The Dürer Society (3.1900)

II.
DURER. The Adoration of the Magi.
Photogravure by M. M. Braun, Clement et Cie, from the PiBure in the Tribune of the Uffizi
Gallery, Florence, No. 1141. On panel, signed with the artist's monogram and dated 1504.
The picture was painted for the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, and was formerly in
the Church of All Saints at Wittenberg. The Elector Christian II. presented it in 1603 to the
Emperor Rudolph IL, and Carel van Mander saw it shortly afterwards in the new gallery at Prague.
It remained in the Imperial collection till 1792, when it was sent to Florence by Francis II. in
exchange for Fra Bartolommeo’s Presentation in the Temple, which took its place in the Belvedere at
Vienna. The picture is executed with extreme delicacy and is in admirable preservation. “ Aerial
and linear perspective are still imperfect, but the technical treatment of the figures is as finished as in
Durer’s best pictures of the later period. The outlines are sharp, the colours very liquid, laid on
without doubt in tempera, and covered with oil glazes; the whole tone exceedingly fresh, clear and
brilliant” (Thausing. Engl. Tr.). The date has also been read as 1509 (Riehl); but the picture cer-
tainly belongs to the period of the Life of the Virgin, many woodcuts in which recall it in one way
or another. The town climbing the steep hillside in the background is a motive which belongs to
Durer’s early time. The two arches standing intact, at right angles to one another, after the wall in
which they were inserted has perished, remind one of the woodcut of the Repose in Egypt, but they
occur again in the Madonna of 1506 from the Marquess of Lothian’s collection, now at Berlin. Mary
in the Adoration of the Magi recalls the earlier Virgin of the Paumgartner Nativity at Munich, but
the later figure is the more pleasing of the two. No drawings for this picture seem to have been
preserved.

DRAWINGS.

III.—iv.

DURER. A Sheet of sketches drawn on both sides, with
studies for the Madonna in “La Sainte Famille
au Papillon.” b. 44. see Pl. XIX.

Collotype from the pen and ink drawing (8 s by ^iini) in the ColleBion of Mr. G. Mayer.

Recto.


HE Virgin is drawn in three-quarter face to the left, and is kissing the Child. In the upper
part of the sheet are two large studies of drapery, either intended as alternative schemes
for the arrangement of that part of the Virgin’s mantle which falls on the ground, or
perhaps altogether independent of this composition. The monogram and date 1519
are forgeries. The drawing has been coarsely re-touched in several places. The initials P.L stamped
on the sheet in the lower corner to the right, are the collector’s mark of Sir Peter Lely.

Verso.
The Virgin is drawn almost full-face, turning slightly to the right. The Child looks away
from his mother’s face. The monogram on the tree is false, and the drawing has been re-touched
in a few places. In the upper part of the sheet are a careful study of a hand, on a larger scale, and a
slighter sketch of a hand and sleeve, (compare the left arm of the Virgin in the Erlangen drawing, Pl. V.)
This is the first publication of these sketches, which were acquired by Mr. Mayer in 1899
from a London dealer. They are not mentioned in any of the critical literature on Durer, and have
only once been brought before the notice of the public, as Lot 39 in the Second Part of the Sale of

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