Chapter V (3)

A week after Corpus Christi day[V-50] Durer left Antwerp for Malines, where the Archduchess Margaret, the aunt of the emperor Charles V, was then residing. He took up his lodgings with Henry de Bles, a painter of considerable reputation, called Civetta by the Italians, from the owl which he painted as a mark in most of his pictures; and the painters and statuaries, as at Antwerp and other places, invited him to an entertainment and treated him with great respect. He waited on the archduchess and showed her his portrait of the emperor, and would have presented it to her, but she would by no means accept of it;--probably because she could not well receive such a gift without making the artist a suitable return, for it appears, from a subsequent passage in Durer’s Journal, that she had no particular objection to receive other works of art when they cost her nothing.

[Footnote V-50: Corpus Christi day is a moveable festival, and is
celebrated on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday.]

In the course of a few days Durer returned to Antwerp, where he shortly afterwards saw Lucas Van Leyden, the celebrated painter and engraver, whose plates at that time were by many considered nearly equal to his own. Durer’s brief notice of his talented contemporary is as follows: “Received an invitation from Master Lucas, who engraves on copper. He is a little man, and a native of Leyden in Holland.” Subsequently he mentions having drawn Lucas’s portrait in crayons; and having exchanged some of his own works to the value of eight florins for a complete set of Lucas’s engravings. Durer in this part of his Journal, after enumerating the portraits he had taken and the exchanges he had made since his return from Malines to Antwerp, thus speaks of the manner in which he was rewarded: “In all my transactions in the Netherlands--for my paintings, drawings, and in disposing of my works--both with high and low I have had the disadvantage. The Lady Margaret, especially, for all that I have given her and done for her, has not made me the least recompense.”

Durer now began to make preparations for his return home. He engaged a waggoner to take him and his wife to Cologne; he exchanged a portrait of the emperor for some white English cloth; and, on 1st July, he borrowed of Alexander Imhoff a hundred gold guilders to be repaid at Nuremberg; another proof that Durer, though treated with great distinction in the Low Countries, had not derived much pecuniary advantage during the period of his residence there. On the 2nd July, when he was about to leave Antwerp, the King of Denmark, Christian II, who had recently arrived in Flanders, sent for him to take his portrait. He first drew his majesty with black chalk--mit der Kohlen--and afterwards went with him to Brussels, where he appears to have painted his portrait in oil colours, and for which he received thirty florins. At Brussels, on the Sunday before St. Margaret’s Day,[V-51] the King of Denmark gave a grand banquet to the Emperor and the Archduchess Margaret, to which Durer had the honour of being invited, and failed not to attend. On the following Friday he left Brussels to return to Nuremberg, proceeding by way of Aix-la-Chapelle to Cologne.

[Footnote V-51: St. Margaret’s day is the 20th July.]

Out of a variety of other matters which Durer has mentioned in his Journal, the following--which could not be conveniently given in chronological order in the preceding abstract--may not, perhaps, be wholly uninteresting. He painted a portrait of one Nicholas, an astronomer, who was in the service of the King of England, and who was of great service to Durer on several occasions.[V-52] He gave one florin and eight stivers for wood, but whether for drawing on, or for fuel, is uncertain. He only mentions having made two drawings on wood during his residence in the Low Countries, and both were of the arms of Von Rogendorff, noticed at page 236. In one of those instances, he distinctly says that he made the drawing, “_das man’s schneiden mag_”--that it may be engraved. The word “_man’s_” clearly shows that it was to be engraved by another person.--He mentions that since Raffaele’s death his works are dispersed--“_verzogen_,”--and that one of that master’s pupils, by name “Thomas Polonier,” had called on him and made him a present of an antique ring. In a subsequent passage he calls this person “Thomas Polonius,” and says that he had given him a set of his works to be sent to Rome and exchanged for “_Raphaelische Sache_”--things by Raffaele.

[Footnote V-52: Durer says that this astronomer was a German, and
a native of Munich.]

It has been said, though without sufficient authority, that Durer, weary of a home where he was made miserable by his bad-tempered, avaricious wife, left Nuremberg, and visited the Low Countries alone for the purpose of avoiding her constant annoyance. There is, however, no evidence of Durer’s visiting the Low Countries previous to 1520, when he was accompanied by his wife; nor is there any authentic record of his ever again visiting Flanders subsequent to the latter end of August 1521, when he left Brussels to return to Nuremberg. In 1522, Durer published the first edition of the Triumphal Car of the Emperor Maximilian, the designs for which had probably been made five or six years before. One of the best portraits drawn by Durer on wood also bears the date 1522. It is that of his friend Ulrich Varnbuler,[V-53]-- mentioned at page 253,--and is of large size, being about seventeen inches high by twelve and three-fourths wide. The head is full of character, and the engraving is admirably executed. From 1522 to 1528, the year of Durer’s death, he seems to have almost entirely given up the practice of drawing on wood, as there are only three cuts with his mark which contain a date between those years; they are his own arms dated 1523; his own portrait dated 1527; and the siege of a fortified city previously noticed at page 253, also dated 1527. The following is a reduced copy of the cut of Durer’s arms. The pair of _doors_ on the shield--in German _Durer_ or _Thurer_--is a rebus of the artist’s name; after the manner of the Lucys of our own country, who bore three _luces_,[V-54] or pikes--fish, not weapons--argent, in their coat of arms.

