This is obvious: but who shall compare or estimate the accession of force which the tide as a whole gained from him, or that more latent power which begins to be disengaged from the reserve and lack of proper issue from which he evidently suffered, now that the great tide of the Renaissance has spent its mighty onrush and become merged in the constant movement of life—that power by which he moves us to commiserate his circumstances and to feel after the more and better, which we cannot doubt that he might have given us had he been more happily situated?



II

Only to compare the value of Michael Angelo's sonnets with that of the doggerel rhymes which Duerer produced, may give us some idea of the portentous inferiority in Duerer's surroundings to those of the great Italian. Both borrow the general idea of the subject, treatment, and form of their poems from the fashion around them. But that fashion in Michael Angelo's case called for elevated subject, intimate and imaginative treatment, and adequacy of form, whereas none of these were called for from Albrecht Duerer; and if his friends laughed at the rudeness of his verses, it was not that they themselves conceived of anything more adequate in these respects, only something more scholarly, more pedantic. Michael Angelo's verse was often crabbed and rude, but the scholarship and pedantry of Italy forbore to laugh at that rudeness, because a more adequate standard made them recognise its vital power and noble passion as of higher importance to true success. Still, in the following rhymes, Duerer shows himself a true child of the Renascence, at least in intention; and was proud of a desire for universal excellence.

When I received this from Lazarus Spengler, I made him the following poem in reply (Mrs. Heaton's translation):

In Nuernberg it is known full well A man of letters now doth dwell, One of our Lord's most useful men, He is so clever with his pen, And others knows so well to hit, And make ridiculous with wit; And he has made a jest of me, Because I made some poetry, And of True Wisdom something wrote, But as he likes my verses not, He makes a laughing stock of me, And says I'm like the Cobbler, he Who criticised Apelles' art. With this he tries to make me smart, Because he thinks it is for me To paint, and not write poetry. But I have undertaken this (And will not stop for him or his), To learn whatever thing I can, For which will blame me no wise man. For he who only learns one thing, And to naught else his mind doth bring, To him, as to the notary, It haps, who lived here as do we, In this our town. To him was known To write one form and one alone. Two men came to him with a need That he should draw them up a deed; And he proceeded very well, Until their names he came to spell: Gotz was the first name that perplexed, And Rosenstammen was the next. The Notary was much astonished, And thus his clients he admonished, "Dear friends," he said, "you must be wrong, These names don't to my form belong; Franz and Fritz[84] I know full well, But of no others have heard tell." And so he drove away his clients, And people mocked his little science. To me that it may hap not so, Something of all things I will know. Not only writing will I do, But learn to practise physic too; Till men surprised will say, "Beshrew me, What good this painter's medicines do me!" Therefore hear and I will tell Some wise receipts to keep you well. A little drop of alkali, Is good to put into the eye; He who finds it hard to hear, Should mandel-oil put in his ear; And he who would from gout be free, Not wine but water drink should he; He who would live to be a hundred, Will see my counsel has not blundered. Therefore I will still make rhymes Though my friend may laugh at times. So the Painter with hairy beard Says to the Writer who mocked and jeered.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 84: Equivalent to our John Doe and Richard Roe.]



PART IV

DUeRER'S IDEAS



CHAPTER I

THE IDEA OF A CANON OF PROPORTION FOR THE HUMAN FIGURE

Duerer often painted the Virgin's head as a mere exercise or example in those proportion studies with which we must presently deal.

Sir W. M. CONWAY, in "Duerer's Literary Remains," p. 151.

As soon as he comes to speak of the very essence of artistic work, he forgets theories and imitations of the antique; he knows nothing of composition from fragments of Nature, of measurements and speculations. No longer trusting to such aids as these, but launching himself boldly on the broad stream of Nature, he believes that he shall attain to a higher harmony in his work.

THAUSING'S "Albert Duerer," vol. ii., p. 318.

I

The idea of a canon for human proportions has proved a great stumbling-block for so-called classical or academic artists. It is usually taken to mean an absolutely right or harmonious proportion, any deviation from which cannot fail to result in a diminution of beauty. According to their thoroughness, the devotees of this idea seek to arrive at such a scale of proportions for a varying number of different ages in either sex; often even modifying this again for diverse types, as tall or short, fat or lean, dark or blonde, but allowing no excessive variation for these causes; so that abnormally tall people and dwarfs are not considered. This is, I take it, what the great artist Albert Duerer is generally taken to have been aiming at in his books on proportion. It will not be difficult, I think, to show that Duerer had quite a different idea of what a canon of proportion should be, and how it should be applied. And certainly, had it been possible to study Greek practice more closely, and in a larger number of examples, when this idea (supposed to be drawn from that source) was chiefly mooted, a very different notion of the canon of proportion would have been forced on the most academical of theorists. Duerer's great superiority over such academical masters is, that his idea of a canon of proportion and its use agrees far better with what was apparently Greek practice.

Any one who has followed at all the interesting attempts made by Professor Furtwaengler and others to group together, by attention to the measurements of the different parts of the figure, works belonging to the different masters, schools, and centres, will have perceived that he is led to assume a traditional canon of proportion from which a master deviates slightly in the direction of some bias of his own mind towards closer knit or more slim figures; such variations being in the earlier stages very slight. Again, it is supposed that from the canon followed by a master, different pupils may branch off in opposite directions according to the leanings of their personal sentiment for beauty. The conception of these ramifications has at least created the hope that critics may follow them through a great number of complications, since a master may modify his canon—after certain pupils have already struck out for themselves, and new pupils may start from his modified canon; and so on into an infinite criss-cross of branches, as any sculptor may be influenced to modify his canon by his fellows or by the masters of other schools whose work he comes across later. In any case, this main fact arises, that the canon appears as what the artist deviated from, not what he abided by: and any one who has any feeling for the infinite nicety of the results obtained by Greek sculptors will easily apprehend that each masterpiece established a new and slightly different canon, and was then in the position to be in its turn again deviated from, as Flaubert says:

"The conception of every work of art carries within it its own rule and method, which must be found out before it can be achieved."

"Chayue ceuvre a faire a sa poetique en soi, qu'il faut trouver."

II

The same thing is asserted by literary critics to have been the cause of the repetition of subjects in Greek tragedy, and to have resulted in the infinite niceties of their forms, which are never the same and never radically new.

The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator's mind; it stood in his memory as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long dark vista. Then came the poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in. Stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded; the light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the riveted gaze of the spectator; until at last, when the final words were spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of immortal beauty.

This passage from Matthew Arnold's deservedly famous preface well emphasises one advantage that a tradition of subject and treatment gave to the Greek poet as to the Greek sculptor: the economy of means it made possible, "not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in,"—since every deviation from, every addition to, the traditional story and treatment, was immediately appreciated by an audience thoroughly conversant with that tradition, and often with several previous masterpieces treating it. By merely leaving out an incident, or omitting to appeal to a sentiment, a Greek tragedian could flood his whole work with a new significance. So that the temptation to be eccentric, the temptation to hit too hard or at random because he was not sure of exactly where the mind stood that he would impress, did not exist in anything like the same degree for him as it did for Shakespeare and Michael Angelo as it does for romantic and origina natures to-day. The absence of a sufficient body of traditional culture belonging to every educated person tends always to force the artist to commence by teaching the alphabet to his public. As Coleridge so justly remarked in the case of Wordsworth: "He had, like all great artists, to create the taste by which he was to be relished, to teach the art by which he was to be seen and judged." All great artists no doubt have to do this, but the modern artist is in the position of the Israelite who was bidden not only to make bricks, but to find himself in stubble and straw, as compared with a Greek who could appeal to traditional conceptions with certainty. Dr. Verrall is no doubt right when he says:

Every one knows, even if the full significance of the fact is not always sufficiently estimated, that the tragedians of Athens did not tell their story at all as the telling of a story is conceived by a modern dramatist, whose audience, when the curtain goes up, know nothing which is not in the play-bill.

