Pictures Every Child Should Know Part 6

He was a painter of fantastic and grotesque subjects, and as far as we know, he began his career when a boy. He made sketches before his eighth year which attracted much attention, and he earned considerable money while still at school. He was at that time engaged to ill.u.s.trate for journals, at a good round sum, and before he left the Lyc?e he had made hundreds of drawings, somewhat after the satirical fas.h.i.+on of Hogarth.

His work is very characteristic and once seen is likely to be always recognised.

He first worked for the _Journal Pour Rire_, but then he undertook to ill.u.s.trate the work of Rabelais, the great satirist, whose text just suited Dor?'s pencil. After Rabelais he ill.u.s.trated Balzac, also the "Wandering Jew," "Don Quixote," and Dante's "Divine Comedy."

He undertook to do things which he could not do well, simply for the money there was in the commissions. He had but a poor idea of colour and his work was coa.r.s.e, but it had such marked peculiarities that it became famous. He did a little sculpture as well, and even that showed his eccentricities of thought.

PLATE--MOSES BREAKING THE TABLETS OF THE LAW

This is one of the ill.u.s.trations of the Dor? Bible, published in 1865-66. The story is well known of how Moses went up into the Mount of the Lord to receive the laws for the Israelites, which were written upon tables of stone. Upon his descent from the Mount he found that his followers had set up a golden calf, which they were wors.h.i.+pping; and in his wrath Moses broke the tablets on which the Law was inscribed. The power shown in his att.i.tude, the affrighted faces of the cowering Jews, the thunder and lightning as an expression of the wrath of the Almighty are all painted in Dor?'s best manner.

XIII

ALBRECHT D?RER

(p.r.o.nounced Dooer-rer') _Nuremberg School_ 1471-1528 _Pupil of Wolgemuth and Schongauer_

Albrecht Drer by nationality was a Hungarian, but he was born in the city of Nuremberg. His father had come from the little Hungarian town of Eytas to Nuremberg that he might practise the craft of a goldsmith. Notwithstanding his Hungarian origin, the name is German and the family "bearing," or sign, is the open door. This device suggests that the name was first formed from "Thurer," which means "carpenter," maker of doors.

The father became the goldworker for a master goldsmith of Nuremberg named Hieronymus Holper, and very soon the new employee had fallen in love with his master's daughter. The daughter was very young and very beautiful; her name was Barbara, and as Herr Drer was quite forty years of age, while she was but fifteen, the match seemed most unlikely, but they married and had eighteen children! The great painter was one of them.

Albrecht loved his parents most tenderly, and from first to last we hear no word of disagreement among any members of that immense household. Young Albrecht was especially the companion of his father, being brilliant, generous, and hard-working in a family where everyone needed to do his best to help along. This love and companions.h.i.+p never ceased until death, and after his parents died Albrecht wrote in a touching manner of their death, describing his love for them, and their many virtues. He was an author and a poet as well as a painter, and only Leonardo da Vinci matched him for greatness and versatility. We may know what Drer's father looked like, since the son made two portraits of him; one is to be seen in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence and the other belongs to the Duke of Northumberland's collection. The latter portrait has been reproduced in an engraving, so that it is familiar to most people.

In the days when the great artist was growing up, Nuremberg was the centre of all intellectuality and art in the North. The city of Augsburg also followed art fas.h.i.+ons, but it was far less important than Nuremberg, because in the latter city every sort of art-craft was followed in sincerity and with great originality.

In those days, the craft of the goldsmith was closely allied with the profession of the painter, because the smith had to create his own designs, and that called for much talent. Thus it was but a step from designing in precious metals to the use of colour, and to engraving. In making wood engravings, however, the drudgery of it was left almost entirely to workmen, not artists. Nuremberg was also the seat of musical learning. Wagner makes this fact pathetic, comical, and altogether charming in his "Mastersingers of Nuremberg."