[Footnote V-53: Ulrich Varnbuler was subsequently the chancellor
of the Emperor Ferdinand I. Durer mentions him in a letter
addressed to “Hernn Frey in Zurich,” and dated from Nuremberg on
the Sunday _after St. Andrew’s day_, 1523. With this letter Durer
sent to his correspondent a humorous sketch, in pen and ink, of
apes dancing, which in 1776 was still preserved in the Public
Library of Basle. The date of this letter proves the incorrectness
of Mr. Ottley’s statement, in page 723 of his Inquiry, where he
says that Durer did not return to Nuremberg from the Low Countries
“until _the middle of the year_ 1524.” Mr. Ottley is not more
correct when he says, at page 735, that the portrait of Varnbuler
is the “size of nature.”]

[Footnote V-54: It is supposed that Shakspeare, in alluding to the
“dozen white luces” in Master Shallow’s coat of arms,--Merry Wives
of Windsor, Act I,--intended to ridicule Sir Thomas Lucy of
Charlecotte, Wiltshire, before whom he is said to have been
brought in his youth on a charge of deer-stealing.]

The last of Durer’s engravings on copper is a portrait of Melancthon, dated 1526, the year in which the meek and learned reformer visited Nuremberg. The following is a reduced copy of his own portrait, perhaps the last drawing that he made on wood. It is probably a good likeness of the artist; at any rate it bears a great resemblance to the portrait said to be intended for Durer’s own in his carving of the naming of St. John, of which some account is given at page 259. The size of the original is eleven inches and three-eighths high by ten inches wide. According to Bartsch, the earliest impressions have not the arms and mark, and are inscribed above the border at the top: “_Albrecht Durer’s Conterfeyt_”--Albert Durer’s portrait. It would seem that the block had been preserved for many years subsequent to the date, for I have now before me an impression, on comparatively modern paper, from which it is evident that at the time of its being taken, the block had been much corroded by worms.

It is probable that between 1522 and 1528 the treatises of which Durer is the author were chiefly composed. Their Titles are An Essay on the Fortification of Towns and Villages; Instructions for Measuring with the Rule and Compass; and On the Proportions of the Human Body.[V-55] They were all published at Nuremberg with illustrative wood-cuts; the first in 1527, and the other two in 1528. It is to the latter work that Hogarth alludes, in his Analysis of Beauty, when he speaks of Albert Durer, Lamozzo, and others, having “puzzled mankind with a heap of minute unnecessary divisions” in their rules for correctly drawing the human figure.

[Footnote V-55: Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett,
Schloss, und Flecken; Underweysung der Messung mit der Zirckel und
Richtscheyt; Bucher von Menschlicher Proportion. All in folio.
Those treatises were subsequently translated into Latin and
several times reprinted. The treatise on the Proportions of the
Human Body was also translated into French and printed at Paris in
1557. A collection of Durer’s writings was published by J. Jansen,
1604.]

After a life of unremitted application,--as is sufficiently proved by the number of his works as a painter, an engraver, and a designer on wood,--Albert Durer died at Nuremberg on 6th April 1528, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. His wife’s wretched temper had unquestionably rendered the latter years of his life very unhappy, and in her eagerness to obtain money she appears to have urged her husband to what seems more like the heartless toil of a slave than an artist’s exercise of his profession. It is said that her sitting-room was under her husband’s studio, and that she was accustomed to give an admonitory knock against the ceiling whenever she suspected that he was “not getting forward with his work.” The following extracts from a letter, written by Bilibald Pirkheimer shortly after Durer’s death, will show that common fame has not greatly belied this heartless, selfish woman, in ascribing, in a great measure, her husband’s death to the daily vexation which she caused him, and to her urging him to continual application in order that a greater sum might be secured to her on his decease. The passages relating to Durer in Pirkheimer’s letter are to the following effect.[V-56]

[Footnote V-56: This letter is addressed to “Johann Tscherte,” an
architect residing at Vienna, the mutual friend of Pirkheimer and
Durer.--Von Murr, Journal, 10er Theil, S. 36.]

“I have indeed lost in Albert one of the best friends I had on earth; and nothing pains me more than the thought of his death having been so melancholy, which, next to the will of Providence, I can ascribe to no one but his wife, for she fretted him so much and tasked him so hard that he departed sooner than he otherwise would. He was dried up like a bundle of straw; durst never enjoy himself nor enter into company. This bad woman, moreover, was anxious about that for which she had no occasion to take heed,--she urged him to labour day and night solely that he might earn money, even at the cost of his life, and leave it to her; she was content to live despised, as she does still, provided Albert might leave her six thousand guilders. But she cannot enjoy them: the sum of the matter is, she alone has been the cause of his death. I have often expostulated with her about her fretful, jealous conduct, and warned her what the consequences would be, but have only met with reproach. To the friends and sincere well-wishers of Albert she was sure to be the enemy; while such conduct was to him a cause of exceeding grief, and contributed to bring him to the grave. I have not seen her since his death; she will have nothing to say to me, although I have on many occasions rendered her great service. Whoever contradicts her, or gives not way to her in all things, is sure to incur her enmity; I am, therefore, better pleased that she should keep herself away. She and her sister are not indeed women of loose character; but, on the contrary, are, as I believe, of honest reputation and religious; one would, however, rather have one of the other kind who otherwise conducts herself in a pleasant manner, than a fretful, jealous, scolding wife--however devout she may be--with whom a man can have no peace either day or night. We must, however, leave the matter to the will of God, who will be gracious and merciful to Albert, for his life was that of a pious and righteous man. As he died like a good Christian, we may have little doubt of his salvation. God grant us grace, and that in his own good time we may happily follow Albert.”