This ignorant public, this uncultivated and unmanured field with which every modern artist has to commence, is the greatest let to the creator. What wonder that he should so often prefer to make a gaudy show with yellow weeds, when he perceives that there is hardly time in one man's life to produce a respectable crop of wheat from such a wilderness?

"The story of an Athenian tragedy is never completely told; it is implied, or, to repeat the expression used above, it is illustrated by a selected scene or scenes. And the further we go back the truer this is," continues Dr. Verrall; and the same was doubtless true of sculpture and painting. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance or advantage of this fact to the artist. For religious art, for art that appeals to the sum and total of a man's experience of beauty in life, a public cultivated in this sense is a necessity. Giotto and Fra Angelico enjoyed this almost to the same degree as AEschylus or Phidias; Michael Angelo and the great artists of the Renascence generally enjoyed it in a very great degree, and reaped an advantage comparable to that which Euripides and his contemporaries and immediate successors enjoyed. The tradition enabled such an artist to impress by means of subtleties, niceties, and refinements, instead of forcing him to attempt always to more or less seduce, astonish or overawe; strong measures which grow almost necessarily into bad habits, and end by perverting the taste they created. This, it has often been remarked, was the case even with Michael Angelo, even with Shakespeare. Yet nowadays, to enable a man to remark this, exceptional culture is required.

III

This idea of the use of a canon may be illustrated in many ways; for, like all notions which resume actual experiences, it will be found applicable in many spheres. Thus, on the subject of verse, the eternal quarrel between the poet and the pedant is, that for the first the rules of prosody and rhyme are only useful in so far as they make the licenses he takes appreciable at their just value; while for the pedant such licenses ever anew seem to imply ignorance of the rule or incapacity to follow it,—an absurd mistake, since the power to create and impress has little to do with the means employed; and if a man builds up for himself a barrier of foregone conclusions about the exact manner in which alone he will allow himself to be deeply impressed, it is very certain he will have few save painful impressions. Or take another illustration—an artist the other day told me that he had noticed that one could almost always trace a faintly ruled vertical line on the paper which the greatest of all modern draughtsmen used. Ingres, then, with all his freedom, vivacity, and accuracy of control over the point he employed to draw with, still found it useful to have a straight line ruled on his paper as a student does, and may often even have resorted to the plumb-line. It enabled his eye to test the subtlest deviations in the other lines with which he was creating the balance, swing or stability of a figure. Rules of art are, like this straight line, dead and powerless in themselves: they help both creator and lover to follow and appreciate the infinite freedom and subtlety of the living work. The same thing might be illustrated with regard to manners; a fine standard of social address and receptivity must be established before the varieties and subtleties of those whose genius creates beautiful relations can be appreciated at their full value in their full variety. This dead law must be buried in everybody's mind and heart before they can rise to that conscious freedom which is opposite to the freedom of the wild animals, who never know why they do, nor appreciate how it is done; neither are they able to rejoice in the address of others; much less can they relish the infinite refinements of exhilarating apprehension, which make of laughter, tears, speech, silence, nearness and distance, a music which holds the enraptured soul in ecstasy; which created and constantly renews the hope of Heaven. And what blacker minister of a more sterile hell than the social pedant who only knows the rule, and mistakes grace and delicacy, frankness and generosity, for more or less grave infractions of it? But the happy critic, free from any personal knowledge of what creation means, or what aids are likely to forward it, is for ever in such a hurry to correct great creators like Leonardo, Duerer, or Hokusai, that he fails to understand them; and when he has caught them saying, "This is how anger or despair is expressed," calmly smiles in his superiority and says,

"He had a scientific law for putting a battle on to canvas, one condition of which was that 'there must not be a level spot which is not trampled with gore.' But Leonardo did no harm; his canon was based on literary rather than artistic interests."

Analogies with scientific laws have served art and art criticism a very bad turn of late years. Nothing can be more useful to an artist than knowledge of how the emotions are expressed by the contortion of the features; but nobody in his senses could ever imagine that a rule for the expression of anger was rigid throughout and must never be departed from; every one approaching such a rule with a view to practice instead of criticism must immediately perceive that its only use is to be departed from in various degrees. Leonardo's advice for the painting of a battle-piece is excellent if it is understood in the sense in which it was meant,—"everything is what it is and not another thing," as Bishop Butler put it. Be sure and make your battle a battle indeed. It is time we should realise that what the great artists wrote about art is likely to be as sensible as are the works they created. How absurd it is for some one who can neither carve nor paint, much less create, to imagine he easily grasps the rules of art better than a great master! To such people let us repeat again and again Hamlet's impatient: "Oh, mend it altogether!"

IV

Now it will easily be seen that the causes which shape an art tradition may often be independent of, and foreign to, the will that creates beautiful objects. Religious superstition or formalism may often hem the artist in, and hamper his will in every direction; though it is not wholly accidental that the Greeks had a religion the spirit of which tended always to defeat the conservatism and bigotry of its priests. So that their formalism, instead of frustrating or warping the growth of their art tradition, merely served as a check that may well seem to have been exactly proportioned to its need; preventing the weakness or rankness of over rapid growth such as detracts from the art of the Renascence, and at the same time causing no vital injury. The spirit of the race deserved and created and was again in turn recreated by its religion.

Since it is generally recognised that too much freedom is not good for growing life, I think that almost everybody must at this stage have become aware of how immensely stupid the academical idea of a canon appears besides this idea. How suitable both to life and the desire for perfection the Greek practice was! How theologically dense the unprogressive inflexibility of the academical practitioner! And now let us hear Duerer.

But first I will quote from Sir Martin Conway the explanation of what Duerer means by the phrase, "Words of Difference."

These are what he calls the "Words of Difference": large, long, small, stout, broad, thick, narrow, thin, young, old, fat, lean, pretty, ugly, hard, soft, and so forth; in fact any word descriptive of a quality "whereby a thing may be differentiated from the thing (normal figure) first made."

Or, as Duerer says in another place, "difference such as maketh a thing fair or foul."

But further, it lieth in each man's choice whether or how far he shall make use of all the above written "Words of Difference." For a man may choose whether he will learn to labour with art, wherein is the truth, or without art in a freedom by which everything he doth is corrupted, and his toil becometh a scorn to look upon to such as understand.

Wherefore it is needful for every one that he use discreetness in such of his works as shall come to the light Whence it ariseth that he who would make anything aright must in no wise abate aught (that is essential) from Nature, neither must he lay what is intolerable upon her. Howbeit some will (by going to an opposite extreme) make alterations (from Nature) so slight that they can scarce be perceived. Such are of no account if they cannot be perceived; to alter over much also answereth not. A right mean (in such alterations) is best. But in this book I have departed from this right mean in order that it might be so much the better traced in small things. Let not him who wishes to proceed to some great thing imitate this my swiftness, but let him set more slowly (gradually) about his work, that it be not brutish but artistic to look upon. For figures which differ from the mean are not good to look upon when they are wrongly and unmasterly employed.

It is not to be wondered at that a skilful master beholdeth manifold differences of figure, all of which he might make if he had time enough, but which, for lack of time, he is forced to pass by. For such chances come very often to artists, and their imaginations also are full of figures which it were possible for them to make. Wherefore, if to live many hundred years were granted unto a man who had skill in the use of such art and were thereto accustomed, he would (through the power which God hath granted unto men) have wherewith daily to mould and make many new figures of men and other creatures, which none had before seen nor imagined. God, therefore, in such and other ways granteth great power unto artistic men.

Although there be such talking of differences, still it is well known that all things that a man doth differ of their own nature one from another. Consequently, there liveth no artist so sure of hand as to be able to make two things exactly alike the one to the other, so that they may not be distinguished. For of all our works none is quite and altogether like another, and this we can in no wise avoid.

