DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0038
20
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
long friendship. Pirkheimer produced a great influence on the
painter. He had the advantage of a good education during a
seven years’ residence in Italy. He not only studied law but,
what was less common, the ancient Greek language. On his
return to Niirnberg he was made a town-councillor, and em-
ployed on various missions to foreign courts. He was boisterous
and physically clumsy, not the kind of man one would have
expected to be a refined scholar, though many of the Humanists
were not unlike him in those respects. The New Learning was a
passion with him. He also took an ardent interest in religious
reform. He was one of the three men specially picked out by
the Pope for excommunication. Towards the end of his life,
whence he still glances past us from Durer’s splendid engraving,
a certain fat dignity came upon him, and with it disgust at the
extravagant courses the next generation of reformers was
pursuing. Along with all moderate men he was troubled by
the miseries of the Peasants’ War and the threatened ruin of all
constituted authority. The gout attacked him at the same time,
and so, shortly after the death of his life-long artist friend, he
turned a sick eye on the world and went to his rest.
Still more important perhaps in the influence which he
brought to bear upon the young life of the painter was Michael
Wolgemut, his master. We know little about him except what
his pictures tell us. They would not have sufficed to keep
his memory green ; but they were not his greatest work. He
was not sent into the world to paint, but to teach Diirer.
Wolgemut, in his youth, belonged to the old symbolic school.
He worked upon the old lines, not without success. But when
the new ideas began to make themselves felt he turned to them
and it became his honour to prepare the way for the great
development which his pupil effected. Wolgemut burst the
bonds of tradition asunder and Diirer was enabled to walk free.
Though we are right to praise the man whose work is finest in
its visible results, we ought not to forget those silent workers who
prepared the way before him and so enabled him to become
great. Such a man was Wolgemut. We may still behold him
looking forth from his portrait at Munich, or better still from
Durer’s original drawing for it at Vienna—the head upright, the
eye bright, steady, and clear, the mouth firm. The well-nigh
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
long friendship. Pirkheimer produced a great influence on the
painter. He had the advantage of a good education during a
seven years’ residence in Italy. He not only studied law but,
what was less common, the ancient Greek language. On his
return to Niirnberg he was made a town-councillor, and em-
ployed on various missions to foreign courts. He was boisterous
and physically clumsy, not the kind of man one would have
expected to be a refined scholar, though many of the Humanists
were not unlike him in those respects. The New Learning was a
passion with him. He also took an ardent interest in religious
reform. He was one of the three men specially picked out by
the Pope for excommunication. Towards the end of his life,
whence he still glances past us from Durer’s splendid engraving,
a certain fat dignity came upon him, and with it disgust at the
extravagant courses the next generation of reformers was
pursuing. Along with all moderate men he was troubled by
the miseries of the Peasants’ War and the threatened ruin of all
constituted authority. The gout attacked him at the same time,
and so, shortly after the death of his life-long artist friend, he
turned a sick eye on the world and went to his rest.
Still more important perhaps in the influence which he
brought to bear upon the young life of the painter was Michael
Wolgemut, his master. We know little about him except what
his pictures tell us. They would not have sufficed to keep
his memory green ; but they were not his greatest work. He
was not sent into the world to paint, but to teach Diirer.
Wolgemut, in his youth, belonged to the old symbolic school.
He worked upon the old lines, not without success. But when
the new ideas began to make themselves felt he turned to them
and it became his honour to prepare the way for the great
development which his pupil effected. Wolgemut burst the
bonds of tradition asunder and Diirer was enabled to walk free.
Though we are right to praise the man whose work is finest in
its visible results, we ought not to forget those silent workers who
prepared the way before him and so enabled him to become
great. Such a man was Wolgemut. We may still behold him
looking forth from his portrait at Munich, or better still from
Durer’s original drawing for it at Vienna—the head upright, the
eye bright, steady, and clear, the mouth firm. The well-nigh