The popular error,--as I believe it to be,--that Albert Durer was an engraver on wood, has not tended, in England, where his works as a painter are but little known, to increase his reputation. Many persons on looking over the wood engravings which bear his mark have thought but meanly of their execution; and have concluded that his abilities as an artist were much over-rated, on the supposition that his fame chiefly rested on the presumed fact of his being the engraver of those works. Certain writers, too, speaking of him as a painter and an engraver on copper, have formed rather an unfavourable estimate of his talents, by comparing his pictures with those of his great Italian contemporaries,-- Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Raffaele,--and by judging of his engravings with reference to the productions of modern art, in which the freedom and effect of etching are combined with the precision and clearness of lines produced by the burin. This, however, is judging the artist by an unfair standard. Though he has not attained, nor indeed attempted, that sublimity which seems to have been principally the aim of the three great Italian masters above mentioned, he has produced much that is beautiful, natural, and interesting; and which, though it may not stand so high in the scale of art as the grand compositions of his three great contemporaries, is no less necessary to its completion. The field which he cultivated, though not yielding productions so noble or splendid as theirs, was of greater extent and afforded greater variety. If they have left us more sublime conceptions of past and future events, Durer has transmitted to us more faithful pictures of the characters, manners, and customs of his own times. Let those who are inclined to depreciate his engravings on copper, as dry and meagre when compared with the productions of modern engravers, consider the state in which he found the art; and let them also recollect that he was not a mere translator of another person’s ideas, but that he engraved his own designs. Setting aside his merits as a painter, I am of opinion that no artist of the present day has produced, from his own designs, three such engravings as Durer’s Adam and Eve, St. Jerome seated in his chamber writing, and the subject entitled Melancolia.[V-57] Let it also not be forgotten that to Albert Durer we owe the discovery of etching; a branch of the art which gives to modern engravers, more especially in landscape, so great an advantage over the original inventor. Looking impartially at the various works of Durer, and considering the period and the country in which he lived, few, I think, will venture to deny that he was one of the greatest artists of his age. The best proof indeed of the solidity of his fame is afforded by the esteem in which his works have been held for three centuries by nearly all persons who have had opportunities of seeing them, except such as have, upon narrow principles, formed an exclusive theory with respect to excellence in art. With such authorities nothing can be beautiful or interesting that is not _grand_; every country parish church should be built in the style of a Grecian temple; our woods should grow nothing but oaks; a country gentleman’s dove-cot should be a fac-simile of the lantern of Demosthenes; the sign of the Angel at a country inn should be painted by a Guido; and a picture representing the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science should be in the style of Raffaele’s School of Athens.

[Footnote V-57: Those three engravings are respectively numbered
1, 60, and 67 in Bartsch’s list of Durer’s works in his
Peintre-Graveur, tom. vii. The Adam and Eve is nine inches and
three-fourths high by seven inches and a half wide,--date 1504;
St. Jerome, nine inches and five-eighths high by seven inches and
three-eighths wide,--date 1514; Melancolia, nine inches and
three-eighths high by seven inches and one fourth wide,--date
1514.]

Lucas Cranach, a painter of great repute in his day, like his contemporary Durer has also been supposed to be the engraver of the wood-cuts which bear his mark, but which, in all probability, were only drawn by him on the block and executed by professional wood engravers. The family name of this artist was Sunder, and he is also sometimes called Muller or Maler--Painter--from his profession. He acquired the name Cranach, or Von Cranach, from Cranach, a town in the territory of Bamberg, where he was born in 1470. He enjoyed the patronage of the electoral princes of Saxony, and one of the most frequent of his marks is a shield of the arms of that family. Another of his marks is a shield with two swords crossed; a third is a kind of dragon; and a fourth is the initial letters of his name, L. C. Sometimes two or three of those marks are to be found in one cut. There are four engravings on copper with the mark [[LCZ]] which are generally ascribed to this artist. That they are from his designs is very likely, but whether they were engraved by himself or not is uncertain. One of them bears the date 1492, and it is probable that they were all executed about the same period. Two of those pieces were in the possession of Mr. Ottley, who says, “Perhaps the two last characters of the mark may be intended for _Cr_.” It seems, however, more likely that the last character is intended for the letter which it most resembles--a Z, and that it denotes the German word _zeichnet_--that is “_drew_;” in the same manner as later artists occasionally subjoined the letter P or F to their names for _Pinxit_ or _Fecit_, respectively as they might have painted the picture or engraved the plate.

One of the earliest chiaro-scuros, as has before been observed, printed from three blocks, is from a design of Lucas Cranach. It is dated 1509, nine years before the earliest chiaro-scuro with a date executed by Ugo da Carpi, to whom Vasari and others have erroneously ascribed the invention of this mode of imitating a drawing by impressions from two or more wood-blocks. The subject, like that of the following specimen, is a Repose in Egypt, but is treated in a different manner,--the Virgin being represented giving suck to the infant Christ.

