United States or South Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Not only persons but works of art produce this effect, and they are those with whom it is the greatest benefit to live. It is true that, compared with Giotto, Rembrandt, or Michael Angelo, Duerer does not appear comprehensive enough.
God grant you grace to persevere; the adversaries, indeed, are strong, but God is stronger, and is wont to help the sick who call upon Him and acknowledge Him. I want you, dear Herr Albrecht Duerer, to make a drawing for me of the instrument you saw at Herr Pirkheimer's, wherewith they measure distances both far and wide. You told me about it at Antwerp.
The prudent and wise Masters Caspar Nuetzel, Lazarus Spengler, and Albrecht Duerer, for the time being at Augsburg, our gracious Masters and good friends. Jesus. As a friendly greeting, prudent, wise, gracious Masters and especially good friends, cousins, and wellwishers, I desire every good thing for you, from the Highest Good.
The following is an extract: Whereas our and the Empire's trusty Albrecht Duerer has devoted much zeal to the drawings he has made for us at our command, and has promised henceforth ever to do the like, whereat we have received particular pleasure; and whereas we are informed on all hands that the said Duerer is famous in the art of painting before all other Masters: we have therefore felt ourself moved, to further him with our especial grace, and we accordingly desire you with earnest solicitude, for the affection you bear us, to make the said Duerer free of all town imposts, having regard to our grace and to his famous art, which should fairly turn to his profit with you, &c.
"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.
We know little of the private life of the greatest geniuses; but the little that we know of it what tradition has preserved, for example, of Sophocles, of Archimedes, of Hippocrates, and in modern times of Ariosto, of Dante, of Tasso, of Raphael, of Albert Duerer, of Cervantes, of Shakespeare, of Fielding, of Sterne, etc. confirms this assertion.
In future I would not take 400 florins to paint another such as this. ALBRECHT DUeRER. NUeRNBERG, July 24, 1509. DEAR HERR HELLER, I have read the letter which you addressed to me. You write that you did not mean to decline taking the picture from me. To that I can only say that I don't understand what you do mean.
"This art of painting is made for the eyes, for sight is the noblest sense of man," says Duerer; and again: "It is ordained that never shall any man be able, out of his own thoughts, to make a beautiful figure, unless, by much study, he hath well stored his mind. That then is no longer to be called his own; it is art acquired and learnt, which soweth, waxeth, and beareth fruit after its kind.
Michael Angelo pictures for us freedom from trammels, the freedom that action, thought and ecstasy give, the freedom that is granted to beauty by all who recognise it; Duerer shows us the constancy that bridges the intervals between such free hours, that gives continuity to man's necessarily spasmodic effort.
Only to compare the value of Michael Angelo's sonnets with that of the doggerel rhymes which Duerer produced, may give us some idea of the portentous inferiority in Duerer's surroundings to those of the great Italian. Both borrow the general idea of the subject, treatment, and form of their poems from the fashion around them.
Word Of The Day