Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/577

557 D U R E R 557 of Christ, in white on a green ground, which is known as the Green Passion, and forms one of the treasures of the Albertina at Vienna. He had followed up his great woodcut series of the Apocalypse with preparations for other series on a similar scale, and had finished seven out of twelve subjects for the set known as the Great Passion, and sixteen out of twenty for the Life of the Virgin, when his work was interrupted by a journey which is one of the principal episodes in his life. In the autumn of the year 1505 he went to Venice, and stayed there until the autumn of the following year. The occasion of this journey has been erroneously stated by Vasari. Diirer s engravings, having by this time attained a great popularity both north and south of the Alps, had begun to be copied by various hands, and among others by the celebrated Marcantonio of Bologna, then in his youth. According to Vasari, Marcantonio, in copying Diirer s series of the Little Passion on Wood, had imitated the original monogram, and Diirer, indignant at this fraud, set out for Italy in order to protect his rights, and having lodged a complaint against Marcantonio before the signory of Venice, carried his point so far that Marc antonio Avas forbidden in future to add the monogram of Diirer to copies taken after his works. This account Avill not bear examination. Chronological and other proofs show that if such a suit was fought at all, it must have been in connection with another set of Diirer s woodcuts, the first sixteen of the Great Passion on Wood. Diirer himself, a number of Avhose familiar letters written from Venice to his friend Pirkheimer at Nuremberg are preserved, makes no mention of anything of the kind. Nevertheless something of the kind may probably have been among the causes which determined his journey. Other causes, of Avhich Ave have explicit record, Avere an outbreak of sickness at Nuremberg; Diirer s desire, which in fact was realized, of finding a good market for the proceeds of his art ; and the prospect, also realized, of a commission for an important picture from the German community settled at Venice, Avho had lately caused an exchange arid warehouse the Fondaco de Tedeschi to be built on the Grand Canal, and who Avere now desirous to dedicate a picture in the church of St Bartholomew. The picture painted by Diirer on this com mission Avas the Adoration of the Virgin, better known as the Feast of Hose-Garlands ; it was subsequently acquired by the emperor Rudolf II., and carried as a thing beyond price xrpon men s shoulders to Vienna ; it now exists in a greatly injured state in the monastery of Strachow, near Prague. It is one of Diirer s best conceived and most multitudinous compositions, and one in Avhich he aims at rivalling the richness and playfulness of Italian art. Other pictures probably painted by him at Venice are Christ disputing Avith the Doctors, now in the Palazzo Barberini at Rome, Christ Crucified, in the gallery at Dresden, and a Madonna and Child in the possession of Lord Lothian. These works of the German master Avere not without influence upon the Italian painters resident at Venice, an influence Avhich Ave can distinctly trace in some of the early Avorks of Titian. Diirer s letters testify to the high position he held at Venice, and speak of the jealousy shown towards him by some of the meaner sort of artists, the friendship and courtesy by the nobler sort, and especially by the noblest of all, the veteran GioA T anni Bellini. He talks of the honour and weal thin Avhich he might live if he would consent to abandon home for Italy, of the Northern Avinter, and how it Avill make him shiver. Yet he resisted the seductions of the South, and was in Nuremberg again before the close of 1506. First, it seems, he had made an excursion to Bologna, having intended to take Mantua on the way, in order to do homage to the old age of that Italian master, Andrea Mantegna, from whom he had him self in youth learnt the most. But the death of Mantegna prevented this purpose. From the winter of 1506 until the summer of 1520, Diirer was again a settled resident in his native town. During these years his genius and his fortunes were at their height. Except the dazzling existence of Raphael at Rome, the annals of art present the spectacle of no more honourable or more enviable career. Diirer s fame had spread all over Europe. From Antwerp to Rome his greatness was acknow ledged, and artists of less invention, among them some of the foremost on both sides of the Alps, were not ashamed to borrow from his work this or that striking combination or expressive type. He was on terms of friendship or friendly communication Avith all the first masters of the age, and Raphael held himself honoured in exchanging drawings with Diirer. In his own country, all orders of men, from the emperor Maximilian doAvn, delighted to honour him; he Avas the familiar companion of chosen spirits among statesmen, humanists, and reformers, and had the power to bind to himself with the links of a more than brotherly friendship the leading citizen of the leading city of Germany, Willibald Pirkheimer. His temper and his life were singularly free from all that was jarring, jealous, or fretful. The burgher life of even this, the noblest German city, seems narrow, quaint, and harsh beside the grace and opulence and poetry of Italian life in the same and the preceding generation; but among its native surroundings, the career of Diirer stands out AA r ith an aspect of ideal elevation and decorum which is its own. He is even distinguished from his fellow citizens by the stately beauty of his aspect and the rich elegance of his attire. Every reader Avill be familiar with the portrait in which he has represented himself at this middle period of life the nobly formed OA T al counte nance, Avith the short beard, and the long carefully divided locks curled and floAving over either shoulder, the upright broAV, tha stedfast penetrating gaze of the large perfectly cut eyes, the long nose somewhat aquiline, and full per fectly cloven mouth, the strong delicate fingers playing with the rich fur lappet of his cloak. These years of Diirer s life can best be divided according to the several classes of work with which, during their succession, he Avas principally occupied. During and after his residence at Venice, he had come to disuse the traditional German practice of painting with the help of a whole school of assistants and apprentices. The first six years after his return, from 1506 to 1512, are pre-eminently the painting years of his life ; in them, Avorking Avith infinite preliminary pains, and, as it seems almost entirely with his own hands, he produced what are accounted his four capital works, the Adam and Eve, painted in 1507 ; of this it has been disputed AA T hether a version at Madrid or one in the Pitti Palace at Florence is the original ; the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia, painted for the elector Frederick of Saxony in 1508, and noAv in the imperial gallery at Vienna ; a rich altar-piece representing the Assumption of the Virgin, Avith portraits of the donor and his wife and other accessory subjects, executed for Jacob Heller, a merchant of Frankfort, in 1509 this AA r as after wards replaced, at Frankfort, by a copy, and the original trans ported to Munich, where it perished by fire in 1674 ; and lastly, the Adoration of the Trinity by all the Saints, a com position of many figures commissioned for a chapel dedicated to All Saints in an almshouse for decayed tradesmen at Nuremberg, and completed in 1511 this is noAvone of the glories of the Belvedere at Vienna. In this same year, 1511, Diirer brought out his three great woodcut books in folio form together the Apocalypse in a second edition, the Great Passion, and the Life of the Virgin for the first time complete. In 1512, he painted tAvo pictures for his natiA-e toAvn, the historical portraits of Charlemagne and the emperor Sigia-