We see that if we take two prints from an engraved copper-plate, or cast two images in a mould, very many points may immediately be found whereby they may be distinguished one from another. If, then, it cometh thus to pass in things made by processes the least liable to error, much more will it happen in other things which are made by the free hand.

This, however, is not the kind of Difference whereof I here treat; for I am speaking of a difference (from the mean) which a man specially intendeth, and which standeth in his will, of which I have spoken once and again....

This is not the aforesaid Difference which we cannot sever from our work, but, such a difference as maketh a thing fair or foul, and which may be set forth by the "Word of Difference" dealt with above in this Book. If a man produce "different" figures of this kind in his work, it will be judged in every man's mind according to his own opinion, and these judgments seldom agree one with another.... Yet let every man beware that he make nothing impossible and inadmissible in Nature, unless indeed he would make some fantasy, in which it is allowed to mingle creatures of all kinds together....

Any one who leads this carefully cannot fail to see that it is not only that Duerer is not "desirous of laying down rules applicable to all cases," or even of "proposing a definite canon for the relative proportions of the human body," as Thausing indeed points out (p. 305, v. 11): but that he does not conceive the proportions he gives as even approximately capable of these functions; and considers it indeed the very nature and special use of a canon of proportions to be wilfully deviated from, pointing out that, though the deviations of which he is speaking are slight and subtle, they are not to be confused with the accidental ones that can but appear even in work done by mechanical processes. Rather they are such variation as a man "specially intendeth, and which standeth in his will;" and again, "such a difference as maketh a thing fair or foul;" for the use of these normal proportions is that they may enable an artist to deviate from the normal without the proportions he chooses having the air of monstrosities or mistakes or negligences. He does not insist that either of the scales he gives is the best that could be, even for this purpose, but that they are sufficiently good to be used; and he would have marvelled at the wonder that has been caused in innocent critical minds that in his own work he adhered to them so little. He never intended them to be adhered to.

V

It may be objected that Duerer certainly sometimes thought of a Canon of Proportion as a perfect rule, because he wrote on a MS. page as follows:—

Vitruvius, the ancient architect, whom the Romans employed upon great buildings, says that whosoever desires to build should study the perfection of the human figure, for in it are discovered the most secret mysteries of proportion. So, before I say anything about architecture, I will state how a well-formed man should be made, and then about a woman, a child and a horse. Any object may be proportioned out (literally, measured) in a similar way. Therefore, hear first of all what Vitruvius says about the human figure, which he learnt from the greatest masters, painters and founders, who were highly famed. They said that the human figure is as follows.

That the face from the chin upward to where the hair begins is the tenth part of a man, and that an out-stretched hand is the same length, &c.



And again in another place, as Sir Martin Conway points out, he gives a religious basis to this notion,[85] "the Creator fashioned men once for all as they must be, and I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men." In an obvious sense these passages certainly run counter to those which I have quoted (pp. 285-207): but I would like to point out that these are dogmatic assertions about something that if it were true could never be proved by experience (see also pp. 64, 254), those former are Duerer's advice with a view to practice. Men frequently carry about a considerable amount of dogmatic opinion, which has so little connection with actual experience that it is never brought to the test without being noticeably incommoded by it. Yet it is not absolutely necessary to consider Duerer as inconsistent in regard to this matter, even to this degree.

The beauty of form which he held had been Adam's, and which was now parcelled out among his vast progeny in various amounts as a consequence of his fall—this beauty of form doubtless Duerer considered it part of an artist's business to recollect and reveal in his work. This beauty is an ideal, and his canon (or rather canons) were intended as means to help the artist to approach towards the realisation of that ideal. It is obvious also that a man occupied in comparing the proportions of those whom he considers to be exceptionally beautiful will develop and feed his power of imagining beautifully proportioned figures. It would be futile to deny that this is very much what took place in the evolution of Greek statues, or that such works are perhaps of all others the most central and satisfying to the human spirit. The sentences that precede that quoted by Sir Martin are Greek in tendency.

A good figure cannot be made without industry and care; it should therefore be well considered before it is begun, so that it be correctly made. For the lines of its form cannot be traced by compass or rule, but must be drawn by the hand from point to point, so that it is easy to go wrong in them. And for such figures great attention should be paid to human proportions, and all their kinds should be investigated. I hold that the more nearly and accurately a figure is made to resemble a man, so much the better the work will be. If the best parts chosen from many well-formed men are united in one figure, it will be worthy of praise. But some are of another opinion, and discuss how men ought to be made. I will not argue with them about that. I hold Nature for Master in such matters, and the fancy of men for delusion.

And then follows the passage quoted by Sir Martin Conway (see p. 289). It is obvious that, joined with the two preceding sentences, this passage can in no way be made to serve the academical practitioner, as it seems to when taken alone. In the same way, the sentence printed in italics in the above quotation, if isolated, would certainly seem to serve the scientific practitioners and their slavish realism, though in connection with those that follow this is no longer possible. Duerer regards nature as providing raw material for a creation which may not tally exactly with any individual natural object. This was the Greek artists' idea of the serviceableness of nature, as revealed both by their practice and by such traditions as that concerning Zeuxis and his five beautiful models for the figure of Venus. But Duerer does not confine the use of his canons even to this aim, but clearly perceived their utility in regard to quite other aims, as is shown by the passage beginning, "It is not to be wondered at," &c. (see p. 286), in which the imagination of figures not merely intended to embody beautiful or newly assorted proportions is clearly considered; and if we review Duerer's actual work we shall see how much oftener he created figures for picturesque or dramatic effect than he did to embody beautiful proportions in them, though he evidently also considered the last purpose as of the first importance, as we see when he goes on to say:

Let any one who thinks I alter the human form too much or too little take care to avoid my error and follow nature. There are many different kinds of men in various lands: whoso travels far will find this to be so, and see it before his eyes. We are considering about the most beautiful human figure conceivable, but (only) the Maker of the world knows how that should be. Even if we succeed well we do but approach towards it from afar. For we ourselves have differences of perception, and the vulgar who follow only their own taste usually err. Therefore I do not advise any one to follow me, for I only do what I can, and that is not enough even to satisfy myself.

The extreme complexity of Duerer's ideas and their application was a natural result of their having been born of his experience. For excellence is extremely various, and widely scattered through the world. The simplicity of a true work of art results merely from some excellence having been singled out from all foreign circumstances, and presented as vividly as it was intensely apprehended. This excellence may be one of proportion or one of many other kinds. Now, a figure conceived by an artist, whether he value it for its choicely assorted proportions or for picturesque or dramatic effect, may need to be developed before it is serviceable in an elaborate work of art.

Artists who work rapidly, and, whose pictures are dominated by passing moods, have always been in the habit of taking great licences with proportion, and, indeed, with all matters of fact. Duerer's aim is to endow the artist who elaborates his work slowly with a similar freedom. This energy and power in rapid work it is the ever-renewed despair of artists to feel themselves losing in the process of elaboration. And one of the reasons for this is that in larger or more elaborate work, the statement, being more ample, is expected to be also more comprehensive and exhaustive; for the time required begets after-thoughts as to the real nature of the object viewed apart from the mood, which is the only excuse for the work; and so some of the artist's attention is drawn away to facts and aspects which it would have been the success of his work to have ignored. Duerer's object was to help a man to carry out his essential intention, and that alone, in a carefully elaborated picture; the problems faced were precisely similar to those so successfully coped with in Greek statues. In the first place, he would have pointed out that all sketches will not bear elaboration if their merit depends on extreme licence, for instance. Next, that a man who had a standard of proportion could see wherein the deviations of his sketched figure were essential to the effect he wished it to produce, and wherein they were unessential. Then, if he drew the normal figure large, he would be able to deviate from it in exactly the right places and to the right degree to reproduce the desired effect. But to do this he must also have a general notion of how deviations from a normal proportion could be made consistent throughout all the measurements involved not that he would in every case want to make them consistent. Now, there is a class of artists for whom all these suggestions of Duerer's must for ever remain useless, for all science of production is impossible for those whose only success lies in improvisation; such improvisations, however dazzling or however delightful they may be, are, nevertheless, the class of art-works furthest removed in spirit and in method from Greek statuary. I do not say that they need be inferior; I say that they are opposite in method. And, had circumstances permitted, or Duerer's dowry of great gifts been more complete than it was, and enabled him to become as great a creator of pictures as he is a great draughtsman and portrait-painter, no doubt his pictures would have resembled Greek statues both in their effect and their method, however different they might have been in subject and in range. To talk about "beauty" being sacrificed to "truth," with Prof. Thausing; or the ideal of the North being "strength" in works of art as in life, with Sir Martin Conway;—is to confuse the issue and deceive oneself. To have mistaken the proper end of art, beauty, by thinking it was "truth" or "strength," is to have failed to labour in the right direction; that is all-who-ever may condone the failure.

