contemporaries that he became the first modern artist--the first to clear his vision from the deceptions of religious enthusiasm, and to subdue in himself the lawlessness of the romantic spirit; the first to perceive that only the purely human interest gives lasting significance to any artistic work, and to depict humanity simply for its own sake; the first to express his meaning in a way which seems truthful and beautiful universally to all cultivated men. In this lies the peculiar and profound value of his works.