DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0147
CHAPTER VIII.
durer’s last years.
Shortly after Durer’s return to Ntirnberg he painted a
half-length picture, which Thausing believes to be a portrait of
Hans Imhof the elder, and suggests may have been painted to
liquidate the debt of a ioo florins, contracted by Diirer with the
Antwerp Imhofs. The picture is now at Madrid and is one
of Durer’s finest existing portraits. The town-authorities of
Ntirnberg were eager to give employment to their illustrious
fellow-citizen. The great Hall of the Rathhaus needed decora-
tion and Diirer was charged with the direction of the work.
Three large pictures were needed to adorn the parts of a
long wall divided by two doors. The Allegory of Calumny, a
favourite subject with humanistic painters, was chosen for one
of the spaces ; Maximilian’s Car of Triumph, as it appeared in
the woodcut printed the same year, occupied the corresponding
section of the wall at the other end ; whilst a balcony full of
pipers was introduced in the middle, the pipers themselves being
portraits of local celebrities. Georg Pencz executed the pictures
from Durer’s designs. They had all to be painted over again in
1618 and now nothing but a faint trace of the work can be seen.
In the remaining years of his life Diirer was less active as an
artist than he had been before his journey to the North. His
mind lost none of its vigour but his body was weakened by the
sickness he brought home from Zeeland and by other repeated
illnesses. Still he painted and engraved several excellent por-
traits, and he wrote out in final form some of his ideas upon
artistic and other subjects.
durer’s last years.
Shortly after Durer’s return to Ntirnberg he painted a
half-length picture, which Thausing believes to be a portrait of
Hans Imhof the elder, and suggests may have been painted to
liquidate the debt of a ioo florins, contracted by Diirer with the
Antwerp Imhofs. The picture is now at Madrid and is one
of Durer’s finest existing portraits. The town-authorities of
Ntirnberg were eager to give employment to their illustrious
fellow-citizen. The great Hall of the Rathhaus needed decora-
tion and Diirer was charged with the direction of the work.
Three large pictures were needed to adorn the parts of a
long wall divided by two doors. The Allegory of Calumny, a
favourite subject with humanistic painters, was chosen for one
of the spaces ; Maximilian’s Car of Triumph, as it appeared in
the woodcut printed the same year, occupied the corresponding
section of the wall at the other end ; whilst a balcony full of
pipers was introduced in the middle, the pipers themselves being
portraits of local celebrities. Georg Pencz executed the pictures
from Durer’s designs. They had all to be painted over again in
1618 and now nothing but a faint trace of the work can be seen.
In the remaining years of his life Diirer was less active as an
artist than he had been before his journey to the North. His
mind lost none of its vigour but his body was weakened by the
sickness he brought home from Zeeland and by other repeated
illnesses. Still he painted and engraved several excellent por-
traits, and he wrote out in final form some of his ideas upon
artistic and other subjects.