Till Drer's time, however, there had been little painting that could be regarded as art, and when he came to study it there was but little opportunity in his own land, but Drer was destined to bring art to Nuremberg. If he went elsewhere to study, it was only for a little time, because he was above all things patriotic and dearly loved his home.

With seventeen brothers and sisters, young Drer's problem was a serious one. His father not only meant him to become a goldsmith like himself--a craft in which there was much money to be made at a time when people dressed with great ornamentation and used gold to decorate with--it was highly necessary with so large a family that he should learn to do that which could make him helpful to his father. Hence the young boy entered his father's shop. If he had not been handicapped with so many to help to maintain, he would have laid up a considerable fortune, because from the very beginning he was master of all that he undertook; doing the least thing better than any other did it, putting conscience and painstaking into all.

"My father took special delight in me," the son said, "seeing that I was industrious in working and learning, he put me to school; and when I had learned to read and write, he took me home from my school and taught me the goldsmith's trade."

The family were good and kind; excellent neighbours, deeply religious, and little Albrecht certainly was comely. He was beautiful as a little child, and as a man was very handsome, with long light hair sweeping his shoulders, and gentle eyes. He was very tall, stately, and full of dignity.

In his father's shop he made little clay figures which were afterward moulded in metal; also he learned to carve wood and ivory, and he added the touch of originality to all that he did. He was the Leonardo da Vinci of Germany, an intellectual man, a poet, painter, sculptor, engraver, and engineer. He approached everything that he did from an intellectual point of view, looking for the reasons of things.

After a while in his father's shop, he found mere craftsmans.h.i.+p irksome, and he begged to be allowed to enter a studio. This was a great disappointment to the father, even a distress, because he could see no very quick nor large returns in money for an artist, and he sorely needed the help of his son; but being kind and reasonable, he consented Albrecht was apprenticed to the only artist of any repute then in Nuremberg, Wolgemuth.

To his studio Albrecht went, at the age of fifteen, and if he did not learn much more of painting, under that artist's direction, than his own genius had already taught him, he learned the drudgery of his work; how to grind colours and to mix them, and he studied wood engraving also.

In Wolgemuth's studio he remained for the three years of his apprentices.h.i.+p, and then he fled to better things. For a time he followed the methods of another German artist, Schongauer, but finally he went forth to try his luck alone. He wandered from place to place, practising all his trades, goldsmithing, engraving, whatever would support him, yet always and everywhere painting.

It is thought that he may have gone as far as Italy, but it is not certain whether he went there in his first wanderings or later on. However, he was soon recalled home, for his father had found a suitable wife for him. She was the daughter of a rich citizen and her name was Agnes Frey. She was pretty as well as rich, but had she been neither Albrecht would have returned at his father's bidding. There was never any resistance to the fine and proper things of life on Albrecht Drer's part. He was the well balanced, reasonable man from youth up.

There have been extraordinary tales told of the artist's wife. She has been called hateful and spiteful as Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, but we think this is calumny. The stories came about in this way: Drer had a life-long friend, Wilibald Pirkheimer, who in his old age became the most malicious and quarrelsome of old fellows. He lived longer than Drer did, and Drer's wife also outlived her husband. Pirkheimer wanted a set of antlers which had belonged to Drer and which he thought the wife should give him after Drer was dead, but Agnes thought otherwise and would not give them up. Then, full of rage, the old man wrote the most outrageous letters about poor Agnes, saying that she was a shrew and had compelled Drer to work himself to death; that she was a miser and had led the artist an awful dance through life. This is the only evidence against her, and that so sane and sensible a man as the artist lived with her all his life and cherished her, is evidence enough that Pirkheimer didn't tell the truth. When Drer died he was in good circ.u.mstances and instead of being overworked, he for many years had done no "pot-boiling," but had followed investigations along lines that pleased him. After his death, the widow treated his brothers and sisters generously, giving them properties of Drer's and being of much help to them. During the artist's life he and she had travelled everywhere together and had appeared to love each other tenderly; hence we may conclude that the old Pirkheimer was simply a disgruntled, gouty old man without a good word for anybody.

