Albrecht Dürer

“ He too became a goldsmith, a pure and skilful man. The second son he called Ladislaus; he was a saddler. His son is my cousin Niklas Dürer, called Niklas the Hungarian, who is settled at Köln. He also is a goldsmith, and learnt the craft here in Nürnberg with my father. The third son he called John. Him he set to study, and he afterwards became a parson at Grosswardein, and continued there thirty years.
So Albrecht Dürer, my dear father, came to Germany. He had been a long time with the great artists in the Netherlands. ”

“ His quaint house still stands, and his tomb bears the motto 'Emigravit,'
'For the great painter never dies.'
Albrecht Dürer's name ranks with the names of the first painters of any time or country, though his work as a painter was, as in the case of William Hogarth, subservient to his work as an engraver. With the knowledge of a later generation to that of the earliest Italian and Flemish painters, Albrecht Dürer had much of their singleness of purpose, assiduity of application, and profound feeling. He had to labour against a tendency to uncouthness in stiff lines and angular figures ”

“ The ramparts of the city with their towers and gateways, the splendid buildings enclosed, were like miracles to the youth. It was a fête day in celebration of the marriage of the son of a prominent citizen, Pirkheimer by name. Albrecht Durer, for that was the youth’s name, long studied the gay throng, little thinking how in the future the name of his son and that of [169] the bridegroom there would together be known to fame, the one as the greatest artist, the other as the most learned man of Nuremberg. ”

“ The grandfather turned goldsmith, and his eldest son, Albrecht Dürer the elder, came to Nuremberg in 1455 and settled in the Burgstrasse (No. 27) . He became one of the leading goldsmiths of the town; married and had eighteen children, of whom only three, boys, grew up. Albrecht, or as we call him Albert Dürer, was the eldest of these. He was born May 21, 1471, in his father's house, and Anthoni Koberger, the printer and bookseller, the Stein of those days, stood godfather to him. The maintenance of so large a family involved the father, skilful artist as he was, in unremitting toil. ”

“ They had followed the Byzantine models largely, and had been influenced by the servile and narrow influences of the middle ages. With the new intellectual and spiritual life which sprang up in the fifteenth century, artistic life awoke in Germany. Dürer was the first and greatest master of the school. He was born in Nuremberg on the 21st of May, 1471.
His father was a Hungarian, who settled in Nuremberg as a goldsmith. Albrecht Dürer was taught his father’s trade, but fortunately his talent for art was observed, and he was sent, in 1484, a boy of thirteen years, to Schongauer. ”

“ A few months after a much longed for son came to bless the Pirkheimers, a little boy was born in the goldsmith’s house whom they named, for his father, Albrecht Durer. As the years went by, seventeen other children came to the Durer home. Three only of all these children grew to maturity.
With such a family to support we can easily imagine that the father’s life was a hard one. He was a pious and industrious man whom his illustrious son never tires of praising. ”

“ The purity, truth, and depth of the man's spirit, from which ideal beauty proceeds, no man could add to.
Among Albrecht Dürer's greatest paintings are his 'Adoration of the Trinity' at Vienna, his 'Adam and Eve' at Florence, and that last picture of 'The Apostles,' presented by Albrecht Dürer to his native city, 'in remembrance of his career as an artist, and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period.' The prominence given to the Bible in the picture, points to it as the last appeal in the great spiritual struggle. ”

“ While executing a large amount of work for the great towns and sovereign princes of Germany, some of whom were said to consult the painter on their military operations, relying on his knowledge of mathematics, and his being able to apply it to military engineering and fortification, Albrecht Dürer was constantly improving and advancing in his art, laying down his prejudices, and acquiring fresh ideas, as well as fresh information, according to the slow but sure process of the true German mind, till his last work was incomparably his best. ”

