DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0082
62
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
nesses of himself and Pirkheimer and Hieronymus of Augsburg,
besides the Fuggers and the Kolbs which we cannot identify.
While our artist was still at Venice he made studies1 for a
figure of Eve and he painted, either then or immediately on his
return home, the two fine panels of ‘ Adam and Eve ’ now in the
Pitti Palace at Florence, and of which well-known copies are at
Madrid and Mainz. In this picture also the Venetian influence
is apparent.
In March 1507, doubtless immediately after the completion
of the ‘ Adam and Eve,’ Diirer began to paint the ugliest and
most elaborate picture he ever made. It was ordered by Duke
Friedrich the Wise, and the subject chosen was the Martyrdom
of the Ten Thousand by Sapor II. Fate, which has seriously
injured some of Durer’s masterpieces and utterly destroyed others,
has unkindly left this one to hang in faultless preservation upon
the walls of the Vienna gallery. It contains many well-drawn
figures, and the multiplicity of incident in it is astonishing, but
it lacks all dramatic unity. The frightfulness of the deeds
depicted fails to affect the spectator with horror. The artist
merely added figure to figure till the panel was full. His
imagination never grasped the tragic scene as a whole. He did
not conceive the picture; he constructed it. It devoured a year
of the best part of his life and all that it devoured was wasted.
While Diirer was at work upon the 1 Martyrdom ’ he met
Jacob Heller of Frankfurt at the house of a relative2. Heller
was a rich merchant of high position in his own town. He was
several times employed in offices of public trust. Being childless
he was impelled to spend some of his wealth upon monuments
to perpetuate the memory of his name. He caused a sculptured
group representing the scene at Calvary to be erected in the
Churchyard at Frankfurt. He also embellished the chapel of
S. Thomas in the Dominican church, where he was afterwards
buried, and he employed Diirer to paint an altar-piece for it.
He was a morbidly religious person of the old school, terribly
1 Now in the British Museum.
2 Otto Cornill, y. Heller und A. D., Frankfurt a. M. 1871. C. Ephrussi, Le
Triptique cP A. D. dit le Tableau de Heller, Paris, 1876, with 19 reproductions. See
also the same author’s A. D. et see dessins, p. 152 for a list of the known existing
studies for the Heller picture.
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
nesses of himself and Pirkheimer and Hieronymus of Augsburg,
besides the Fuggers and the Kolbs which we cannot identify.
While our artist was still at Venice he made studies1 for a
figure of Eve and he painted, either then or immediately on his
return home, the two fine panels of ‘ Adam and Eve ’ now in the
Pitti Palace at Florence, and of which well-known copies are at
Madrid and Mainz. In this picture also the Venetian influence
is apparent.
In March 1507, doubtless immediately after the completion
of the ‘ Adam and Eve,’ Diirer began to paint the ugliest and
most elaborate picture he ever made. It was ordered by Duke
Friedrich the Wise, and the subject chosen was the Martyrdom
of the Ten Thousand by Sapor II. Fate, which has seriously
injured some of Durer’s masterpieces and utterly destroyed others,
has unkindly left this one to hang in faultless preservation upon
the walls of the Vienna gallery. It contains many well-drawn
figures, and the multiplicity of incident in it is astonishing, but
it lacks all dramatic unity. The frightfulness of the deeds
depicted fails to affect the spectator with horror. The artist
merely added figure to figure till the panel was full. His
imagination never grasped the tragic scene as a whole. He did
not conceive the picture; he constructed it. It devoured a year
of the best part of his life and all that it devoured was wasted.
While Diirer was at work upon the 1 Martyrdom ’ he met
Jacob Heller of Frankfurt at the house of a relative2. Heller
was a rich merchant of high position in his own town. He was
several times employed in offices of public trust. Being childless
he was impelled to spend some of his wealth upon monuments
to perpetuate the memory of his name. He caused a sculptured
group representing the scene at Calvary to be erected in the
Churchyard at Frankfurt. He also embellished the chapel of
S. Thomas in the Dominican church, where he was afterwards
buried, and he employed Diirer to paint an altar-piece for it.
He was a morbidly religious person of the old school, terribly
1 Now in the British Museum.
2 Otto Cornill, y. Heller und A. D., Frankfurt a. M. 1871. C. Ephrussi, Le
Triptique cP A. D. dit le Tableau de Heller, Paris, 1876, with 19 reproductions. See
also the same author’s A. D. et see dessins, p. 152 for a list of the known existing
studies for the Heller picture.