Joseph Cundall

“ Dürer's designs for the 'Prayer-book of Maximilian' also claim a short notice. Only three copies of the work are known to be in existence, one of which is in the British Museum. The margins are full of fanciful designs; amid intertwining branches, birds are singing, apes are climbing, snakes creeping, and gnats flying. King David is charming a stork with his harp; a fox is playing a flute to poultry. It is a curious mixture of the sacred and profane, for which Dürer has often been censured. The engraving of the subjects, which are in outline, is excellent. ”

“ It was to the genius of Albrecht Dürer and the engravers who translated his drawings into woodcuts that the art received its new vigour. Up to this time wood-engraving in Germany had been the work of craftsmen who were little better than mechanics; but when Dürer and Burgkmair, who knew the capabilities of the art, made drawings on the wood expressly for the engravers to reproduce in exact lines, there was a quick improvement which went on increasing in excellence for more than half a century. ”

“ The series of the Apocalypse was succeeded by three others in which the human interest is far greater. These were what the artist himself called 'The Larger Passion of Our Lord,' a series of eleven large cuts, with a vignette on the title-page; 'The Life of the Virgin,' a series of twenty cuts; and 'The Smaller Passion of Our Lord,' a series of thirty-six cuts of less size, with a well-known vignette of 'Christ Mocked' on the title-page. These works mark an important era in the history of wood-engraving and clearly led onwards to its future development. ”