DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.60474#0011
ÜRER experienced his richest sensations and his
loftiest conceptions in his youth. So it is with many
artist. What they feel and what they are to express
nature implants in them early in order that there
may be time for their powers to reach maturity and
also that they may acquire an experience
to support their new vision. Thus it is that the
artist of the highest creative originality may yet in
his maturer years draw largely on the experience of his youth for material.
Albrecht Durer surpassed his late gothic contemporaries not only in his
power of representation and his deeper sense of the dignity and significance of his
subjects but above all in the intensity of his nature-worship. For him nature
was personified complete and coherent; for him every landscape had an intimate
spiritual beauty. In the art of his contemporaries there is none of this. They
found no joy in soft grass or in the new green of the woods in spring, but to
Durer a wide view of valleys and mountains brought rapture and this crystallized
into those characteristics which have influenced the whole course of German
art. From this vision he drew inspiration for his ever developing powers
throughout his creative life and it upheld him during his periods of severe theo-
retical work. From the drudgery of the triumphal arch for the Emperor Maxi-
milian he turned for relief to the landscape in the „great cannon“. The inner need
which led him on to the execution of this etching revealed to him the demands
and the possibilities of his nature.
Perhaps even more remarkable than his consciousness of nature was his
innate sense for the element of the picturesque. These qualities it is which make
Durer despite Grünewald the most naive, the most original, the most unpreju-
diced of the painters of his age as he is the greatest draughtsman. Before his
I
eyes the world unfolded itself as infinite space glowing with light and colour
untrammelled by considerations of proportion, perspective or composition and
this is the immortal gift which made him unique in his age.
In comparison with the artists of northern Germany or with the School of
Cologne the old Nurembergers appear to have developed their talent for
draughtsmanship for line and form at the expense of colour and atmosphere.
The work of such men as Lucas Moser and still more of Konrad Witz had no
3
loftiest conceptions in his youth. So it is with many
artist. What they feel and what they are to express
nature implants in them early in order that there
may be time for their powers to reach maturity and
also that they may acquire an experience
to support their new vision. Thus it is that the
artist of the highest creative originality may yet in
his maturer years draw largely on the experience of his youth for material.
Albrecht Durer surpassed his late gothic contemporaries not only in his
power of representation and his deeper sense of the dignity and significance of his
subjects but above all in the intensity of his nature-worship. For him nature
was personified complete and coherent; for him every landscape had an intimate
spiritual beauty. In the art of his contemporaries there is none of this. They
found no joy in soft grass or in the new green of the woods in spring, but to
Durer a wide view of valleys and mountains brought rapture and this crystallized
into those characteristics which have influenced the whole course of German
art. From this vision he drew inspiration for his ever developing powers
throughout his creative life and it upheld him during his periods of severe theo-
retical work. From the drudgery of the triumphal arch for the Emperor Maxi-
milian he turned for relief to the landscape in the „great cannon“. The inner need
which led him on to the execution of this etching revealed to him the demands
and the possibilities of his nature.
Perhaps even more remarkable than his consciousness of nature was his
innate sense for the element of the picturesque. These qualities it is which make
Durer despite Grünewald the most naive, the most original, the most unpreju-
diced of the painters of his age as he is the greatest draughtsman. Before his
I
eyes the world unfolded itself as infinite space glowing with light and colour
untrammelled by considerations of proportion, perspective or composition and
this is the immortal gift which made him unique in his age.
In comparison with the artists of northern Germany or with the School of
Cologne the old Nurembergers appear to have developed their talent for
draughtsmanship for line and form at the expense of colour and atmosphere.
The work of such men as Lucas Moser and still more of Konrad Witz had no
3