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Updated: May 18, 2025
These two warriors are, however, most successful and imposing, and immeasurably enhanced now that the spurious backgrounds, artfully concocted out of Duerer's own prints by an ingenious improver of his betters, have been removed.
Doubtless Duerer's hand had changed its character considerably during this period of constant and rapid development, and it requires tact and knowledge to separate the differences due to the creator from those due to the engraver. Duerer's drawings differed as widely from the earlier drawings as does the engraving from the earlier blocks.
It is this inventiveness in handling which most distinguishes Duerer from painters like Raphael and Holbein, and makes his work comparable with the masterpieces of Rembrandt and Titian, in spite of the extreme opposition in aspect between their work and his. The vivid Oswolt Krel at Munich shows the peculiarity of Duerer's caligraphic touch better than perhaps any other of his portraits.
Duerer's great superiority over such academical masters is, that his idea of a canon of proportion and its use agrees far better with what was apparently Greek practice.
It is very dangerous to draw conclusions from such a fact, which may be merely an accident: or may, if it represents a habit of Duerer's, bear precisely the opposite significance. For some men are proud to drop such outward marks of affection, in cases where they know that every day proves to every witness that they are not needed.
Before closing this part of my book something must be said of Duerer's influence on other artists. It is one of the foibles of modern criticism to please itself by tracing influences, a process of the same nature as that of tracing resemblances to ferns and other growths on a frosted pane.
"This is the Emperor Maximilian, whose likeness I, Albrecht Duerer, have taken, at Augsburg, high up in the palace in his little chamber, in the year of Grace 1518, on Monday after St. John the Baptist's Day" Charcoal-Drawing. A charming letter from Charitas Pirkheimer gives us a little sunlit glimpse of the tone of Duerer's lighter hours.
Indeed, it would be difficult to distinguish between the kind of honour done the Virgin in many of Duerer's pictures and etchings and that done her in the Antwerp procession; but both are infinitely removed from the degradation of emotion produced by an orgy of superstition such as that depicted in Ostendorfer's print, which is truly nearer akin to the scenes that occasionally occur in Salvation Army or Methodist revivals, and is even more repugnant to the spirit of the Renascence than to that of the Reformation as Luther and Duerer conceived of it.
In fact, Duerer's position was very similar to that of the modern artist, who finds little and insufficient patronage, and can make more if he is lucky by the reproduction of his creations for the great public. But Duerer still had one advantage over his fellow-sufferers of to-day that of being his own publisher.
It is now more generally recognised than in Luther's day that however sweet vengeance may be, it is not admirable, either in God or man. The total impression produced by Duerer's life and work must help each to decide for himself which sense he considers most likely. The truth, as in most questions of history, remains for ever in the balance, and cannot be ascertained.
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