The wood engravings that contain Cranach’s mark are not so numerous as those which contain the mark of Albert Durer, and they are also generally inferior to the latter both in effect and design. The following reduced copy of a cut which contains three of Cranach’s four marks will afford some idea of the style of his designs on wood. As a specimen of his ability in this branch of art it is perhaps superior to the greater part of his designs executed in the same manner. The subject is described by Bartsch as a Repose in Egypt. The action of the youthful angels who are dancing round the Virgin and the infant Christ is certainly truly juvenile if not graceful. The two children seen up the tree robbing an eagle’s nest are perhaps emblematic of the promised peace of Christ’s kingdom and of the destruction of the power of Satan: “No lion shall be there nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there.”[V-58] In the right-hand corner at the top is the shield of the arms of Saxony; and to the left, also at the top, is another of Cranach’s marks--a shield with two swords crossed; in the right-hand corner at the bottom is a third mark,--the figure of a kind of dragon with a ring in its mouth. The size of the original cut is thirteen inches and one-fourth high by nine inches and one-fourth wide.

[Footnote V-58: Isaiah, chapter xxxv. verse 9.]

Cranach was much esteemed in his own country as a painter, and several of his pictures are still regarded with admiration. He was in great favour with John Frederick, Elector of Saxony,[V-59] and at one period of his life was one of the magistrates of Wittenberg. He died at Weimar, on 16th October 1553, aged eighty-three.

[Footnote V-59: One of the largest wood-cuts designed by Cranach
is a subject representing the baptism of some saint; and having on
one side a portrait of Frederick, Elector of Saxony, and on the
other a portrait of Luther. The block has consisted of three
pieces, and from the impressions it seems as if the parts
containing the portraits of the elector and Luther had been added
after the central part had been finished. The piece altogether is
comparatively worthless in design, and is very indifferently
engraved.]

Another eminent painter who has been classed with Durer and Cranach as a wood engraver is Hans Burgmair, who was born at Augsburg about 1473. The mark of this artist is to be found on a great number of wood engravings, but beyond this fact there is not the least reason to suppose that he ever engraved a single block. To those who have described Burgmair as a wood engraver from this circumstance only, a most satisfactory answer is afforded by the fact that several of the original blocks of the Triumphs of Maximilian, which contain Burgmair’s mark, have at the back the names of the different engravers by whom they were executed. As we have here positive evidence of cuts with Burgmair’s mark being engraved by other persons, we cannot certainly conclude that any cut, from the mere fact of its containing his mark, was actually engraved by himself. Next to Albert Durer he was one of the best designers on wood of his age; and as one of the early masters of the German school of painting he is generally considered as entitled to rank next to the great painter of Nuremberg. It has indeed been supposed that Burgmair was a pupil of Durer; but for this opinion there seems to be no sufficient ground. It is certain that he made many of the designs for the wood-cuts published under the title of The Triumphs of Maximilian; and it is also probable that he drew nearly all the cuts in the book entitled Der Weiss Kunig--The Wise King, another work illustrative of the learning, wisdom, and adventures of the Emperor Maximilian.[V-60] Before proceeding, however, to give any account of those works, it seems advisable to give two specimens from a different series of wood-cuts of his designing, and to briefly notice two or three of the more remarkable single cuts that bear his mark.

[Footnote V-60: Burgmair also made the designs for a series of
saints, male and female, of the family of the emperor, which are
also engraved on wood. The original blocks, with the names of the
engravers written at the back, are still preserved, and are at
present in the Imperial Library at Vienna.]

The cut on the opposite page is a reduced copy from a series designed by Burgmair. The subject is Samson and Delilah, and is treated according to the old German fashion, without the least regard to propriety of costume. Samson is represented like a grisly old German baron of Burgmair’s own time, with limbs certainly not indicating extraordinary strength; and Delilah seems very deliberately engaged in cutting off his hair. The wine flagon and fowl, to the left, would seem to indicate the danger of yielding to sensual indulgence. The original cut is surrounded by an ornamental border, and is four inches and five-eighths high by three inches and five-eighths wide. Burgmair’s mark H. B. is at the bottom of the cut, to the right.

The cut on page 280 is also a reduced copy from one of the same series, and is a proof that those who call the whole by the general title of “Bible Prints” are not exactly correct in their nomenclature. The somewhat humorous-looking personage, whom a lady is using as her pad, is thus described in an inscription underneath the cut: “Aristotle, a Greek, the son of Nicomachus. A disciple of Plato, and the master of Alexander the Great.” Though Aristotle is said to have been extremely fond of his wife Pythaïs, and to have paid her divine honours after her death, there is no record, I believe, of her having amused herself with riding on her husband’s back. The subject is probably intended to illustrate the power of the fair sex over even the wisest of mortals, and to show that philosophers themselves when under such influence occasionally forget their character as teachers of men, and exhibit themselves in situations which scarcely an ass might envy. The original is surrounded by a border, and is four inches and five-eighths high by three inches and five-eighths wide.

There are several chiaro-scuros from wood-blocks with Burgmair’s mark. One of the earliest is a portrait of “Joannes Paungartner,” from two blocks, with the date 1512; another of St. George on horseback, from two blocks, engraved by Jost or Josse de Negher, without date; a third representing a young woman flying from Death, who is seen killing a young man,--from three blocks, without date; and a fourth of the Emperor Maximilian on horseback, from two blocks, with the date 1518.

