166. Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528, Northern Renaissance, German, Self-portrait in a Fur-Collared Robe, 1500, Oil on limewood panel, 67.1 × 48.9 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
This flattering, Christ-like portrait is also innovative as the artist represented himself frontally. The painting bears the inscription: “Thus I, Albrecht Dürer from Nuremberg, painted myself with indelible colours at the age of 28 years.”
Albrecht Dürer
(1471–1528 Nuremberg)
Dürer is the greatest of German artists and most representative of the German mind. He, like Leonardo, was a man of striking physical attractiveness, great charm of manner and conversation, and mental accomplishment, being well grounded in the sciences and mathematics of the day. His skill in draughtsmanship was extraordinary; Dürer is even more celebrated for his engravings on wood and copper than for his paintings. With both, the skill of his hand was at the service of the most minute observation and analytical research into the character and structure of form. Dürer, however, had not the feeling for abstract beauty and ideal grace that Leonardo possessed; but instead, a profound earnestness, a closer interest in humanity, and a more dramatic invention. Dürer was a great admirer of Luther; and in his own work is the equivalent of what was mighty in the Reformer. It is very serious and sincere; very human, and addressed the hearts and understanding of the masses. Nuremberg, his hometown, had become a great centre of printing and the chief distributor of books throughout Europe. Consequently, the art of engraving upon wood and copper, which may be called the pictorial branch of printing, was much encouraged. Of this opportunity Dürer took full advantage.
The Renaissance in Germany was more a moral and intellectual than an artistic movement, partly due to northern conditions. The feeling for ideal grace and beauty is fostered by the study of the human form, and this had been flourishing predominantly in southern Europe. But Albrecht Dürer had a genius too powerful to be conquered. He remained profoundly Germanic in his stormy penchant for drama, as was his contemporary Mathias Grünewald, a fantastic visionary and rebel against all Italian seductions. Dürer, in spite of all his tense energy, dominated conflicting passions by a sovereign and speculative intelligence comparable with that of Leonardo. He, too, was on the border of two worlds, that of the Gothic age and that of the modern age, and on the border of two arts, being an engraver and draughtsman rather than a painter.
167. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Mona Lisa (La Gioconda), c. 1503–06, Oil on poplar panel, 77 × 53 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Everybody knows this portrait: oval face with broad, high forehead; dreamy eyes beneath drooping lids; a smile very sweet and a little sad, with a suggestion of conscious superiority. This small painting, one of only thirty extant works by Leonardo, ended up in the collection of the French King, Francis I, and was displayed in the castle of Fontainebleau until the reign of Louis XIV. It is the most famous portrait, one of the first easel paintings, the most often reproduced and satirised, and one of the most influential works of the Italian Renaissance, if not of all European art. The model was probably the wife of the Marquis Francesco del Giocondo, a Florentine merchant. The work is the perfection of Leonardo’s pioneering technique of “sfumato,“ creating atmospheric scenery, or the layering of glazes in a way that blends one colour seamlessly to another. The work also demonstrates his mastery of anatomy, perspective, landscape and portrait painting. The disposition of the sitter, in three-quarter view and the background landscape is characteristic of Florentine painting at the time. But this picture is no longer presented to us as an almost fortuitous aggregate of details and episodes. It is an organism in which all the elements, lines and colours, shadows and light compose a subtle tracery converging on a spiritual, sensuous centre. On this small panel, Leonardo depicted an epitome of the universe, creation and created: woman, the eternal enigma, the eternal ideal of man and the sign of the perfect beauty to which he aspires, evoked by a magician in all its mystery and power. Mona Lisa represents a vast revelation of the eternal feminine.
168. Giovanni Bellini, c. 1430–1516, Early Renaissance, Venetian School, Italian, Saint Zaccaria Altarpiece, 1505, Oil on wood, transferred to canvas, 402 × 273 cm, Church of San Zaccaria, Venice
This altarpiece is often considered as the most perfect painting of sacra conversazione. Bellini brings to life the traditional figure of the Virgin and saints. Here, the composition of the painting (an apse surrounding the Madonna and the saints) becomes the continuation of the altar.
Giovanni Bellini
(1430–1516 Venice)
Giovanni Bellini was the son of Jacopo Bellini, a Venetian painter who was settled in Padua at the time Giovanni and his elder brother, Gentile, were in their period of studentship. Here, they came under the influence of Mantegna, who was also bound to them by the ties of relationship, since he married their sister. To his brother-in-law, Bellini owed much of his knowledge of classical architecture and perspective, and his broad and sculptural treatment of draperies. Sculpture and the love of the antique played a large part in Giovanni’s early impressions, and left their mark in the stately dignity of his later style. This developed slowly during his long life. Bellini died of old age, indeed in his eighty-eighth year, and was buried near his brother, Gentile, in the Church of Ss. Giovanni e Paulo. Outside, under the spacious vault of heaven, stands the Bartolommeo Colleoni, Verrocchio’s monumental statue, which had been among the elevating influences of Bellini’s life and art. After filling the whole of the north of Italy with his influence, he prepared the way for the giant colourists of the Venetian School, Giorgione, Titian, and Veronese.
169. Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528, Northern Renaissance, German, Paumgartner Altar (Middle panel), 1502–04, Oil on lime panel, 155 × 126 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The central panel is conceived in the traditional Gothic style but Dürer uses perspective with extreme rigour. It depicts a Nativity, set in an architectural ruin of a palatial building.
170. Piero di Cosimo, 1462–1521, High Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Venus, Mars and Cupid, c. 1500, Oil on panel, 72 × 182 cm, Stiftung Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
171. Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1450–1516, Northern Renaissance, Dutch, The Haywain (triptych), c. 1500, Oil on panel, 135 × 100 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
The central painting, now supposed to be an illustration of the Flemish proverb, “The world is a haystack; everyone takes what he can grab thereof,” is dominated by a gigantic hay wagon which, according to Jacques Combe, “evok[es] at the same time the late Gothic motif of the procession of pageant, and the Renaissance Triumph… drawn by semi-human, semi-animal monsters and headed straight for hell, followed by a cavalcade of ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries. From all sides of the wagon men scrabble over one another to pull hay from the giant stack. The only heed they take of their fellows is to thrust them out of their way or to raise hands against them. One sticks a knife into the throat of the unfortunate competitor whom he has pinned to the ground.”
Many among the greedy mob wear ecclesiastical garb, indicating Bosch’s attitude that the holy as well as profane are involved in this scavenging. A fat monk sits in a large chair and lazily sips a drink while several nuns do service for him, packing bundles of hay into the bag at his feet. One of his nuns turns to the lure of sexual enticement, symbolised by the fool playing a bagpipe, to whom she offers a handful of hay in hopes of winning his favours.
172. Hans