Part 2
In judging, not enjoying, a work of art, one should first make sure that one understands the methods of the artist; one should next endeavour to discover his evident purpose or aim, or "motif," and forming one's judgment, ask: Has the artist succeeded in welding aim and result into one organic whole?
Neither the "motif" nor its form are in themselves of value, but the harmony of both--hence we may place Dürer's "Man of Sorrows" by the side of Michelangelo's "Moses," as of equal importance, of equal greatness. This "Man of Sorrows" we must praise as immortal Art, and the reason is evident; Dürer, who designed it during an illness, had himself suffered and knew sorrow--_felt_ what he visualised.
If we compare another woodcut, viz. the one from "Die heimliche Offenbarung Johannis," illustrating Revelations i. 12-17, we will have to draw a different conclusion. Let us listen to the passage Dürer set himself to illustrate:
12. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;
13. And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
14. His head and hairs white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes as a flame of fire;
15. And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
16. And he had in his right hand many stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
17. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.
Assuming that a passage such as this _can_ be illustrated, and that without the use of colour, is his a good illustration? Does it reproduce the spirit and meaning of St. John, or only the words? Look at the two-edged sword glued to the mouth, look at the eyes "as a flame of fire"; can you admit more than that it pretends to be a literal translation? But it is not even literal; verse 17 says distinctly, "And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead." But St. John is here represented as one praying. Then what is the inference? That Dürer was unimaginative in the higher sense of the word; that he, like the Spirit of the Reformation, sought salvation in the WORD. Throughout Dürer's Art we feel that it was constrained, hampered by his inordinate love of literal truthfulness; not one of his works ever rises even to the level of Raphael's "Madonna della Seggiola." Like German philosophy, his works are so carefully elaborated in detail that the glorious whole is lost in more or less warring details. His Art suffers from insubordination--all facts are co-ordinated. He himself knew it, and towards the end of this life hated its complexity, caused by the desire to represent in one picture the successive development of the spoken or written word; a desire which even in our days has not completely disappeared.
Dürer therefore appeals to us of to-day more through such conceptions as the wings of the Paumgaertner altar-piece, or the four Temperaments (St. Peter, St. John, St. Mark, and St. Paul), than through the crowded centre panels of his altar-pieces; and the strong appeal of his engravings, such as the "Knight of the Reformation" (1513) or the "Melancholia" (1514), is mainly owing to the predominant big note of the principal figures, whilst in the beautiful St. Jerome ("Hieronymus im Gehäus") it is the effect of sunshine and its concomitant feeling of well-being--_Gemüthlichkeit_, to use an untranslatable German word--which makes us linger and dwell with growing delight on every detail of this wonderful print.
In spite of appearances to the contrary, Dürer was, as I have said, unimaginative. He needed the written word or another's idea as a guide; he never dreamt of an Art that could be beautiful without a "mission"--he never "created." Try to realise for a moment that throughout his work--in accordance with the conception of his age--he mixes purely modern dress with biblical and classical representation, as if our Leightons, Tademas, Poynters, were to introduce crinolines, bustles, or "empire" gowns amongst Venuses and Apollos. In the pathetic "Deposition from the Cross" the Magdalen is just a "modern" Nuremberg damsel, and the Virgin's headwrap is slung as the northern housewife wore it, and not like an Oriental woman's; Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are clad as Nuremberg burghers, and only in the figure of John does he make concession to the traditional "classic" garment. Such an anachronistic medley could only appear logical so long as the religious spirit and the convictions of the majority were at one. I dare scarcely hint at, much less describe, the feelings that would be stirred in you if a modern painter represented the Crucifixion with Nicodemus and the man from Arimathea in frock-coats, Mary and the Magdalen in "walking costume," and a company of Horse-guards in attendance. The abyss of over four centuries divides us from Dürer; my suggestion sounds blasphemous almost, yet it is a thought based on fact and worthy of most careful note.
Owing to a convention--then active, now defunct--Dürer grasped the hands of all the living, bade them stop and think. Not one of those who beheld his work could pass by without feeling a call of sympathy and understanding. "Everyman" Dürer!--that is his grandeur. To this the artists added their appreciation; what he did was not only _truly_ done, but on the testimony of all his brothers in Art _well_ done. So with graver, pen, and brush he gave his world the outlines of Belief. In his pictures the illiterate saw, as by revelation, that which they could not read, and the literate, the literati--Erasmus, Pirkheimer, Melanchthon amongst the most prominent--saw the excellence of the manner of his revelations.