VI

Again, Sir Martin Conway tells us:

The laws of perspective can be deduced with certainty from mathematical first principles, the canon of proportions' could only be constructed empirically as the result of repeated observations. Nevertheless, once constructed, it can certainly be used as Duerer suggested. Its use has practically been superseded by the study of anatomy.

This last phrase shows us in a flash how far the writer when he wrote it was from apprehending Duerer's meaning. How could the study of anatomy ever do for an artist what Duerer was trying to do? No doubt Sir Martin had Michael Angelo in his mind's eye; and it is true that he studied anatomy, and that his influence has been, on the whole, paramount with artists attempting subjects of this kind ever since. Whether Michael Angelo studied proportion or not, his practice exemplifies Duerer's meaning splendidly. No anatomical research could have led him to construct figures nine to twelve, or even fifteen to twenty, heads high—to do which, as his work developed, more and more became his practice, especially in designs and sketches for compositions. To arrive at such proportions he followed his imaginative instinct. He found that these monstrous deviations from the normal (which, of course, in a general sense he recognised, whether he gave any study to rendering it precise or not) produced the effect on his mind that he wished to produce on the minds of others—an effect that was emotional and peculiar to his habitual moods. We know that his constitution gave him the staying-power, while his fiery Titanic spirit gave him the energy, to carry out and perfect his mighty frescoes and statues at the same heat that the creative hour yields other men for the production of a sketch alone. This giant son of Time was able to live for days and weeks together in a state of mind two or three consecutive hours of which exhaust the average master even. Considering the rapidity and intensity of his mental process, it is a miracle that, in so many works and to so great a degree, he respected the too much and too little of human reason, and allowed himself to be governed by what the Greeks called a sense of measure, instead of yielding to his native impetuosity and becoming an a-thousand-fold-greater-Blake; and illustrating, to the delight of active and short-winded intelligences, and the stupefaction of slow and dull ones, the futility of eccentricity and the frivolity of passion when unseconded by constancy of character and labour. For futile, in the arts, is whatever the sense of beauty must condemn, however well-intentioned; and frivolous is the passion that forgets the end it would attain, and becomes merely a private rhapsody, however astonishing its developments; slowly but surely it will be seen that such fireworks do not vitally concern us. The proportions of many of Michael Angelo's figures are as far removed from any possible normal standard as what Duerer calls "this my swiftness," in the abnormally tall and stout figures among the diagrams illustrating his book.

And this is where Duerer's idea comes nearer to Greek practice. For by letting the striking rather than the subtle govern his departures from the mean, Michael Angelo found himself always bound to go beyond himself; as the palate which once has entertained strong stimulants demands that the dose be continually strengthened. Now this is in entire conformity with the impatience which was perhaps his greatest weakness; just as Duerer's too methodical approach is in conformity with that acquiescence in the insufficiency of his conditions which made him in his weak moments swear never again to undertake those better classes of work which were less adequately paid, or made him content to display mere manual dexterity rather than do nothing on his days of darkness, suffering and depression: we may add, which made him choose to live at Nuremberg and refuse a better income and more suitable surroundings at Venice.

It is obviously the more hopeful way to create a beautiful figure first and discover a mathematical way of reproducing its most essential proportions afterwards; and no doubt this is what Duerer intended should be done; and in consequence he felt a need, and sought to supply it, for mechanical means to simplify, shorten and render more sure that part of the process which must necessarily partake something of the nature of drudgery, if great finish is to be combined with splendid design. The romantic, impulsive improvisatore does not feel this need, considers it bound to defeat its own aim; and, given his own gifts, he is right. But none the less, there are the Greek statues elaborated with a thoroughness which, if it ever dims or veils the creative intention, does so in a degree so slight as to seem amply compensated by the sense of ease maintained in spite of the innumerable difficulties overcome; there are besides a score or more of Duerer's copper engravings with their imperturbable adequacy of minute painstaking, never for a moment sleepy or mechanical or lifeless. The one aim need not excommunicate the other even in the same individual; far less need this be so in different artists, with diverse temperaments, diverse aptitudes.

VII

The application of this idea does not end with the simple proportions of measurement between the limbs and parts of the figure; it is also concerned with what is called the modelling, and the treatment of surfaces such as the draperies, the hair, the fleshy portions and those beneath which the bony structure comes to prominence; in painting it may be applied to the chiaroscuro and colour. Reynolds' remarks on the Venetians in his Eighth Discourse well illustrate this fact. He says:

It ought, in my opinion, to be indispensably observed that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow, red, or a yellowish-white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green colours be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support and set off these warm colours; and, for this purpose, a small proportion of cold colours will be sufficient.

If this conduct be reversed, let the light be cold, and the surrounding colours warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters; and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens or Titian, to make a picture splendid or harmonious.[86]

Here we see a great colourist attempting to establish a canon for colour. Had he lived at an earlier period, before expression had become generally a subject of criticism, he would have described his discovery in less guarded and elastic language, such as is now applied to scientific laws. And then he might have been as excusably misunderstood as Leonardo and Duerer have been; as it is, the misunderstanding dealt out to him is quite without excuse.

Rembrandt, not only exemplifies the impressiveness of great deviations in structural proportions in much the same degree as Michael Angelo, using what the Greeks and Duerer would doubtless have considered a dangerous liberty, however much they might have felt bound to admire the results obtained; not only does he do this when, for instance, he represents Jesus now as a giant, now as almost a dwarf, according to the imaginative impression which he chooses to create; but he follows a similar process in his black and white pattern. For among his works there are etchings, which, though often supposed to have been left unfinished, are discerned by those with a sense for beauties of this class to be marvellously complete, stimulating, and satisfying, and in the nicest harmony with the other impressions produced by the mental point of view from which the subject is viewed, as also by the main lines and proportions of the composition, and to yield the visual delight most suitable to the occasion. Duerer and the Greeks are at one with Michael Angelo and Rembrandt in condemning by their practice all purely mechanical application of ideas or methods to the production of works of creative art, such as is exemplified by artists of more limited aims and powers; by academical practitioners, by theoretical scientists calling themselves impressionists, luminarists, naturalists, or any other name. For artists whose temperaments are impeded by some unhappy slowness, or difficulty in concentrating themselves, methods of procedure similar to those elaborated by Duerer in his books on proportion, properly understood, must be a real aid and benefit; as those who are essentially improvisors may help themselves and supply their deficiencies by methods similar to those which Reynolds describes as practised by Gainsborough.

"He even framed a kind of model of landscapes on his table, composed of broken stones, dried herbs and pieces of broken glass, which he magnified and improved into rocks, trees and water" (Fourteenth Discourse).

This process resembles that of tracing faces or scenes from the life of gnomes in glowing caverns among coals of fire on a winter's eve; it is resorted to in one form or another by all creative artists, but it is peculiarly useful to men like Gainsborough, whose art tends always to become an improvisation, whatever strenuous discipline they may have subjected themselves to in their days of ardent youth.