The best cuts of Burgmair’s designing, though drawn with great spirit and freedom, are decidedly inferior to the best of the wood-cuts designed by Albert Durer. Errors in perspective are frequent in the cuts which bear his mark; his figures are not so varied nor their characters so well indicated as Durer’s; and in their arrangement, or grouping, he is also inferior to Durer, as well as in the art of giving effect to his subjects by the skilful distribution of light and shade. The cuts in the Wise King, nearly all of which are said to have been designed by him, are, for the most part, very inferior productions both with respect to engraving and design. His merits as a designer on wood are perhaps shown to greater advantage in the Triumphs of Maximilian than in any other of his works executed in this manner.--Some writers have asserted that Burgmair died in 1517, but this is certainly incorrect; for there is a portrait of him, with that of his wife on the same pannel, painted by himself in 1529, when he was fifty-six years old. Underneath this painting was a couplet to the following effect:

Our likeness such as here you view;--
The glass itself was not more true.[V-61]

[Footnote V-61:
“Solche Gestalt unser baider was,
Im Spigel aber nix dan das!”
A small engraving in a slight manner appears to have been made of
the portraits of Burgmair and his wife by George Christopher
Kilian, an artist of Augsburg, about 1774.--Von Murr, Journal,
4er Theil, S. 22.]

Burgmair, like Cranach, lived till he was upwards of eighty; but it would seem that he had given up drawing on wood for many years previous to his death, for I am not aware of there being any wood-cuts designed by him with a date subsequent to 1530. He died in 1559, aged eighty-six.

Hans Schäufflein is another of those old German painters who are generally supposed to have been also engravers on wood. Bartsch, however, thinks that, like Durer, Cranach, and Burgmair, he only made the designs for the wood-cuts which are ascribed to him, and that they were engraved by other persons. Schäufflein was born at Nuremberg in 1483; and it is said that he was a pupil of Albert Durer. Subsequently he removed to Nordlingen, a town in Suabia, about sixty miles to the south-westward of Nuremberg, where he died in 1550.

The wood-cuts in connexion with which Schäufllein’s name is most frequently mentioned are the illustrations of the work usually called the Adventures of Sir Theurdank,[V-62] an allegorical poem, in folio, which is said to have been the joint composition of the Emperor Maximilian and his private secretary Melchior Pfintzing, provost of the church of St. Sebald at Nuremberg. Though Köhler, a German author, in an Essay on Sir Theurdank,--De inclyto libro poetico Theurdank,--has highly praised the poetical beauties of the work, they are certainly not such as are likely to interest an English reader. “The versified allegory of Sir Theurdank,” says Küttner,[V-63] “is deficient in true Epic beauty; it has also nothing, as a poem, of the romantic descriptions of the thirteenth century,--nothing of the delicate gallantry of the age of chivalry and the troubadours. The machinery which sets all in action are certain personifications of Envy, restless Curiosity, and Daring; these induce the hero to undertake many perilous adventures, from which he always escapes through Understanding and Virtue. Such is the groundwork of the fable which Pfintzing constructs in order to extol, under allegorical representations, the perils, adventures, and heroic deeds of the emperor. Everything is described so figuratively as to amount to a riddle; and the story proceeds with little connexion and without animation. There are no striking descriptive passages, no Homeric similes, and no episodes to allow the reader occasionally to rest; in fact, nothing admirable, spirit-stirring, or great. The poem is indeed rather moral than epic; Lucan’s Pharsalia partakes more of the epic character than Pfintzing’s Theurdank. Pfintzing, however, surpasses the Cyclic poets alluded to by Horace.”[V-64]

[Footnote V-62: The original title of the work is: “Die
gevarlichkeiten und eins teils der Geschichten des loblichen
streytparen und hochberümbten Helds und Ritters Tewrdanckha.” That
is: The adventurous deeds and part of the history of the famous,
valiant, and highly-renowned hero Sir Theurdank. The name,
Theurdank, in the language of the period, would seem to imply a
person whose thoughts were only employed on noble and elevated
subjects. Goethe, who in his youth was fond of looking over old
books illustrated with wood-cuts, alludes to Sir Theurdank in his
admirable play of Götz von Berlichingen: “Geht! Geht!” says
Adelheid to Weislingen, “Erzählt das Mädchen die den Teurdanck
lesen, und sich so einen Mann wünschen.”--“Go! Go! Tell that to a
girl who reads Sir Theurdank, and wishes that she may have such a
husband.” In Sir Walter Scott’s faulty translation of this
play--under the name of _William_ Scott, 1799,--the passage is
rendered as follows: “Go! Go! Talk of that to some forsaken damsel
whose Corydon has proved forsworn.” In another passage where
Goethe makes Adelheid allude to the popular “Märchen,” or tale, of
Number-Nip, the point is completely lost in the translation:
“Entbinden nicht unsre Gesetze solchen Schwüren?--Macht das
Kindern weiss die den Rübezahl glauben.” Literally, “Do not our
laws release you from such oaths?--Tell that to children who
believe Number-Nip.” In Sir Walter Scott’s translation the passage
is thus most incorrectly rendered: “Such agreement is no more
binding than an unjust extorted oath. Every child knows what faith
is to be kept with robbers.” The name _Rübezahl_ is literally
translated by _Number-Neep_; Rübe is the German name for a
turnip,--Scoticè, a neep. The story is as well known in Germany as
that of Jack the Giant-Killer in England.]

[Footnote V-63: Charaktere Teutscher Dichter und Prosaisten,
S. 71. Berlin, 1781.]

