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Updated: May 18, 2025
As we study the character of Duerer's creative gift in relation to his works, several of the phrases used by Erasmus, Camerarius, and Melanchthon should take added significance, being probably remembered from conversations with the great artist himself.
The treatment of the still life in the foreground is in itself almost a proof of this. Perhaps this thin, flat tempera treatment was that most suited to Duerer's native bias, and we should regret his having been tempted to overcome the more brilliant and exacting medium of oils.
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 Duerer's paintings.
It would be idle to attempt to say something about every masterpiece in Duerer's splendidly copious work on metal plates. There is perhaps not one of these engravings that is not vital upon one side or another, amazingly few that are not vital upon many.
Nor is there any good reason for dating the drawings of sites in the Tyrol, supposed to have been sketched on the road, rather this year than another. Lastly, the famous sentence in a letter written from Venice during Duerer's authenticated visit there, in 1506, may be construed in more than one sense. The passage is generally rather curtailed when quoted.
Such stormy and strenuous lowerings of the imagination break in upon Duerer's habitual mood as St. Peter's thunders into Milton's "Lycidas," of which the general felicitous mingling of a conventional pedantry with idyllic charm and racy touches of realistic effect is very similar to the general effect of the golden group we have been describing.
The latter was the pair to and compeer of his own portrait at Madrid,; and, hitherto unknown, was lent last year by Lord Northampton to the Royal Academy, and has since been bought for the National Gallery. This beautiful work is unique even among the works of the master, and is not so much the worse for repainting as some make out. The majority of Duerer's portraits stand alone.
Instances of the highest imaginative power are rare in Duerer's work. The Melancholy has had a world-wide success. The Knight, Death and the Devil has one almost equal, but which is based on the facility with which it is associated with certain ideas dear to Christian culture, rather than on the creation of the mood in which these ideas arise.
I have reproduced less of Duerer's wood engravings than would be necessary to represent their importance and beauty, because most, being large and bold, are greatly impoverished by reduction; besides, they are nearly all well known through comparatively cheap reproductions. DUeRER'S INFLUENCES AND VERSES
Raphael and Holbein have alone produced portraits which, as they can be compared to Duerer's, might also be held to rival them; Titian, Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Reynolds have done as splendidly, but the material they used and the aims they set themselves were too different to make a comparison serviceable.
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