If Drer's father and mother had eighteen children, Albrecht and Agnes struck a balance, for they had none. Whether or not Drer went to Italy before his marriage in 1494, certain it is that he was in Venice, the home of t.i.tian, in 1506. t.i.tian was six years younger than Drer, who was then about thirty-five years old. It is said that he started for Italy in 1505 and that he went the whole of the way, over the Alps, through forests and streams, on horseback. Who knows but it was during that very journey, while travelling alone, often finding himself in lonely ways, and full of the speculative thoughts that were characteristic of him, that he did not think first of his subject, "Knight, Death, and the Devil," which helped make his fame. In that picture we have a knight, helmeted, carrying his lance, mounted upon his horse, riding in a lonely forest, with death upon a "pale horse"

by his side, holding an hour gla.s.s to remind the knight of the fleeting of time. Behind comes the devil, with trident and horn, represented as a frightful and disgusting beast, which follows hot-foot after the lonely knight, who looks neither to right nor left, but persistently goes his way.

t.i.tian's teacher, Bellini, was still living, and he was one of Drer's greatest admirers. Especially did he believe that he could paint the finest hair of any artist in the world. One day, while studying Drer's work, and being especially fascinated by the hair of one of his figures, the old man took Drer's brush and tried to reproduce as beautiful a tress. Presently he put down the brush in despair, but the younger artist took it up, still wet with the same colours, and in a few brilliant strokes produced a lovely lock of woman's hair.

While luxuriating in Venetian heat, Drer wrote home to his friend Pirkheimer: "Oh, how I shall freeze after this suns.h.i.+ne!" He was a lover of warm, beautiful colour, gay and tender life. Most of all he loved the fatherland, and all the honours paid him and all the invitations pressed upon him could not keep him long from Nuremberg. The journey homeward was not uneventful because he was taken ill, and had to stop at a house on his way, where he was cared for till he was strong enough to proceed. Before he went his way he painted upon the wall of that house a fine picture, to show his grat.i.tude for the kind treatment he had received. Imagine a people so settled in their homes that it would be worth while for an artist who came along to leave a picture upon the walls to-day--we should have moved to a new house or a new flat almost before Drer could have washed his brushes and turned the corner.

Back in Nuremberg, he settled down into the life of a responsible citizen, lived in a fine new house, in time became a member of the council, and his studio was a veritable workshop. Studios were quite different from those of to-day. Then the pupils turned to and ground colours, did much of their own manufacturing, engaged at first in such commonplace occupations, which were nevertheless teaching them the foundation of their art, while they watched the work of the master. Such a studio as Drer's must have been full of young men coming and going, not all working at the art of painting, but engraving, preparing materials for such work, designing, and executing many other details of art work.

After this time Drer made his smallest picture, which is hardly more than an inch in diameter. On that tiny surface he painted the whole story of the crucifixion, and it is now in the Dresden Gallery. To those of us who see little mentality in the faces of the Italian subjects, the German art of Drer, often ugly in the choice of models, and so exact as to bring out unpleasing details, is nevertheless the greater; because in all cases, the faces have sincere expressions. They exhibit human purposes and emotions which we can understand, and despise or love as the case may be.

They say that his Madonna is generally a "much-dressed round-faced German mother, holding a merry little German boy." That may be true; but at any rate, she is every inch a mother and he a well-beloved little boy, which is considerably more than can be said of some Italian performances.

Drer made a painting of "Praying Hands," a queer subject for a picture, but those hands are nothing _but_ praying hands. The story of them is touching. It is said that for several years Drer had won a prize for which a friend of his had also competed, and upon losing the prize the last time he tried for it, the friend raised his hands and prayed for the power to accept his failure with resignation and humility. Drer, looking at him, was impressed with the eloquence of the gesture; thus the "Praying Hands" was conceived.

Drer was also called the _Father of Picture Books_, because he designed so many woodcuts that he first made possible the ill.u.s.tration of stories.