[Footnote V-64:

Nec sic incipies, ut scriptor cyclicus olim:
“Fortunam Priami cantabo, et nobile bellum:”
Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?
Parturiunt montes; nascetur ridiculus mus.
Ars Poetica, v. 136-139.

In a Greek epigram the Cyclic poets are thus noticed:

Τοὺς κυκλίους τούτους τοὺς αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα λέγοντας
Μισῶ λωποδύτας ἀλλοτρίων ἐπέων.]

The first edition of Sir Theurdank was printed by Hans Schönsperger the elder, at Nuremberg in 1517; and in 1519 two editions appeared at Augsburg from the press of the same printer. As Schönsperger’s established printing-office was at the latter city and not at Nuremberg, Panzer has supposed that the imprint of Nuremberg in the first edition might have been introduced as a compliment to the nominal author, Melchior Pfintzing, who then resided in that city. Two or three other editions of Sir Theurdank, with the same cuts, appeared between 1519 and 1602; but Küttner, in his Characters of German poets and prose-writers, says that in all those editions alterations have been made in the text.

The character in which Sir Theurdank is printed is of great beauty and much ornamented with flourishes. Several writers, and among others Fournier, who was a type-founder and wood-engraver, have erroneously described the text as having been engraved on blocks of wood. This very superficial and incorrect writer also states that the cuts contained in the volume are “chefs-d’œuvres de la gravure en bois.”[V-65] His opinion with respect to the cuts is about as correct as his judgment respecting the type; the most of them are in fact very ordinary productions, and are neither remarkable for execution nor design. He also informs his readers that he has discovered on some of those cuts an H and an S, accompanied with a little shovel, and that they are the monogram of _Hans Sebalde_, or Hans Schäufflein. By _Hans Sebalde_ he perhaps means Hans Sebald Behaim, an artist born at Nuremberg in 1500, and who never used the letters H and S, accompanied with a little shovel, as a monogram. Fournier did not know that this mark is used exclusively by Hans Schäufflein; and that the little shovel, or baker’s peel,--called in old German, Schäufflein, or Scheuffleine,--is a rebus of his surname. The careful examination of writers more deserving of credit has completely proved that the text of the three earliest editions--those only in which it was asserted to be from engraved wood-blocks--is printed from moveable types of metal. Breitkopf[V-66] has observed, that in the edition of 1517 the letter i, in the word _shickhet_, in the second line following the eighty-fourth cut, is inverted; and Panzer and Brunner have noticed several variations in the orthography of the second and third editions when compared with the first.

[Footnote V-65: Dissertation sur l’Origine et les Progres de l’Art
de Graver en Bois, p. 74. Paris, 1758.]

[Footnote V-66: The kind of character in which the text of Sir
Theurdank is printed is called “Fractur” by German printers. “The
first work,” says Breitkopf, “which afforded an example of a
perfectly-shaped _Fractur_ for printing, was unquestionably the
Theurdank, printed at Nuremberg, 1517.”--Ueber Bibliographie und
Bibliophile, S. 8. 1793.--Neudörffer, a contemporary, who lived at
Nuremberg at the time when Sir Theurdank was first published, says
that the specimens for the types were written by Vincent Rockner,
the emperor’s court-secretary.--Von Murr, Journal, 2er Theil,
S. 159; and Lichtenberger, Initia Typographica, p. 194.]

There are a hundred and eighteen wood-cuts in the Adventures of Sir Theurdank, which are all supposed to have been designed, if not engraved, by Hans Schäufflein, though his mark, [Symbol], occurs on not more than five or six. From the general similarity of style I have, however, no doubt that the designs were all made by the same person, and I think it more likely that Schaufflein was the designer than the engraver. The cut on page 284 is a reduced copy of that numbered 14 in the first edition. The original is six inches and one-fourth high by five inches and a half wide. In this cut, Sir Theurdank is seen, in the dress of a hunter, encountering a huge bear; while to the right is perceived one of his tempters, _Fürwittig_--restless Curiosity,--and to the left, on horseback, Theurdank’s squire, Ernhold. The title of the chapter, or fytte, to which this cut is prefixed is to the following effect: “How Fürwittig led Sir Theurdank into a perilous encounter with a she-bear.” The subject of the thirteenth chapter is his perilous encounter with a stag, and in the fifteenth we are entertained with the narration of one of his adventures when hunting the chamois.

The opposite cut is a reduced copy of No. 111 in the Adventures of Sir Theurdank. The title of the chapter to which this cut is prefixed is: “How Unfalo [one of Theurdank’s tempters] was hung.” A monk at the foot of the gallows appears to pray for the culprit just turned off; while Ernold seems to be explaining to a group of spectators to the left the reason of the execution. The cut illustrative of the 110th chapter represents the beheading of “Fürwittig;” and in the 112th, “Neydelhart,” the basest of Theurdank’s enemies, is seen receiving the reward of his perfidy by being thrown into a moat. The two original cuts which have been selected as specimens of the wood engravings in the Adventures of Sir Theurdank, though not the best, are perhaps, in point of design and execution, rather superior to two-thirds of those contained in the work. The copies, though less in size, afford a tolerably correct idea of the style of the originals, which no one who is acquainted with the best wood-cuts engraved after the designs of Durer and Burgmair will assert to be “chefs-d’œuvres” of the art of wood engraving.

