These qualities, which are more evident in his interiors, are also to be found in his landscapes. Sparingly coloured, with their animated skies and fluttering leaves, they are the outcome of the artist’s true sense of nature, and they give evidence of his keen observation. The facility with which he worked seems incredible. With the proceeds of his pictures he bought the picturesque Chateau of Dry Toren, and, when making little excursions in the neighbourhood with his guests, he would note the various effects that appealed to him, and, as soon as he returned to his studio, would paint pictures quickly from these sketches.
After these artists of the great epoch, who were brought up in the school of nature, the decline of the Flemish school was soon evident. This was not for lack of talent; it was simply that art was no longer the result of a direct study of nature with many of these Italianised painters, some of whom had never even seen Italy. Others were clever executants who, merely through continually copying each other, soon lost the sense of reality, and substituted for it school methods and conventional formulas.
In spite of the incontestable qualities of these artists, this school seems gradually to have lost life. It was not until after a long interval that Flemish artists, won over by the simpler and more passionate method of modern landscapists, returned once more to the study of nature, in search of the instruction that she alone can give.
David Teniers the Younger, Peasants Merrymaking, c.1650.
Oil on copper, 69 × 86 cm.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
German Landscape
It was near the banks of the Rhine that the first manifestation of Christian art in Germany appeared. The river, by facilitating interaction between Cologne and the South of Europe and Flanders, procured prosperity and culture for this city and for the surrounding country at an earlier date than the rest of Germany. Torn by violent strife, it was not until much later that the other parts of Germany attained the same degree of cultural development. The poetry of the Minnesang certainly abounded in picturesque features; the mystery of the great forests, the return of spring flowers, and the songs of constantly singing birds; and yet, all these poetical details, inspired by a love of nature, did not appeal to German painters. In the pictures of the early Rhenish School, for instance, a few flowers and plants, presented in a very summary fashion, were timidly depicted under the feet of the saints, or were to be seen against the gold used for a background to these figures.
Stefan Lochner’s work is more impressive and individualistic. Lochner went to live in Cologne around 1440, and died there on December 24th, 1451. He was the painter of the admirable triptych of the Adoration of the Magi, the altarpiece of Cologne Cathedral. We have in his work that charm of purity, softness, and delicacy which is to be found in the pictures of Fra Angelico and Memling, who had preceded him. Like them, he delighted in painting the Virgin, and with the sweet, candid type of woman he depicts, he associates the softest harmonies and the most delicate perfumes of nature as being worthy of her. Birds are singing among the rosebushes in the background, and ripe strawberries and spring violets are to be seen in the grass at her feet.
A little later, when Germany was again torn by internal strife, art began to decline, and its incoherent efforts were the outcome of the agitated life of the period. But from the very midst of those troubled times one great master emerged, whose genius moved German art forward.
Albrecht Dürer, Fir Tree (Picea abies), 1495–1496.
Watercolour and gouache on paper, 29.3 × 19.4 cm.
The British Museum, London.
Albrecht Dürer, View of Val D’Arco in South Tyrol, c.1495.
Pen drawing in brown Indian ink and with gouache and topped by black Indian ink, 22.3 × 22.2 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Superior though he was to his predecessors and to his contemporaries, both as a painter and an engraver, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), was not free from the old traditions. He was influenced by various masters. For more than three years he studied under Michael Wolgemut, and was influenced later by Jacopo de Barbari and by Andrea Mantegna. He belongs essentially to his times and, like his fellow artists, as a painter, he was a somewhat belated representative of the Middle Ages at the time of the Renaissance movement. But in his landscape drawings, both in his choice of subjects and in his interpretation of nature, he is absolutely original and distinctly an innovator. The town in which he was born, and in which he lived and died, does not account for his genius, but it was nevertheless instrumental in calling it forth.
The name Dürer has become intimately associated with Nuremberg. Like Bruges and Venice, the historical aspect of the place appeals to the imagination. His father had come from Hungary, and had settled in Nuremberg as a goldsmith in 1455. He married the daughter of a citizen there and had eighteen children. Albrecht, the third of these children, was born on May 21st, 1471 and, like many Italian artists of that epoch, served his apprenticeship in his father’s workshop. It was in this way that he acquired the skill of hand and somewhat dry precision which we see in his pictures and etchings. In 1486 he entered the studio of a painter who had a great reputation at that time in Nuremberg. This painter was Michael Wolgemut, a stiff and formal artist, who owes the place he now occupies in the history of art to his illustrious pupil.
Dürer learnt his profession in this studio, where the roughness and coarseness of his fellow students frequently tried his patience. Outside the studio the young artist obtained more direct and profitable instruction from nature. He painted his own portrait and that of his various acquaintances. He sketched or painted in watercolour the horizon which he saw from his window, the plants and flowers he gathered when out walking, and animals dead or alive. In this way he learnt to observe and to paint whatever he saw, only troubling to satisfy himself with his work. Everything seemed to him worth painting and the most insignificant objects worth observing. He endeavoured to copy to the best of his ability the infinite diversity of their forms, proportions, and substances.
By the perfection of his work, he obliges us to have the same admiration for reality that he himself had. Even when he had arrived at the most masterly certainty and decision, he retained that respectful simplicity which is the supreme charm of great talent. With his active mind and keen intelligence, he soon found the perspective before him too limited. Young and ardent, he longed to see something new, to learn more, to know the great works of the past and to enjoy the picturesque beauties of neighbouring countries. Italy, with its monuments and works of art, attracted him and, at the age of nineteen, in 1490, he went abroad, with very little money, but rich in hope and confidence. He went through Alsace, Basel, Augsburg, the Tyrol, and, crossing the Alps, made straight for Venice. Many attempts have been made to fix exactly the itinerary and dates of this journey and of the sketches from nature that he made on the way. The precocity of the young artist’s talent and the fact that there were no dates on his sketches, make it impossible to decide whether they should be attributed to this first journey or to his second pilgrimage (1505–1507). The first journey has even been contested by some of Dürer’s biographers, but it is now proved to have taken place. Fascinated by the beauty of the landscape, he must have stayed some time in Trent and made several drawings. First there is the general view, also in watercolour, in which he shows the picturesque situation of Trent with the river, towers, palaces, cathedral and amphitheatre of mountains closing in the horizon. There is also another sketch, touched slightly