VIII

Perhaps Duerer's actual standards for the normal, his actual methods for creating self-consistent variations from it, are not likely to prove of much use, even when artists shall be sufficiently educated to understand them; nevertheless, the principle which informs them has been latent in the work of all great creators; is marvellously fulfilled indeed, in Greek statuary. The work of Antoine Louis Barye, that great and little-understood master—as far as I am able to judge, the only modern artist who has made science serve him instead of being seduced by her—exemplifies this central idea of Duerer's almost as fully as the Greek masterpieces. The future of art appears to me to lie in the hands of those artists who shall be able to grapple with the new means offered them by the advance of science, as he did, and be as little or even less seduced than he was by the foolish idea that art can become science without ceasing to be art, which has handicapped and defeated the efforts of so many industrious and talented men of late years. So truly is this the case that the improvisor appears to many as the only true artist, and his uncontrolled caprices as the farthest reach of human constructive power.

In any case, no artist is unhappy if a docile and hopeful disposition enables him to see in the masterpieces of Greek sculpture the reward of an easy balance of both temperaments and methods, the improvisor's and the elaborator's, under felicitous circumstances, by men better endowed than himself. And this though never history and archaeology shall be in a position to give him information sufficient to determine that his faith is wholly warranted.

A golden age is a golden dream, that sheds A golden light on waking hours, on toil, On leisure, and on finished works.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 85: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Duerer," p. 166.]

[Footnote 86: See also III Discourse where he defends Duerer against Bacon.]



CHAPTER II

THE IMPORTANCE OF DOCILITY

I

I now intend to re-arrange what seem the most interesting of the sentences on the theory of art which are found in Duerer's MSS. and books on proportion. He did not give them the final form or order which he intended, and it seems to me that to arrange the more important according to the subjects they treat of will be the simplest way of arriving at general conceptions as to their tendency and value. We shall thus bring together repetitions of the same thought and contradictory answers to the same question; and after each series of sentences, I myself shall discuss the points raised, illustrating my remarks from modern writers whose opinion in these matters seems to me deserving of most attention. I have heard it said by the late Mr. Arthur Strong that Duerer's art is always didactic; and Duerer as a writer on art certainly has ever before his mind this one object, to teach others, or, as I should prefer to phrase it, to help others to learn. For he himself is continually confessing that he cannot yet answer his own questions, and it seems to me that the best teacher is always he who most desires to increase his knowledge, not indeed to hoard it as some do and make of it a personal possession; intellectual misers, for ever gnashing their teeth over the reputations or the pretensions of others. No, but one who desires knowledge for its own sake and welcomes it in others with as much satisfaction as he gains it for himself. Docility, i.e., teachableness, let me point out once more, seems to be the necessary midwife of genius, without the aid of which it often labours in vain, or brings forth strange incongruous and misshapen births.

Sad is the condition of a brilliant and fiery spirit shut up in a man's brain without the humble assistance of this lively, meek and patient virtue! What unrelieved and insupportable throes of agony must be borne by such a spirit, and how often does such labour end in misanthropy or madness! The records of the lives of exceptionally-gifted men tell us only too clearly what pains those are, and how frequently they have been borne. So I fancy I cannot do better than choose out for my first section sentences which praise or advocate the effort to learn, or attempt to enlighten those who make such an effort on the choice of teachers and disciplines.

II

I shall not hesitate to transpose sentences even when they appear in connected passages, in order, as I hope, to bring out more clearly their connection. For Duerer was not a writer by profession, and his thoughts were often more abundant than he knew how to deal with.

Before starting, however, I must prefix to my quotations some account of the four MS. books in the British Museum from which they are principally taken. Rough drafts in Pirkheimer's handwriting were found among them, but of Duerer's work Sir Martin Conway tells us:

The volumes contain upwards of seven hundred leaves and scraps of paper of various kinds, covered at different dates with more or less elaborate outline drawings, and more or less corrected drafts for works published or planned by Duerer. Interspersed among them are geometrical and other sketches.

He was in the habit of correcting and re-copying, again and again, what he had written. Sometimes he would jot down a sentence alongside of matter to which it had no relation. This sentence he would afterwards introduce in its right connection. There are in these volumes no less than four drafts of the beginning of a Dedication to Pirkheimer of the Books of Human Proportions. Two other drafts of this same dedication are among the Dresden MSS. The opening sentences of the Introduction to the same work were likewise, as will be seen, the subject of frequent revision.

These drafts, notes and sketches date from 1508 to 1523. Some collector had had them cut out, gummed together, and bound without the slightest regard to order, or even to the sequence of consecutive passages. In January 1890 the volumes were taken to pieces and rearranged by Miss Lina Eckenstein, who had previously made the admirable translations of them for Sir Martin Conway's "Literary Remains of Albrecht Duerer," from which my quotations are taken.

The contents of the volumes as rearranged may be roughly described as follows:

Volume 1. Drawings of whole figures and portions of the body, illustrating Duerer's theories of Proportion. Drawings of a solid octogon. Six coloured drawings of crystals. The description of the Ionic order of architecture. Drawings of columns with measurements. A scale for Human Proportions. A table of contents for a work on Geometry. Notes on perspective, curves, folds, &c. The different kinds of temple after Vitruvius. Mathematical diagrams, &c.

Volume II. Draft of a dedicatory letter to King Ferdinand (see page 180). Drafts and drawings for "The Art of Fortification." Drawing of a shield with a rearing horse. Mantles of Netherlandish women and nuns. A Latin inscription for his own portrait. Notes on "Proportion," and on the feast of the Rosenkranz. Scale for Human Proportions. An alphabet. Draft of a dedication for the books on Proportion. Sketch of a skeleton. Studies of architecture. Venetian houses and roofs. Sketches of a church, a house, a tower, a drapery, &c.

Volume III. Drafts of a projected work on Painting and on the study of Proportion. Drafts for the dedication, the preface, and for a work on Esthetics. Drawings of a male body, a female body, and a piece of drapery. Notes and drawings for the proportions of heads, hands, feet, outline curves, a child, a woman, &c.

Volume IV. Proportions of a man, a fat woman, the head of the average woman, the young woman, &c. Short Profession of Faith (see page 130). Scale for Human Proportions, &c. Fragments of the Preface of Essay on Aesthetics, &c. Grimacing and distorted faces. Use of measurements. On the characters of faces, thick, thin, broad, narrow, &c. Sketches of a dragon and of an angel for Maximilian's Triumphal Procession. List of Luther's works (see page 130). Drawings of human bodies proportioned to squares.



See the description in "Duerer's Schriftlicher Nachlass" (Lange und Fuhse), page 263, from which the above abstract is made.

Sir Martin Conway continues:

In these volumes Duerer is seen, sometimes writing under the influence of impetuous impulse, sometimes with leisurely care, allowing his pen to embroider the script with graceful marginal flourishes.

At what period of his career Duerer first conceived the idea of writing a comprehensive work upon the theory and practice of art is unknown. It was certainly before the year 1512. The following list of chapters may perhaps be an early sketch of the plan.

Ten things are contained in the little book. The first, the proportions of a young child. The second, proportions of a grown man. The third, proportions of a woman. The fourth, proportions of a horse. The fifth, something about architecture. The sixth, about an apparatus through which it can be shown that 'all things may be traced. The seventh, about light and shade. The eighth, about colours, how to paint like nature. The ninth, about the ordering (composition) of the picture. The tenth, about free painting, which alone is made by Imagination without any other help.

III

Glad enough should we be to attain unto great knowledge without toil, for nature has implanted in us the desire of knowing all things, thereby to discern a truth of all things. But our dull wit cannot come unto such perfectness of all art, truth, and wisdom. Yet are we not, therefore, shut out altogether from all arts. If we want to sharpen our reason by learning and to practise ourselves therein, having once found the right path we may, step by step, seek, learn, comprehend, and finally reach and attain unto something true. Wherefore, he that understandeth how to learn somewhat in his leisure time, whereby he may most certainly be enabled to honour God, and to do what is useful both for himself and others, that man doeth well; and we know that in this wise he will gain much experience in art and will be able to make known its truth for our good. It is right, therefore, for one man to teach another. He that joyfully doeth so, upon him shall much be bestowed by God, from whom we receive all things. He hath highest praise.