I cannot think of any better way of explaining the effect of Dürer's Art as an illustrator upon his time, than to beg you to imagine the delight a short-sighted man experiences when he is given his first pair of spectacles. Everything remains where it is; he has not lost his sense of orientation, but on a sudden he sees everything more clearly, more defined, more in detail: and where he previously had only recognised vague effects he begins to see their causes. Such was the effect of Dürer's Art: features, arms, hands, bodies, legs, feet, draperies, accessories, tree-trunks and foliage, vistas, radiance and light, not suggested but present, truly realised. When I say Dürer was not imaginative I mean to convey that imagination was characteristic of the age, not of him alone, but the materialisation, the realisation of fancy, that is his strength.
All these considerations can find, unfortunately, no room for discussion in these pages, for it were tedious to refer the reader to examples which are not illustrated.
We must perforce accept the limitations of our programme, and devote our attention to his paintings--far the least significant part of his activity.
Dürer was the great master of line--he thinks in line. This line is firstly the outline or contour in its everyday meaning; secondly, it is the massed army of lines that go to make shadow; thirdly, it is line in its psychical aspect, as denoting direction, aim, tendency, such as we have it in the print of the "Melancholia." No one before him had ever performed such wonderful feats with "line," not even Mantegna with his vigorous but repellent parallels.
This line was the greatest obstacle to his becoming a successful painter. For his line was not the great sweep, not the graceful flow, not the spontaneous dash, not the slight touch, but the heavy, determined, reasoned move, as of a master-hand in a game of chess.
To him, consequently, the world and his Art were problems, not joys.
Consider one of his early works--the portrait of his father, the honest, God-fearing, struggling goldsmith. The colour of this work is monotonous, a sort of gold-russet. It might almost be a monochrome, for the interest is centred in the wrinkles and lines of care and old age with which Father Time had furrowed the skin of the old man, and which Dürer has imitated with the determination of a ploughshare cleaving the glebe.
True, the Paumgaertner altar-piece has stirred us on account of the wing-pictures, but there is good reason for that, and we will revert to this reason later. The "Adoration of the Magi" seems reminiscent of Venetian influence. Not until we reach the year 1511 do we encounter a work that must arrest the attention of even the most indolent: it is the "Adoration of the Holy Trinity," or the All Saints altar-piece, painted for Matthew Landauer, whom we recognise, having seen Dürer's drawing of his features, in the man with the long nose on the left of the picture. This picture is without a doubt the finest, the greatest altar picture ever painted by any German. It is not by any means a large picture, measuring only 4 ft. 3 in. × 3 ft. 10-3/4 in., but it is so large in conception that it might well have been designed to cover a whole wall. Dürer has here surpassed himself; he has for once conceived with the exuberance of a Michelangelo, for it is more serious than a Raphael, it is less poetic than a Fra Angelico: but personally I state my conviction, that if ever all the Saints shall unite in adoration of the Trinity, this is the true and only possibility, this is instinct with verisimilitude, this might be taken for "documentary evidence." This communion of saints was beholden by man. If ever a man was a believer irrespective of Church, Creed, or sect--Dürer was he. I confess to a sense of awe in beholding this work, akin to Fra Angelico in its sincerity, akin to Michelangelo in its grandeur, and German wholly in the naturalness of its mystery. With more than photographic sharpness and minuteness of detail does Dürer materialise the vision: God-Father, an aged King--a Charlemagne; God-Son, the willing sufferer; the Holy Ghost, the dove of Sancgrael; the Heavenly Hosts above; the Saints beside and below--Saints that have lived and suffered, and are now assembled in praise--for the crowd is a living, praying, praising, and jubilant crowd.
Well might the creator of this masterpiece portray himself, and proudly state on the tablet he is holding:
Albertus Dürer Noricus faciebat.
This picture is not a vision--it is the statement of a dogmatic truth; as such it is painted with all the subtlety of doctrinal reasoning; not a romantic vision, nor a human truth, such as we find in Rembrandt's religious works. It is a ceremonial picture, only the ceremony is full, not empty; full of conviction, reverence, and faith! Such pictures are rare amongst Italians--in spite of all their sense of beauty; more frequent amongst the trans-alpine peoples, but never built in so much harmony. Unfortunately it has suffered, and is no longer in its pristine condition; it were fruitless therefore to discuss the merits of its colour.
