Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/578

558 558 D U K E R mund, which are now to be seen in tlie Germanic Museum of Nuremberg. The two or three years next following this are for Diirer years, above all things, of engraving on metal. Of the sixteen pieces composing the Little Passion on Copper, perhaps the best invented and certainly the most brilliantly executed of all his gospel histories, ten were executed in 1512 and the last six in 1513. Of the many devotional figures of the Virgin and Child cut on copper by Diirer at various times of his career, several of the most pathetic and care fully finished date from about the same time. Now, also, he began to repeat with greater persistency the experiment, which he had first tried some years before, of working by the method, then newly invented, of the etcher ; that is, of biting the lines of his drawing with acid upon metal instead of cutting them with the burin. And these, again, are the years of those three master-pieces of his mind and hand, the Melancholia, the Knight with Death and the Devil, and the St Jerome reading in his Cell. These engravings are too well known to need description. The first two, by their earnest and enigmatic significance, have fascinated minds of every class, and given rise to an infinity of discussion. It is nearly certain that in these three plates, of almost the same size, date, and manner, and of equal technical perfection, we have three out of four projected illustrations of the Human Tempera ments, as they Avere divided by mediaeval science- the Mel ancholic, the Sanguine, the Phlegmatic, and the Choleric. Melancholy being intended to stand at the head of the series (although it is dated 1513, and the Knight 1512), has the numeral I. written after the name Melancholia ; the winged genius, in whom the qualities of this tempera ment are incarnated, is seated darkly musing among symbolic instruments of science. She seems an incarnation of the new spirit of the age, the spirit of solemn and resolute search. The subject of the Knight, being intended to illustrate the sanguine temperament, has the initial S written in the corner. To some students this stedfast rider has seemed a type of the righteous man undismayed by the powers of darkness that beset him, to others of the evil man whom fate and retribution are about to overtake at last. Some have read the initial S as designating one one of the first soldiers of the Reformation, Franz von Sickengen ; others as designating one of the most infamous of robber nobles, Sparnecker. But indeed the subject is not thus definitely to be interpreted in either sense ; the piece is but one, and the most pregnant and impressive, interpret it how you will, of the thousand emblems with which the Northern imagination in this age commemorated the power of Death, and proclaimed how lie is for ever dogging at the heels of strong and weak, the just man and the unjust alike. St Jerome, the Father of the church to whom Renaissance Christianity turned with the greatest devotion, and whom the labours of Erasmus had made familiar in espe cial to the humanists of the North, serves as the natural type of the phlegmatic or student temperament. No fourth subject seems to have been attempted to complete the set. The reason of this may have been the call which at this time began to be made on Diirer s industry by another kind of work. The five years between 1514 and 1519 are devoted above all things to woodcut work, on commission from the emperor Maximilian, who had resided for some time at Nuremberg in 1512, and whose personal favour and friend ship Diirer from that time enjoyed. With the learned co operation of Johannes Stabius, he presently commenced a scheme of design for wood engraving in honour of Maximilian more vast and laborious than either Burgkmair s schemes of illustration to the Weisskuniy or Schaufelein s to the Theuenlank. This is the prodigious work known as the Gate of Honour; on it, and on the Car of Honour, and on portions of the Triumphal Procession, all of which belonged to the same great scheme (other portions of the Procession being the work of Burgkmair) Diirer was chiefly engaged for four or five years. One of the most delightful memorials of his activity in the service of the emperor is the famous Prayer- Hook of Maximilian, a volume decorated by Diirer s hand with marginal arabesques of an inex haustibly quaint and various invention, this is now pre served at Munich, and is known by more than one modern edition published in facsimile. His few paintings remain ing from this period show a manifest falling oil in labour and completeness from those of the period just preceding. In 1518 the Diet of Augsburg brought Maximilian to that city, and there Diirer was in attendance on him. A noble portrait drawn in charcoal, and subsequently used for an engraving in wood, carries a note in the artist s handwriting to the effect that it was done from the emperor at Augsburg &quot; in his little room up at the top in the palace.&quot; In 1519 Maximilian died. In the next year the desire of Diirer to secure from his successors a continuance of the patronage and privileges granted during his lifetime, together with au outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg, gave occasion to the master s third and last journey from his home. On the 12th of July 1520 he set out for the Netherlands, with his wife and her maid, in order to be present at the coronation of the young emperor Charles V., and if possible to conciliate the good graces of the all- powerful regent Margaret. In the latter part of his aim Diirer was but partially successful. His diary of his travels enables us to follow his movements almost day by day. He travelled by the Rhine to Cologne, and thence by road to Antwerp, where he was splendidly received and lived in whatever society was most distinguished, including that of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Many portrait drawings of persons who sat to him in these days are preserved. Besides going to Aachen for the coronation, he made exciirsions down the Rhine from Cologne to Nimeguen, and back overland by Herzogenbusch; to Brussels to Bruges and Ghent ; and to Zealand with the object of seeing a natural curiosity, a whale reported ashore. The vivid account of this last expedition given in his diary contrasts with the usual dry entries of interviews and disbursements. A still more striking contrast is the passionate outburst of sympathy and indignation with which, in the same diary, he comments on the supposed kidnapping of Luther by foul play on his return from the Diet of Worms. With out being one of those who in his city took au avowed part against the old ecclesiastical system, and probably without seeing clearly whither the religious ferment of the time was tending without, that is, being properly speak ing a Reformer Diirer in his art and all his thoughts Avas the incarnation of those qualities of the Teutonic character and the Teutonic conscience which resulted in the Reforma tion; and personally, with the fathers of the Reformation he lived in the warmest sympathy. On the 12th of July 1521 Diirer reached home again. The remaining seven years of his life were occupied chiefly with the preparation of the scientific writings of which we have already spoken ; with engraving on copper, in a style of consummate care and power, several portraits of his friends, among them the elector Frederick, Pirkheimer, Erasmus, and Melanchthon ; and with the execution of those two paintings by which, perhaps, his powers in this highest branch of his art are best known, the figures of St Paul with St Mark and St John with Peter. These are now m the Munich gallery, and exhibit at their greatest Durer .s earnest and pregnant conception of character, with a majesty in the types and a grandeur in the gesture and di apery which in his earlier career he had never yet attained. Each apostle or evangelist represents a &quot; temperament,&quot; John the melancholic, Peter the phlegmatic, Paul the sanguino,