One finds some who know nothing and learn nothing. They despise learning, and say that much evil cometh of the arts, and that some are wholly vile. I, on the contrary, hold that no art is evil, but that all are good. A sword is a sword which may be used either for murder or for justice. Similarly the arts are in themselves good. What God hath formed, that is good, misuse it how ye will.

Thou findest arts of all kinds; choose then for thyself that which is like to be of greatest service to thee. Learn it; let not the difficulty thereof vex thee till thou hast accomplished somewhat wherewith thou mayest be satisfied.

It is very necessary for a man to know some one thing by reason of the usefulness which ariseth therefrom. Wherefore we should all gladly learn, for the more we know so much the more do we resemble the likeness of God, who verily knoweth all things.

The more, therefore, a man learneth, so much the better doth he become, and so much the more love doth he win for the arts and for things exalted. Wherefore a man ought not to play the wanton, but should learn in season.

Is the artistic man pious and by nature good? He escheweth the evil and chooseth the good; and hereunto serve the arts, for they give the discernment of good and evil.

Some may learn somewhat of all arts, but that is not given to every man. Nevertheless, there is no rational man so dull but that he may learn the one thing towards which his fancy draweth him most strongly. Hence no man is excused from learning something.

Let no man put too much confidence in himself, for many (pairs of eyes) see better than one. Though it is possible for a man to comprehend more than a thousand (men), still that cometh but rarely to pass.

Many fall into error because they follow their own taste alone; therefore let each look to it that his inclination blind not his judgment. For every mother is well pleased with her own child, and thus also it ariseth that many painters paint figures resembling themselves.

He that worketh in ignorance worketh more painfully than he that worketh with understanding; therefore let all learn to understand aright.

Now I know that in our German nation, at the present time, are many painters who stand in need of instruction, for they lack all real art, yet they nevertheless have many large works to do. Forasmuch then as they are so numerous, it is very needful for them to learn to better their work.

Willingly will I impart my teaching, hereafter written, to the man who knoweth little and would gladly learn; but I will not be cumbered with the proud, who, according to their own estimate of themselves, know all things, and are best, and despise all else. From true artists, however, such as can show their meaning with the hand, I desire to learn humbly and with much thankfulness.

A thing thou beholdest is easier of belief than that thou hearest, but whatever is both heard and seen we grasp more firmly and lay hold on more securely. I will therefore do the work in both ways, that thus I may be better understood.

Whosoever will, therefore, let him hear and see what I say, do, and teach, for I hope it may be of service and not for a hindrance to the better arts, nor lead thee to neglect better things.

I hear moreover of no writer in modern times by whom aught hath been written and made known which I might read for my improvement. For some hide their art in great secrecy, and others write about things whereof they know nothing, so that their words are nowise better than mere noise, as he that knoweth somewhat is swift to discover. I therefore will write down with God's help the little that I know. Though many will scorn it I am not troubled, for I well know that it is easier to cast blame on a thing than to make anything better. Moreover, I will expound my meaning as clearly and plainly as I can; and, were it possible, I would gladly give everything I know to the light, for the good of cunning students who prize such art more highly than silver or gold. I further admonish all who have any knowledge in these matters that they write it down. Do it truly and plainly, not toilsomely and at great length, for the sake of those who seek and are glad to learn, to the great honour of God and your own praise. If I then set something burning and ye all add to it with skilful furthering, a blaze may in time arise therefrom which shall shine throughout the whole world.

I shall here apply to what is to be called beautiful the same touchstone as that by which we decide what is right. For as what all the world prizeth as right we hold to be right, so what all the world esteemeth beautiful that will we also hold for beautiful, and ourselves strive to produce the like.

No one need blindly follow this theory of mine as though it were quite perfect, for human nature has not yet so far degenerated that another man cannot discover something better. So each may use my teaching as long as it seems good to him, or until he finds something better. Where he is not willing to accept it, he may well hold that this doctrine is not written for him, but for others who are willing.

That must be a strangely dull head which never trusts itself to find out anything fresh, but only travels along the old path, simply following others and not daring to reflect for itself. For it beseems each understanding, in following another, not to despair of itself discovering something better. If that is done, there remaineth no doubt but that in time this art will again reach the perfection it attained amongst the ancients.

Much will hereafter be written about subjects and refinements of painting. Sure am I that many notable men will arise, all of whom will write both well and better about this art, and will teach it better than I; for I myself hold my art at a very mean value, for I know what my faults are. Let every man therefore strive to better these my errors according to his powers. Would to God it were possible for me to see the work and art of the mighty masters to come, who are yet unborn, for I know that I might be improved upon. Ah! how often in my sleep do I behold great works of art and beautiful things, the like whereof never appear to me awake, but so soon as I awake, even the remembrance of them leaveth me.

Compare also the passages already quoted,(pp. 15,16,26).

IV

"What an admirable temper!" is the exclamation which expresses our first feeling on reading the foregoing sentences. It renews the spirit of a man merely to peruse such things. Scales fall from our eyes, and we see what we most essentially are, with pleasure, as good children gleefully recognise their goodness: and at the same time we are filled with contrition that we should have ever forgotten it. And this that we most essentially are rational beings, lovers of goodness, children of hope,—how directly Duerer appeals to it: "Nature has implanted in us the desire of knowing all things." It reminds one of Ben Jonson's:—

It is a false quarrel against nature, that she helps understanding but in a few, when the most part of mankind are inclined by her thither, if they would take the pains; no less than birds to fly, horses to run, &c., which, if they lose it, is through their own sluggishness, and by that means they become her prodigies, not her children.

There is something refreshing and inspiriting in the mere conviction of our teachableness; and when the same author, referring to Plato's travels in search of knowledge, says, "He laboured, so must we," we do not find the comparison humiliating either to Plato or ourselves. For "without a way there is no going," and every man of superior mould says to us with more or less of benignity, "I am the way: follow me." Such means or ways of attainment have been followed by all whose success is known to us, and are followed now by all "finely touched and gifted men." I might quote in illustration of these assertions the whole of Reynolds' Sixth Discourse, so marvellous for its acute and delicate discrimination; but I will content myself with a few leading passages:

We cannot suppose that any one can really mean to exclude all imitation of others.

It is a common observation that no art was ever invented and carried to perfection at the same time.

The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own will soon be reduced to the poorest of all imitations, he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has often before repeated.

The truth is, he whose feebleness is such as to make other men's thoughts an encumbrance to him, can have no very great strength of mind or genius of his own to be destroyed: so that not much harm will be done at the worst.

Of course, this last phrase will not apply universally; we must remember that the man who sets out to become an artist, or claims to be one by native gift, has made apparent that he is the possessor of no mean ambition. The humblest may see a way of improvement in their betters, and obey the command, "Follow me." Every man is not called to follow great artists, but only those who are peculiarly fitted to tread the difficult paths that climb Olympus-hill. Yet to all men alike the great artist in life, he who wedded failure to divinity, says, "Learn of me that I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls."

He who confines himself to the imitation of an individual, as he never proposes to surpass, so he is not likely to equal, the object of his imitation. He professes only to follow; and he that follows must necessarily be behind.

It is of course impossible to surpass perfection, but it is possible to be made one with it.

To find excellences, however dispersed, to discover beauties, however concealed by the multitude of defects with which they are surrounded, can be the work only of him who, having a mind always alive to his art, has extended his views to all ages and to all schools; and has acquired from that comprehensive mass which he has thus gathered to himself a well-digested and perfect idea of his art, to which everything is referred. Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of art, he is possessed of that presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every school; selects both from what is great and what is little; brings home knowledge from the east and from the west; making the universe tributary towards furnishing his mind, and enriching his works with originality and variety of inventions.