He printed his own ill.u.s.trations in his own house, and was well paid for it. The Emperor Maximillian visited Nuremberg, and wis.h.i.+ng to honour Drer, commanded him to make a triumphal arch.

"It was not to be fas.h.i.+oned in stone like the arches given to the victorious Roman Emperors; but instead it was to be composed of engravings. Drer made for this purpose ninety-two separate blocks of woodcuts. On these were represented Maximillian's genealogical tree and the princ.i.p.al events of his life. All these were arranged in the form of an arch, 9 feet wide and 10-1/2 feet high. It took Drer three years to do this work, and he was never well paid," so says one who has compiled many incidents of his life.

"While the artist worked, the Emperor often visited his studio; and as Drer's pet cats often visited it at the same time, the expression arose, 'a cat may look at a King!'"

On the occasion of one of these kingly visits, Maximillian tried to do a little art-work on his own account. Taking a piece of charcoal he tried to sketch, but the charcoal kept breaking and he asked Drer why it did so.

"That is my sceptre; your Majesty has other and greater work to do,"

was the tactful reply. It is a question with us to-day whether the King ever did a greater work than Albrecht Drer, king of painters, was doing.

After this, Maximillian gave Drer a pension, but when the Emperor died the artist found it necessary to apply to the monarch who came after him, in order to have the gift confirmed. This was the occasion for his journey to the Low Countries, and he took his wife Agnes with him. In the Netherlands he was received with much honour and was invited to become court painter; and what was more, his pension was fixed upon him for life. The great work of his life was his ill.u.s.tration of the Apocalypse. For this he made sixteen extraordinary woodcuts, of great size.

On his journey to see Charles V., Maximillian's successor, Drer kept a diary in which he noted the minutest details of all that happened to him. He told of the coronation of Charles; of hearing about a whale that had been cast upon the sh.o.r.e; of his disappointment that it had been removed before he had reached the place. He wrote with great indignation about the supposed kidnapping of Martin Luther, while he was on his way home from the Diet of Worms.

While Drer was in the Low Countries, a fever came upon him, and when he returned home, it still followed him. Indeed, although he lived for seven years after his return, he was never well again. Among his effects there was a sketch made to indicate to his physician the seat of his illness.

Drer did not paint great frescoes upon walls as did Raphael, Michael Angelo, and all great Italian artists; but instead he painted on wood, canvas, and in oils.

In all the civilised world Drer was honoured equally with the great Italian painters of his time. He was a man of much conscientiousness, dignity, and tenderness. He was devoted to his home and country, and regarded the problems of life intellectually. When he came to die, his end was so unexpected that those dearest to him could not reach his bedside. He was buried in St. John's cemetery in Nuremberg. After his death, Martin Luther wrote as follows to their mutual friend, Eoban Hesse:

"As for Drer; a.s.suredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the best of men, yet you may well hold him happy that he has made so good an end, and that Christ has taken him from the midst of this time of troubles, and from yet greater troubles in store, lest he, that deserved to behold nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold the worst. Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers, Amen."

PLATE--THE NATIVITY

Our description of this painting calls attention to the fact that the columns and arches of the picturesque ruin belong to a much later period in history than the birth of Christ. Drer was not acquainted with any earlier style of architecture than the Romanesque and therefore he used it here. "The ruin serves as a stable. A roof of board is built out in front of the side-room which shelters the ox and a.s.s, and under this lean-to lies the new born babe surrounded by angels who express their childish joy. Mary kneels and contemplates her child with glad emotion. Joseph, also deeply moved, kneels down on the other side of the child, outside the shelter of the roof. Some shepherds to whom the angel, who is still seen hovering in the air, has announced the tidings, are already entering from without the walls." (Knackfuss). The picture is the central panel of an altar-piece now in the Old Pinakothek at Munich. Drer's oil painting of the four apostles--John, Peter, Mark, and Paul--is in the same gallery. Other Drer pictures are: "The Knight, Death and the Devil,"

"The Adoration of the Magi," "Melancholy," and portraits of himself.