There are a number of wood-cuts which contain Hans Schäufflein’s mark, though somewhat different from that which occurs in the Adventures of Sir Theurdank; the S being linked with one of the upright lines of the H, instead of being placed between them. When the letters are combined in this manner, there are frequently two little shovels crossed, “in saltire,” as a herald would say, instead of a single one as in Sir Theurdank. The following mark, [Symbol], occurs on a series of wood-cuts illustrative of Christ’s Passion, printed at Frankfort by C. Egenolf, 1542; on the cuts in a German almanack, Mentz, 1545, and 1547; and on several single subjects executed about that period. This mark, it is said, distinguishes the designs of Hans Schaufflein the younger. Bartsch, however, observes, that “what Strutt has said about there being two persons of this name, an elder and a younger, seems to be a mere conjecture.”

The book entitled Der Weiss Kunig--the Wise King--is another of the works projected by the Emperor Maximilian in order to inform the world of sundry matters concerning his father Frederick III, his own education, warlike and perilous deeds, government, wooing, and wedding. This work is in prose; and though Marx Treitzsaurwein, the emperor’s secretary, is put forth as the author, there is little doubt of its having been chiefly composed by Maximilian himself. About 1512 it appears that the materials for this work were prepared by the emperor, and that about 1514 they were entrusted to his secretary, Treitzsaurwein, to be put in order. It would appear that before the work was ready for the press Maximilian had died; and Charles V. was too much occupied with other matters to pay much attention to the publication of an enigmatical work, whose chief object was to celebrate the accomplishments, knowledge, and adventures of his grandfather. The obscurity of many passages in the emperor’s manuscript seems to have, in a great measure, retarded the completion of the work. There is now in the Imperial Library at Vienna a manuscript volume of queries respecting the doubtful passages in the Weiss Kunig; and as each had ultimately to be referred to the emperor, it would seem that, from the pressure of more important business and his increased age, he had wanted leisure and spirits to give the necessary explanations. In the sixteenth century, Richard Strein, an eminent philologer, began a sort of commentary or exposition of the more difficult passages in the Wise King; and subsequently his remarks came into the hands of George Christopher von Schallenberg, who, in 1631, had the good fortune to obtain at Vienna impressions of most of the cuts which were intended by the emperor to illustrate the work, together with several of the original drawings. Treitzsaurwein’s manuscript, which for many years had been preserved at Ambras in the Tyrol, having been transferred to the Imperial Library at Vienna, and the original blocks having been discovered in the Jesuits’ College at Gratz in Stiria, the text and cuts were printed together, for the first time, in a folio volume, at Vienna in 1775.[V-67]

[Footnote V-67: The title of the volume is “Der Weiss Kunig. Eine
Erzehlung von den Thaten Kaiser Maximilian des Ersten. Von Marx
Treitzsaurwein auf dessen Angeben zusammen getragen, nebst von
Hannsen Burgmair dazu verfertigten Holzschnitten. Herausgeben aus
dem Manuscripte der Kaiserl. Königl. Hofbibliothek. Wien, auf
Kosten Joseph Kurzböckens, 1775.”]

It is probable that the greater part, if not all the cuts, were finished previous to the emperor’s death; and impressions of them, very likely taken shortly after the blocks were finished, were known to collectors long before the publication of the book. The late Mr. Ottley had seventy-seven of the series, apparently taken as proofs by means of a press. The paper on which these cuts are impressed appears to have consisted of fragments, on one side of which there had previously been printed certain state papers of the Emperor Maximilian, dated 1514. They were sold at the sale of the late Mr. Ottley’s engravings in 1838, and are now in the Print Room of the British Museum. In the volume printed at Vienna in 1775, there are two hundred and thirty-seven[V-68] large cuts, of which number ninety-two contain Burgmair’s mark, H. B; one contains Schaufflein’s mark; another the mark of Hans Springinklee; and a third, a modern cut, is marked “F. F. S. V. 1775.” Besides the large cuts, all of which are old except the last noticed, there are a few worthless tail-pieces of modern execution, one of which, a nondescript bird, has been copied by Bewick, and is to be found at page 144 of the first edition of his Quadrupeds, 1790.

[Footnote V-68: In the Imperial Library at Vienna there is a
series of old impressions of cuts intended for “Der Weiss Kunig,”
consisting of two hundred and fifty pieces; it would therefore
appear, supposing this set to be perfect, that there are fourteen
of the original blocks lost. Why a single modern cut has been
admitted into the book, and thirteen of the old impressions not
re-engraved, it perhaps would be difficult to give a satisfactory
reason.]

The cuts in the Weiss Kunig, with respect to the style in which they are designed, bear considerable resemblance to those in Sir Theurdank; and from their execution it is evident that they have been cut by different engravers; some of them being executed in a very superior manner, and others affording proofs of their either being cut by a novice or a very indifferent workman. It has been said that all those which contain the mark of Hans Burgmair show a decided superiority in point of engraving; but this assertion is not correct, for several of them may be classed with the worst executed in the volume. The unequal manner in which the cuts with Burgmair’s mark are executed is with me an additional reason for believing that he only furnished the designs for professional wood engravers to execute, and never engraved on wood himself.