In this tine passage we get back to our central idea in regard to the sense of proportion "making the universe tributary towards furnishing his mind"; while in the "discovery of beauties" the complete artist "selects both from what is great and what is little," from the clouds of heaven and from the dunghills of the farmyard.

Study, therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever. Study, as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, and on the principles on which they studied. Study nature attentively, but always with those masters in your company; consider them as models which you are to imitate, and at the same time as rivals with whom you are to contend. For "no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms."

Yes, an artist is a child who chooses his parents, nor is he limited to only two. Religion tells all men they have a Father, who is God; philosophy and tradition repeat, "man has a mother, who is Nature." These sayings are platitudes; their application is so obvious that it is now generally forgotten. If God is a Father, it is the soul that chooses Him; if Nature is a mother, it is the man who chooses to regard her as such, since to the greater number it is well known she seems but a stepmother, and a cruel one at that. Elective affinities, chosen kindred!—"tell me what company you keep, and I will tell you who you are" (what you are worth). How many artist waifs one sees nowadays! lost souls, who choose to be nobody's children, and think they can teach themselves all they need to know.

I think the very striking agreement between artists so totally different in every respect except eminence, docility and anxiety to further art, as Duerer and Reynolds, ought to impress our minds very deeply: even though, as is certainly the case, the way they point out has been very greatly abandoned of late years, and public institutions in this and other countries proceed to further art on quite other lines; even though critics are almost unanimous in knowing better both the end and the way than the great masters who had not the advantage of a dash of science in their hydromel to make it sparkle, but instead made it yet richer and thicker by stirring up with it piety and religion. I think this "cock-tail and sherry-cobbler" art criticism of to-day is very deleterious to the digestion, and that the piety and enthusiasm which Duerer and Reynolds worked into their art were more wholesome, and better supplied the needs and deficiencies of artistic temperaments.



CHAPTER III

THE LOST TRADITION

I

Many centuries ago the great art of painting was held in high honour by mighty kings, and they made excellent artists rich and held them worthy, accounting such inventiveness a creating power like God's. For the imagination of a good painter is full of figures, and were it possible for him to live for ever, he would always have from his inward ideas, whereof Plato speaks, something new to set forth by the work of his hand.

Many hundred years ago there were still some famous painters, such as those named Phidias, Praxiteles, Apelles, Polycleitus, Parrhasius, Lysippus, Protogenes, and the rest, some of whom wrote about their art and very artfully described it and gave it plainly to light: but their praise-worthy books are, so far, unknown to us, and perhaps have been altogether lost by war, driving forth of the peoples, and alterations of laws and beliefs—a loss much to be regretted by every wise man. It often came to pass that noble "Ingenia" were destroyed by barbarous oppressors of art; for if they saw figures traced in a few lines they thought it nought but vain, devilish sorcery. And in destroying them they attempted to honour God by something displeasing to Him; and to use the language of men, God was angry with all destroyers of the works of great mastership, which is only attained by much toil, labour, and expenditure of time, and is bestowed by God alone. Often do I sorrow because I must be robbed of the aforesaid masters' books of art; but the enemies of art despise these things.

Pliny writeth that the old painters and sculptors—such as Apelles, Protogenes, and the rest—told very artistically in writing how a well-built man's figure might be measured out. Now it may well have come to pass that these noble books were misunderstood and destroyed as idolatrous in the early days of the Church. For they would have said Jupiter should have such proportions, Apollo such others; Venus shall be thus, Hercules thus; and so with all the rest. Had it, however, been my fate to be there at the time, I would have said: "Oh dear, holy lords and fathers, do not so lamentably destroy the nobly discovered arts, which have been gotten by great toil and labour, only because of the abuses made of them. For art is very hard, and we might and would use it for the great honour and glory of God. For, even as the ancients used the fairest figure of a man to represent their false god Apollo, we will employ the same for Christ the Lord, who is fairest of all the earth; and as they figured Venus as the loveliest of women, so will we in like manner set down the same beauteous form for the most pure Virgin Mary, the mother of God; and of Hercules will we make Samson, and thus will we do with all the rest, for such books shall we get never more." Wherefore, though that which is lost ariseth not again, yet a man may strive after new lore; and for these reasons I have been moved to make known my ideas here following, in order that others may ponder the matter further, and may thus come to a new and better way and foundation.

I certainly do not deny that, if the books of the ancients who wrote about the art of painting still lay before our eyes, my design might be open to the false interpretation that I thought to find out something better than what was known unto them. These books, however, have been totally lost in the lapse of time; so I cannot be justly blamed for publishing my opinions and discoveries in writing, for that is exactly what the ancients did. If other competent men are thereby induced to do the like, our descendants have something which they may add to and improve upon, and thus the art of painting may in time advance and reach its perfection.

II

Whether we should exercise our intellects or logical sense alone upon the records and remains of past ages, or whether they may not be better employed for the exercise and edification of the imaginative faculties, would seem to be a question which, though they did not perhaps in set terms put to themselves, modern historians have very summarily answered; and I think answered wrongly. The records of the past, the records even of yesterday, are necessarily extremely incomplete; to make them at all significant something must be added by the historian. The 'perception' of probability is never exact; it varies with the mind between man and man; in the same man even before and after different experiences, &c. But even if the perception of the highest probability were practically exact, it would never suffice; for, as Aristotle says, "it is probable that many things should happen contrary to probability." From these facts it follows that the man who has the most exhaustive knowledge of what has actually survived, and what has been recorded, will not necessarily form the truest judgment on a question of history; it might always happen that the intuition of some unscholarly person was nearer the truth; still no man could ever decide between the two, nor would any sane man think it worth his while to take sides with either of them; such questions are most useful when they are left open. This is the case because the imagination is thus left freer to use such knowledge as it has for the edification of the character; and that model for our example or warning which the imagination constructs may always possibly be the truth. According to the balance in it of apparent probability, with edifying power it will beget conviction. Such a conviction may be doomed to be superseded sooner or later; its value lies in its potency while it lasts. The temper in which we look at our historical heritage is of more importance to us now than the exactitude of our vision; for this latter can never be proved, while the former approves itself by the fruit it bears within us. It is better, more fruitful, to feel with Duerer about the art of Ancient Greece than to know all that can be known of it to-day and feel a great deal less. "Character calls forth character," said Goethe; we may add, "even from the grave." Now that the physical miracle of the Resurrection has come to seem so unimportant and uninteresting to educated men, it might be a wise economy to connect its poetry with this experience, that great and creative characters can raise men better worth knowing than Lazarus from the dead. Nietsche thought that Shakespeare had brought Brutus back to life, (though he knew very little of Roman history), and that Brutus was the Roman best worth knowing. "Of all peoples, the Greeks dreamt the dream of life the best," Goethe said; and again, "For all other arts we have to make some allowance; to Greek art alone we are for ever debtors." To feel the truth of these sayings with a passion similar to that shown in the passages quoted above from Duerer, must surely be a great help to an artist. Such a passion is an end in itself, or rather is the only means by which we can win spiritual freedom from some of the heavier fetters that modern life lays upon us. It freed Goethe even from Germany.



CHAPTER IV

BEAUTY

I

How is beauty to be judged?—upon that we have to deliberate.

A man by skill may bring it into every single thing, for in some things we recognise that as beautiful which elsewhere would lack beauty.

Good and better in respect of beauty are not easy to discern; for it would be quite possible to make two different figures, one stout, the other thin, which should differ one from the other in every proportion, and yet we scarce might be able to judge which of the two excelled in beauty. What beauty is I know not, though it dependeth upon many things.

I shall here apply to what is to be called beautiful the same touchstone as that by which we decide what is right. For as what all the world prizeth as right we hold to be right, so what all the world esteemeth beautiful that we will also hold for beautiful, and ourselves strive to produce the like.