Mindful of my intention only to pick up a jewel here and there, I will not weary the reader with the enumeration of his altar-pieces, Nativities, Entombments, Piétàs and Madonnas. I can do this with an easy mind, because in my opinion (and you, reader, have contracted by purchase to accept my guidance) his religious paintings are of historical rather than Art interest.
The "Adams and Eves" of the Uffizi and the Prado cannot rouse my enthusiasm either. In these pictures Dürer makes an attempt to create something akin to Dr. Zamenhof's Esperanto; a universal standard for the language of Art in the one case, of Life in the other: and in either case this language, laboriously and admirably constructed but lacking in vitality, leaves the heart untouched. Dürer's attempts to paint a classical subject, such as Hercules slaying the Stymphalian birds, are unsatisfying. I cannot see any beauty of conception in a timid and illogical mixture of realism and phantasy--it is not whole-hearted enough. Even Rembrandt's ridiculous "Rape of Ganymede" has reason and Art on his side. Imagination was not Dürer's "forte"; it is therefore with all the greater pleasure that we turn to his portraits.
Portraits are always more satisfactory than subject pictures, a fact which is particularly noticeable to-day. There are scores of painters whose portrait-painting is considerably more impressive than their subject-painting--not because portrait-painting is less difficult, but because it is more difficult to detect the weaknesses of painting in a portrait.
From the early Goethe-praised self portrait of 1493 down to the wonderful portraits of 1526 there are but few that are not rare works of Art, and of the few quite a goodly proportion may not be genuine at all.
Dürer's ego loomed large in his consciousness, and therefore, unlike Rembrandt (who also painted his own likeness time and again, though only for practice), Dürer was really proud of his person--as to be sure he had reason to be.
The portrait of 1493 shows us the young Dürer, who was in all probability betrothed to his "Agnes"; he is holding the emblem of Fidelity--Man's Troth as it is called in German--which on Goethe's authority I may explain is "Eryngo," or _anglice_ Sea-holly, in his hand.
Five years later this same Dürer, having probably returned from Venice, appears in splendid array, a true gentleman, gloved, and his naturally wavy hair crisply crimped, clad in a most fantastic costume.
As his greatest portrait the Munich one, dated 1500, has always been acclaimed. His features here bear a striking resemblance to the traditional face of Christ, and no doubt the resemblance was intentional. The nose, characterised in other pictures by the strongly raised bridge, loses this disfigurement in its frontal aspect. There is an almost uncanny expression of life in his eyes; dark ages of Byzantine belief and Art spring to the mind, and compel the spectator into an attitude of reverence not wholly due to the merits of the painting.
The comparison with Holbein's work naturally obtrudes itself, when Dürer's portraits are the subject of discussion.
In the Wallace collection is a most delightful little miniature portrait of Holbein, by his own hand. Compare the two heads. What a difference! Holbein the craftsman _par excellence_; the man to whom drawing came as easily as seeing comes to us. With shrewd, cold, weighing eyes he sizes himself up in the mirror. He, too, is a man of knowledge; he does his work faithfully and exceedingly well, but leaves it there. He never moralises, draws no conclusions, infers nothing, states merely facts--and if the truth must be said, is the greater craftsman.
Dürer's mind was deeper; one might say the springs of his talent welling upwards had to break through strata of cross-lying thought, reaching his hand after much tribulation, and teaching it to set down all he knew.
So the Paumgaertner portraits, at one time supposed to represent Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen--the Reformation knights--show a marvellous grasp of character, wholly astonishing in the unconventional attitude, whilst the portrait of his aged master, Michael Wohlgemut, overstates in its anxiety not to understate.
His portrait of Kaiser Maximilian, quiet, dignified, is yet somewhat small in conception.
Two years later, however, he painted a portrait now in the Prado, representing presumably the Nuremberg patrician, Hans Imhof the Elder.
Purely technically considered this picture appears to be immeasurably above his own portrait of 1500, and above any other excepting the marvellous works of 1526. Whoever this Hans Imhof was, Dürer has laid bare his very soul. These later portraits show that Dürer stood on the threshold of the modern world.