It seems unnecessary to give any specimens of the cuts in the Weiss Kunig, as an idea of their style may be formed from those given at pages 284 and 285 from Sir Theurdank; and as other specimens of Burgmair’s talents as a designer on wood will be given subsequently from the Triumphs of Maximilian. The following abstract of the titles of a few of the chapters may perhaps afford some idea of the work, while they prove that the education of the emperor embraced a wide circle, forming almost a perfect Cyclopædia. The first fifteen chapters give an account of the marriage of the Old Wise King, Frederick III, the father of Maximilian, with Elenora, daughter of Alphonso V, King of Portugal; his journey to Rome and his coronation there by the pope; with the birth, and christening of Maximilian, the Young Wise King. About thirty-five chapters, from XV. to L., are chiefly occupied with an account of Maximilian’s education. After learning to write, he is instructed in the liberal arts; and after some time devoted to “Politik,” or King-craft, he proceeds to the study of the _black-art_, a branch of knowledge which the emperor subsequently held to be vain and ungodly. He then commences the study of history, devotes some attention to medicine and law, and learns the Italian and Bohemian languages. He then learns to paint; studies the principles of architecture, and tries his hand at carpentry. He next takes lessons in music; and about the same time acquires a practical knowledge of the art of cookery:--the Wise King, we are informed, was a person of nice taste in kitchen affairs, and had a proper relish for savoury and well-cooked viands. To the accomplishment of dancing he adds a knowledge of numismatics; and, after making himself acquainted with the mode of working mines, he learns to shoot with the hand-gun and the cross-bow. The chase, falconry, angling, and fowling next occupy his attention; and about the same time he learns to fence, to tilt, and to manage the great horse. His course of education appears to have been wound up with practical lessons in the art of making armour, in gunnery, and in fortification. From the fiftieth chapter to the conclusion, the book is chiefly filled with accounts of the wars and adventures of Maximilian, which are for the most part allegorically detailed, and require the reader to be well versed in the true history of the emperor to be able to unriddle them. Küttner says that, notwithstanding its allegories and enigmatical allusions, the Weiss Kunig is a work which displays much mind in the conception and execution, and considerable force and elegance of language; and that it chiefly wants a more orderly arrangement of the events. “Throughout the whole,” he adds, “there are evidences of a searching genius, improved by science and a knowledge of the affairs of the world.”[V-69]

[Footnote V-69: Charaktere Teutscher Dichter und Prosaisten,
S. 70.]

The series of wood-cuts called the Triumphs of Maximilian are, both with respect to design and engraving, the best of all the works thus executed by command of the emperor to convey to posterity a pictorial representation of the splendour of his court, his victories, and the extent of his possessions. This work appears to have been commenced about the same time as the Weiss Kunig; and from the subject, a triumphal procession, it was probably intended to be the last of the series of wood-cuts by which he was desirous of disseminating an opinion of his power and his fame. Of those works he only lived to see one published,--the Adventures of Sir Theurdank; the Wise King, the Triumphal Car, the Triumphal Arch, and the Triumphal Procession, appear to have been all unfinished at the time of his decease in 1519. The total number of cuts contained in the latter work, published under the title of the Triumphs of Maximilian, in 1796, is one hundred and thirty-five; but had the series been finished according to the original drawings, now preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna, the whole number of the cuts would have been about two hundred and eighteen. Of the hundred and thirty-five published there are about sixteen designed in a style so different from the rest, that it is doubtful if they belong to the same series; and this suspicion receives further confirmation from the fact that the subjects of those sixteen doubtful cuts are not to be found among the original designs. It would therefore seem, that, unless some of the blocks have been lost or destroyed, little more than one-half of the cuts intended for the Triumphal Procession were finished when the emperor’s death put a stop to the further progress of the work. It is almost certain, that none of the cuts were engraved after the emperor’s death; for the date, commencing with 1516, is written at the back of several of the original blocks, and on no one is it later than 1519.

The plan of the Triumphal Procession,--consisting of a description of the characters to be introduced, the order in which they are to follow each other, their arms, dress, and appointments,--appears to have been dictated by the emperor to his secretary Treitzsaurwein, the nominal author of the Weiss Kunig, in 1512. In this manuscript the subjects for the rhyming inscriptions intended for the different banners and tablets are also noted in prose. Another manuscript, in the handwriting of Treitzsaurwein, and interlined by the emperor himself, contains the inscriptions for the banners and tablets in verse; and a third manuscript, written after the drawings were finished, contains a description of the subjects,--though not so much in detail as the first, and in some particulars slightly differing,--with all the inscriptions in verse except eight. From those manuscripts, which are preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna, the descriptions in the edition of 1796 have been transcribed. Most of the descriptions and verses were previously given by Von Murr, in 1775, in the ninth volume of his Journal. The edition of the Triumphal Procession published in 1796 also contains a French translation of the descriptions, with numbers referring to those printed at the right-hand corner of the cuts. The numbers, however, of the description and the cut in very many instances do not agree; and it would almost seem, from the manner in which the text is printed, that the publishers did not wish to facilitate a comparison between the description and the cut which they have numbered as corresponding with it. The gross negligence of the publishers, or their editor, in this respect materially detracts from the interest of the work. To compare the descriptions with the cuts is not only a work of some trouble, but it is also labour thrown away. Von Murr’s volume, from its convenient size, is of much greater use in comparing the cuts with the description than the text printed in the edition of 1796; and though it contains no numbers for reference,--as no complete collection of the cuts had then been printed,--it contains no misdirections: and it is better to have no guide-posts than such as only lead the traveller wrong.