“ God grant you grace to persevere; the adversaries, indeed, are strong, but God is stronger, and is wont to help the sick who call upon Him and acknowledge Him. I want you, dear Herr Albrecht Dürer, to make a drawing for me of the instrument you saw at Herr Pirkheimer's, wherewith they measure distances both far and wide. You told me about it at Antwerp. Or perhaps Herr Pirkheimer would send me the design of it--he would be doing me a great favour. I want also to know how much a set of impressions of all your prints costs, and whether anything new has come out at Nürnberg relating to my art. ”

“ Little wonder that Albert Dürer, and Michael Angelo found such deep satisfaction in Him as the object of their worship--his method of docility was next-of-kin to that of their art. Respect and solicitude create the soul, and these two pre-eminently docile passions preside over the soul's creation, whether it be a society, a life, or a thing of beauty.
V
Here, when art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart,
Lived and laboured Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art. ”

“ In that quaint old town where they make the toys of the world, where the famous Albrecht Dürer once lived and drew and painted, had lived a certain honest young man named Palm, and his young wife, Anna. He was a bookseller, and respected by everybody.
One day he received a package of books by mail which he was to sell in his shop. The name of the book was "Germany in Her Deepest Degradation," but it was anonymous.
Herr Bookseller Palm placed the books in his shop as requested. ”

“ Thus the new art became a mirror of almost all the life and thoughts of the age. The genius of Albrecht Dürer cannot be rightly estimated without taking into account the position which the arts of engraving on metal and on wood thus held in the culture of this time. He was indeed professionally and in the first place a painter; but throughout his career a great, and on the whole the most successful, part of his industry was devoted to drawing on the block for the woodcutter or engraving with his own hand on copper. ”

“ From the king's Privy Purse Accounts of 1538 we learn that Dürer also furnished a painted model of the silver altar in Sigismund Chapel; but the actual pictures (illustration 92) , which represent the story of Christ's Passion, are of higher artistic value than Dürer's authenticated works. In the treatment of his subject the painter follows, it is true, the so-called "Little Passion" of Albrecht Dürer, which of course his brother would have done ”

“ He is gone, good Ulrich; our Albrecht is gone! Oh, inexorable decree of fate! Oh, miserable lot of man! Oh, pitiless severity of death! Such a man, yea, such a man, is torn from us, while so many useless and worthless men enjoy lasting happiness, and live only too long!
Thausing insists on the fact that in this letter there is no mention of Dürer's death having been caused by his wife's behaviour; but as the relation of Ulrich to the deceased seems to have been well-nigh as intimate as his own, there may have been no need to mention a fact painfully present to both their minds. ”

“ Born into German circumstances he appears in German habit—that is all.
His father Albrecht was a goldsmith, and Albrecht the son having shown himself worthy of a better education than his numerous brothers, was, after finishing school, apprenticed to and would have re [20] mained a goldsmith, had his artistic nature not drawn him to Art; at least so his biographer, i.e. the painter himself, tells us. It was not the artist alone who longed for freer play, for freer expression of his faculties. It was to a great extent, I feel sure, the thinker.
Dürer took himself tremendously seriously ”

“ Kilian's Day, I, Albrecht Dürer, at my own charges and costs, took myself and my wife from Nuremberg away to the Netherlands, and the same day, after we had passed through Eriangen, we put up for the night at Baiersdorff, and spent there 3 crowns, less 6 pfennigs. From thence on the next day, Friday, we came to Forchheim, and there paid for the conveying thence on the journey to Bamberg 22 pf., and presented to the Bishop a painted Virgin and a "Life of the Virgin," an "Apocalypse," and a florin's worth of engravings. ”

“ Honourable, trusty, and well-beloved, Whereas you are bound to pay us on next St. Martin's day year a remainder, to wit 200 florins Rhenish, out of the accustomed town contribution which you are wont to render into our and the Empire's treasury....We earnestly charge you to deliver and pay the said 200 florins, accepting our quittance therefor, unto our and the Empire's trusty and well-beloved Albrecht Dürer, our painter, on account of his honest services, willingly rendered to us at our command for our "Car of Triumph" and in other ways ”

