DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52444#0022
INTRODUCTION.
thousandfold; the other presents his subject in all its native repulsive-
ness, and thus robs it of much of its baleful influence. And the same
holds good of pictorial art. The Apollos and Venuses, the Theseuses
and Ariadnes of the old Florentine engravers grouped together under
the mythical firm name of Botticelli-Baldini, however far they may be
removed from the creations of a Phidias or even of his late Graeco-
Roman followers, are still, as compared with their congeners on the
northern side of the mountains, triumphant examples of grace and
beauty, and in so far at least make good their claim to be direct descen-
dants of antique ancestors. To understand this, it suffices to place side
by side with the Italian engravings alluded to such a plate as that of
“The Judgment of Paris,” by the Master of the Banderoles (reproduced
in Lehrs’ “ Der Meister mit den Bandrollen,” Dresden, 1886). The
Italian works named belong to a period which, it is hardly necessary to
say, preceded the time of Diirer’s activity by nearly half a century. But,
all advances in the intermediate years conceded, the relative positions of
the North and the South nevertheless remained about the same. Of an
age and a country which did not hesitate, in sober earnest and by the
mouth of one of its most learned men, to proclaim Maximilian’s “Arch
of Honor” (woodcut, B 138) the counterpart of an antique Roman
triumphal arch, and which represented Truth, in the attempted recon-
struction of the “ Calumny ” of Apelles, by a woman richly attired in
sixteenth-century costume, with a big feather hat, and carrying a flaming
face,— the sun,— on a fruit-dish (see Diirer’s sketch in Thausing, II,
opp. p. 162), we must not demand that it should distinguish to a nicety
between the Roman Fortuna and the Greek Nemesis.
To these racial difficulties, however, there must, finally, be added, in
the case of Diirer, still others which arise out of the individuality of the
artist himself. With Faust, he also might have sighed that two souls
dwelt within his breast: one, that of the scientific investigator, the man
of facts, the reasoner,— the other, that of the artist, burning with a con-
stant yearning for the visual embodiment of his longings, which in-
iv
thousandfold; the other presents his subject in all its native repulsive-
ness, and thus robs it of much of its baleful influence. And the same
holds good of pictorial art. The Apollos and Venuses, the Theseuses
and Ariadnes of the old Florentine engravers grouped together under
the mythical firm name of Botticelli-Baldini, however far they may be
removed from the creations of a Phidias or even of his late Graeco-
Roman followers, are still, as compared with their congeners on the
northern side of the mountains, triumphant examples of grace and
beauty, and in so far at least make good their claim to be direct descen-
dants of antique ancestors. To understand this, it suffices to place side
by side with the Italian engravings alluded to such a plate as that of
“The Judgment of Paris,” by the Master of the Banderoles (reproduced
in Lehrs’ “ Der Meister mit den Bandrollen,” Dresden, 1886). The
Italian works named belong to a period which, it is hardly necessary to
say, preceded the time of Diirer’s activity by nearly half a century. But,
all advances in the intermediate years conceded, the relative positions of
the North and the South nevertheless remained about the same. Of an
age and a country which did not hesitate, in sober earnest and by the
mouth of one of its most learned men, to proclaim Maximilian’s “Arch
of Honor” (woodcut, B 138) the counterpart of an antique Roman
triumphal arch, and which represented Truth, in the attempted recon-
struction of the “ Calumny ” of Apelles, by a woman richly attired in
sixteenth-century costume, with a big feather hat, and carrying a flaming
face,— the sun,— on a fruit-dish (see Diirer’s sketch in Thausing, II,
opp. p. 162), we must not demand that it should distinguish to a nicety
between the Roman Fortuna and the Greek Nemesis.
To these racial difficulties, however, there must, finally, be added, in
the case of Diirer, still others which arise out of the individuality of the
artist himself. With Faust, he also might have sighed that two souls
dwelt within his breast: one, that of the scientific investigator, the man
of facts, the reasoner,— the other, that of the artist, burning with a con-
stant yearning for the visual embodiment of his longings, which in-
iv