Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/230

 218 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE the world in 1498, in his twenty-seventh year, are masterpieces of the art and monumental works. 1 In these he has depicted by means of religious symbols the terrors of God's judgments and the joys of the blessed. Particularly striking and impressive are the four horse- men and the four angels at the great river Euphrates. His two sets of woodcuts for the ' Passion ' (known as the Large and the Little Passion) are equally remark- able for power and truthfulness, and affect one as does a great tragedy. The figure of Christ in the frontispiece leaves an ineffaceable impression. He is sitting on a stone, removed from all participation in earthly life — alone with His grief ! In ' The Little Passion ' Jesus rests His head on His hand. In the other one, the insult- ing soldier bends the knee in mockery before Him, while His hands are folded in prayer. In both the Saviour's countenance looks at the beholder with an expression that pierces through the soul. It represents the continual grief which the sins of man inflict on the Saviour. Hence the hands and feet bear the marks of the wounds. The artist must have had in his mind the words of the prophet, ' Come ye, and behold if there is any sorrow like unto My sorrow.' Diirer threw his whole soul into this work, and he expresses here in a picture what his meditations on the sufferings of Christ led him elsewhere to embody in his hymn, 'Sieben Tageszeiten ' (' Seven Periods of the Day '). 2 Zur Vesperzeit, da nahm man ihn Vom Kreuz, bracht' ihn znr Mutter hin, Die Allmacht still verborgen lag In Gottes Schooss an jenem Tag. 1 Springer, pp. 184, 185. There is proof that Diirer contributed th& designs for 170 of those engravings (Kauftnann, A. Diirer, p. 36). 2 See Lulhardt, pp. 44, 45.