“ Michael Angelo, Titian, and Correggio were destined to be the signets by which this great power was to be most often and clearly stamped on the work of future artists. From the unhappy location of his life Dürer was debarred from any such obvious and overwhelming effect on after generations. The influences which helped to shape him were no doubt at work on all the more eminent artists, his fellow-countrymen; on Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Burgkmair, Lucas Cranach, or Baldung Grien, to mention only the elect. ”

“ After a while he began to feel that he might paint pictures instead of merely drawing designs for metal work. He loved the work and so had the courage to tell his father of his wish to become a painter. The elder Durer was patient with the boy, regretting only that he had lost so much time learning the goldsmith’s trade. Albrecht, then only sixteen, was surely young enough to begin his life work! His father put him to study with Wolgemut, the foremost painter of the city, which is not high praise, for the art of painting was then new in the prosperous city of the Pegnitz. ”

“ Most learned, approved, wise, master of many languages, keen to detect all uttered lies, and quick to recognize real truth, honourable, Herr Wilibald Pirkheimer, your humble servant, Albrecht Dürer, wishes you all health, great and worthy honour, with the devil as much of such nonsense as you like. ”

“ The family was of Hungarian origin, though the name is German, and is derived from Thürer, meaning a maker of doors. The ancestral calling of the family probably was that of the carpenter. Albert Dürer, the father of the great artist, was a goldsmith, and settled about 1460 in Nuremberg, where he served as an assistant to Hieronymus Holper, a master goldsmith, whose daughter, Barbara, he married in 1468. He was at the time forty years of age, and she fifteen. As the result of the union eighteen children were born into the world, of whom Albrecht was the second. ”

“ Whatever one's final estimate of his art, Dürer's personality is at once so imposing and so attractive, and has been so endeared to us by familiarity, that something of this personal attachment has been transferred to our aesthetic judgment. ”

“ The town councillors sent some of their principal members to treat with Dürer, and he resigned his claim "in order to honour the said councillors and to maintain their privileges, usages, and rights." In 1515 the drawings for the "Gate of Honour" were finished, and Dürer began to press again for pay. Stabius had promised to speak for him, but nothing had come of it. Albrecht thought Christoph Kress could be of more avail ”

“ He was called home rather suddenly in 1494 by his father, who had arranged what he thought was an acceptable marriage for his son. A short time before Durer had sent his father a portrait of himself in which he figured as a remarkably handsome and well-dressed young man. It is supposed that the father sent for this portrait to help him along in his arrangements for the marriage of his son. However Albrecht may have felt about the matter of making his marriage merely a business affair, he never expressed himself, but was married shortly after his return to Nuremberg. ”

“ Given at Venice on the 18th August, 1506
—Albrecht Dürer
Noricus civis
P.S. Lest I forget, Andreas is here and sends you his service. He is not yet strong, and is in want of money. His long illness and debts have eaten up everything he had. I have myself lent him 8 ducats, but don't tell anyone, in case it should come back to him. He might think I told you in bad faith. You must know, too, that he behaves himself so honourably that everyone wishes him well. I have a mind, if the King comes to Italy, to go with him to Rome. ”

“ Peter Breughel and Albrecht Altdorfer would certainly have done far better so far as the conception of the picture is concerned, though neither of them had so much skill to waste on its realisation. Nevertheless, this tour de force is the picture of Dürer's most pleasing in surface and colour, with the exception of the Wings of the Dresden Altar-piece. It contains beautiful groups and figures, and is extremely well executed; so that it may amuse and delight the eye for a long time while the significance of the subject is forgotten. ”

“ I painted "Jerome" in oils with care and gave it to Rodrigo of Portugal, who gave Susanna a ducat for a tip. Have changed a Philip's florin for expenses and gave 10 stivers to my Father Confessor. Gave 4 stivers for the little tortoise. I have dined with Herr Gilbert, who gave me a Calicut target made of a fish skin, and two gloves as they use them for fighting. I have given Peter 2 stivers. Gave 10 stivers for the fish fins, and 3 stivers for a tip. I have made a very good portrait in hard chalk of Cornelius, the secretary of Antwerp. ”