Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/478

 448 Painting in the abbey of Strahow near Prague, was painted at this time for the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, at Venice, and is dis- tinguished for all the master's peculiar excellences. It is unfortunately much injured ; the museum of- Lyons pos- sesses a fine copy. To the year 1507 belong a very excel- lent Portrait of a Young Man in the Belvedere Vienna, and the single figures of Adam and Eve, now in the Madrid Gallery. From the few years succeeding his visit to Venice date many of Diirer's finest works, such as the two series of woodcuts known as the Little Passion (1511), and the Great Passion (published first in book shape in 1511), — the former consisting of scenes from the ministry of our Lord, and the latter of scenes from the actual Passion, Death, and Burial of the Redeemer, — in all of which the central figure is majestic and dignified, and the solemn subjects are treated with genuine reverence and poetic feeling. Even more famous are the Adoration of the Trinity (1511), — now in the Belvedere, Vienna, considered Diirer's finest painting — and the well-known engravings of the Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), and Melencolia (1514) : the former of which (Fig. 156),, remarkable as it is for masterly drawing and powerful conception, is yet more valuable as an earnest of victory won, and a great problem solved. It is an expression of the artist's conviction of the final triumph of humanity over Death, the Devil and all evil suggestions. Equally expressive of the subtle conflict in this world between joy and sorrow, good and evil, is the awful print of Melencolia, in which we see the great Genius of the toil and knowledge of the world, wearing a laurel wreath upon her brow and with the instruments of science strewn around her, gazing with