There are many causes and varieties of beauty; he that can prove them is so much the more to be trusted.

The accord of one thing with another is beautiful, therefore want of harmony is not beautiful. A real harmony linketh together things unlike.

Use is a part of beauty, whatever therefore is useless unto men is without beauty.

The more imperfection is excluded so much the more doth beauty abide in the work.

Guard thyself from superfluity.

But beauty is so put together in men and so uncertain is our judgment about it, that we may perhaps find two men both beautiful and fair to look upon, and yet neither resembleth the other, in measure or kind, in any single point or part; and so blind is our perception that we shall not understand whether of the two is the more beautiful, and if we give an opinion on the matter it shall lack certainty.

Negro faces are seldom beautiful because of their very flat noses and thick lips; moreover, their shinbone is too prominent, and the knee and foot too long, not so good to look upon as those of the whites; and so also is it with their hand. Howbeit, I have seen some amongst them whose whole bodies have been so well-built and handsome that I never beheld finer figures, nor can I conceive how they might be bettered, so excellent were their arms and all their limbs.

Seeing that man is the worthiest of all creatures, it follows that, in all pictures, the human figure is most frequently employed as a centre of interest. Every animal in the world regards nothing but his own kind, and the same nature is also in men, as every man may perceive in himself.



Further, in order that he may arrive at a good canon whereby to bring somewhat of beauty into our work, there-unto it were best for thee, it bethinks me, to form thy canon from many living men. Howbeit seek only such men as are held beautiful, and from such draw with all diligence. For one who hath understanding may, from men of many different kinds, gather something good together through all the limbs of the body. But seldom is a man found who hath all his limbs good, for every man lacks something.

No single man can be taken as a model of a perfect figure, for no man liveth on earth who uniteth in himself all manner of beauties.... There liveth also no man upon earth who could give a final judgment upon what the perfect figure of a man is; God only knoweth that.

And although we cannot speak of the greatest beauty of a living creature, yet we find in the visible creation a beauty so far surpassing our understanding that no one of us can fully bring it into his work.

If we were to ask how we are to make a beautiful figure, some would give answer: According to human judgment (i.e., common taste). Others would not agree thereto, neither should I without a good reason. Who will give us certainty in this matter?[87]

II

I have already given what I believe to be the best answer to these questions as to what beauty is and how it is to be judged. Beauty is beauty as good is good (see pp. 7, 8), or yellow, yellow; indeed, to the second question, Matthew Arnold has given the only possible answer—the relative value of beauties is "as the judicious would determine," and the judicious are, in matters of art "finely touched and gifted men." This criterion obviously cannot be easily or hastily applied, nor could one ever be quite sure that in any given case it had been applied to any given effect. But for practical needs we see that it suffices to cast a slur on facile popularity, and vindicate over and over again those who had been despised and rejected. What the true artist desires to bring into his pictures is the power to move finely-touched and gifted men. Not only are such by very much the minority, but the more part of them being, by their capacity to be moved and touched, easily wounded, have developed a natural armour of reserve, of moroseness, of prejudice, of combativeness, of pedantry, which makes them as difficult to address as wombats, or bears, or tortoises, or porcupines, or polecats, or elephants. It is interesting to witness how Duerer's self-contradictions show him to be aware of the great complexity of these difficulties, as also to see how very near he comes to the true answer. At one time he tells us:

"When men demand a work of a master, he is to be praised in so far as he succeeds in satisfying their likings ..."[88]

At another he tells us:

"The art of painting cannot be truly judged save by such as are themselves good painters; from others verily is it hidden even as a strange tongue."[89]

Every "finely touched and gifted man" is not an artist; but every true artist must, in some measure, be a finely touched and gifted man. There is no necessity to limit the public addressed to those who themselves produce: yet those who "can prove what they say with their hand" bring credentials superior to those offered by any others,—although even their judgment is not sure, as they may well represent a minority of the true court of appeal which can never be brought together.

No doubt there is a judgment and a scale of values accepted as final by each generation that gives any considerable attention to these questions. AEsthetic appear to be exactly similar to religious convictions. Those who are subject to them probably pass through many successively, even though they all their lives hold to a certain fashion which enables them to assert some obvious unity, like those who, in religion, belong always to one sect. Yet if they were in a position to analyse their emotions and leanings, no doubt very fundamental contradictions would be discovered to disconcert them. Conviction and enthusiasm in the arts and religion would seem to be the frame of mind natural to those who assimilate, and are rendered productive by what they study and admire. Convictions may never be wholly justifiable in theory, but in practice when results are considered, it would seem that no other frame of mind should escape censure.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 87: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Duerer," p. 244.]

[Footnote 88: "Literary Remains of Albrecht Duerer," p. 245.]

[Footnote 89: Idem. p. 177.]



CHAPTER V

NATURE

I

We regard a form and figure out of nature with more pleasure than another, though the thing in itself is not necessarily altogether better or worse.

Life in nature showeth forth the truth of these things (the words of difference—i.e., the character of bodily habit to which they refer), wherefore regard it well, order thyself thereby and depart not from nature in thine opinions, neither imagine of thyself to invent aught better, else shalt thou be led astray, for art standeth firmly fixed in nature, and whoso can rend her forth thence he only possesseth her. If thou acquirest her, she will remove many faults for thee from thy work.

Neither must the figure be made youthful before and old behind, or contrariwise; for that unto which nature is opposed is bad. Hence it followeth that each figure should be of one kind alone throughout, either young or old, or middle-aged, or lean or fat, or soft or hard.

The more closely thy work abideth by life in its form, so much the better will it appear; and this is true. Wherefore never more imagine that thou either canst or shalt make anything better than God hath given power to His creatures to do. For thy power is weakness compared to God's creating hand. (See continuation of passage, p. 10.)

Compare also passages quoted (pp. 289-291).

II

In these and other passages Duerer speaks about "nature," and enjoins on the artist respect for and conformity to "nature" in a manner which reminds us of that still current in dictums about art. Indeed, it seems probable that Duerer's use of this term was almost as confused as that of a modern art-critic. There are two senses in which the word nature is employed, the confusion of which is ten times more confounded than any of the others, and deserves, indeed, utter damnation, so prolific of evil is it. We call the objects of sensory perception "nature"—whatever is seen, heard, felt, smelt or tasted is a part of nature. And yet we constantly speak of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting monstrous and unnatural things. And a monstrous and unnatural thing is not merely one which is rare, but even more decidedly one of which we disapprove. So that the second use of the term conveys some sense of exceptionality, but far more of lack of conformity to human desires and expectations. Now, many things which do not exist are perfectly natural in this second sense: fairy-lands, heavens, &c. We perfectly understand what is meant by a natural and an unnatural imagination, we perceive readily all kind of degrees between the monstrous and the natural in pure fiction. Now, this second use of the term nature is the only one which is of any vital importance to our judgments upon works of art; yet current judgments are more often than not based wholly on the first sense, which means merely all objects perceived by the senses; and this, draped in the authority and phrases belonging to judgments based on the second and really pertinent sense.

Whole schools of painting and criticism have arisen and flourish whose only reason for existence is the extreme facility with which this confusion is made in European languages. It sounds so plausible that some have censured Michael Angelo for bad drawing because men are not from 9 to 15 or 16 heads high, and have not muscles so developed as the gods and Titans of his creation. And others have objected to the angels, the anatomical ambiguity of their wing articulations. To say that a sketch or picture is out of tone or drawing damns, in many circles to-day; in spite of the fact that the most famous masterpieces, if judged by the same standard, would be equally offensive. This absurdity, even where its grosser developments are avoided, breeds abundant contradictions and confusion in the mouths of those who plume themselves on culture and discernment. I hope not to have been too saucy, therefore, in pointing out this pitfall to my readers in regard to these sentences which I thought it worth while to quote from Duerer, merely because if I did not do so I foresaw that they would be quoted against me.