Another artist of this era, inferior to none in taste and delicacy of sentiment, was Veit Stoss. He was a native of Poland, born at Cracow in 1447; making Nuernberg the city of his adoption, and dying there in 1542.[240-*] The same exquisite grace and purity which characterises the works of Vischer is seen in those of Stoss. He devoted himself to sculpture in wood, and in this way is said to have furnished models to those who worked in stone, as well as to goldsmiths, and other artisans who required designs. "The Crowning of the Virgin," still preserved in the old castle at Nuernberg, had all the delicacy and grace of the missal paintings of Julio Clovio.



There is an exquisite repose about his works, only to be gained by great mastership in art. At times a tenderness of sentiment singularly beautiful is apparent in these too-much-forgotten works. We engrave, as an illustration of this, one of the compartments of the "Rosenkranztafel," preserved in the same locality, and representing the "Nativity." The Virgin in the stable at Bethlehem, piously rejoices in the birth of the Lord, and is about to wrap the sacred infant in the folds of her own garments, having no other clothing. She has reverently laid the babe in a corner of her mantle, when, penetrated with a sense of the divinity, she clasps her hands in prayer before the Infant Saviour; while her husband Joseph, who holds the lantern beside her, feeling the same emotion, drops on one knee, and reverently lifts his hat in acknowledgment of the Immortal One.



It is this fervent devotion, this pure, high, yet simple-mindedness, which gives vitality to ancient works of art, and is to be felt by all who are not insensible to its agency in the time present. Another touching incident is seen in the sculpture by Adam Krafft over the grave of Schreyer, representing "The Entombment."[243-*] The dead body of our Saviour is being reverently lifted into the tomb; the sorrowing mother, loving as only mothers love, partially supports the wounded body of her inanimate son; in process of movement the Saviour's head falls languidly on one side, and the dead cheek is again greeted with the fervent kiss of love, which still burns in the breast of the sorrowing mother. Who shall rudely criticise the perspective, the draperies, the absence of "scholastic rule," in this touching work of a true-hearted man? Not the writer of these lines! Let it be rather his province to vindicate for these old artists their due position, among the few forming that galaxy of the great and good, elevating and adorning human nature.

Our parting glance at "the Athens of Germany" must comprehend a view of the life and manners of the people among whom Duerer and his compatriots lived. Theirs were the palmy days of the old city, for its glories rapidly fell to decay toward the end of the sixteenth century. Its aspect now is that of a place of dignity and importance left to loneliness and the quiet wear of time; like an antique mansion of a noble not quite allowed to decay, but merely existing shorn of its full glories. "Nuernberg—with its long, narrow, winding, involved streets, its precipitous ascents and descents, its completely Gothic physiognomy—is by far the strangest old city I ever beheld; it has retained in every part the aspect of the Middle Ages. No two houses resemble each other: yet, differing in form, in colour, in height, in ornament, all have a family likeness; and with their peaked and carved gables, and projecting central balconies, and painted fronts, stand up in a row, like so many tall, gaunt, stately old maids, with the toques and stomachers of the last century. Age is here, but it does not suggest the idea of dilapidation or decay; rather of something which has been put under a glass case, and preserved with care from all extraneous influences. But, what is most curious and striking in this old city, is to see it stationary, while time and change are working such miracles and transformations everywhere else. The house where Martin Behaim, four centuries ago, invented the sphere, and drew the first geographical chart, is still the house of a map-seller. In the house where cards were first manufactured, cards are now sold. In the very shops where clocks and watches were first seen, you may still buy clocks and watches. The same families have inhabited the same mansions from one generation to another for four or five centuries."[244-*]

In a city where all its associations of greatness are with the past, and its memories essentially connected with those who have been long numbered with the dead, it is natural we should find a strong tendency to remembrances of events and personages generally forgotten in other and more stirring cities. The Nuernbergers lovingly preserve all that will connect them with the glorious days of Kaiser Maximilian, when their "great Imperial City" held the treasures of the Holy Roman empire, the crown and royal insignia of Charlemagne, as well as the still more precious "relics" which he had brought from the Holy Land.[245-*]

Among all their literary magnates none is better remembered than

"Hans Sachs, the cobbler-bard,"

and statuettes of this great poet of small things are to be seen in most Nuernberg book and print shops. Since the days of Lope de Vega no writer scribbled so fluently and so well on the thousand-and-one incidents of his own day, or fancies of his own brain. Sachs was born at Nuernberg in 1494 and was the son of a poor tailor, who insured his education in the free-school of the town, and at fifteen he was apprenticed to a shoemaker; when the period of servitude had expired, in accordance with the German practice, he set out on his travels to see the world. It was a stirring time, and men's eyes were rapidly opened to the corruptions of church and state; the great principles of the Reformation were making way. Hans possessed much of that stirling common sense, and shrewd practical observation which belong to many of the lower class, and make them outspoken rude despisers of courtiership. On his return he applied for admission as a fellow rhymester among the master-singers' fraternity of Nuernberg, a corporation of self-styled poets, who surrounded the "divine art" with all kinds of routine ordinances, and regulated the length of lines and number of syllables which each "poem" (?) should contain, so magisterially that they reduced it to a mathematical precision, and might class it among the "exact sciences." Before this august tribunal the muse of Sachs appeared, his poem was read, its lines were measured, its syllables counted, and he was admitted to the honour of being an acknowledged master of song. From that hour till his death, he cobbled and sang to the wonderful amusement of the good citizens; and when seventy-seven years had passed gaily over his head, "he took an inventory of his poetical stock-in-trade, and found, according to his narrative, that his works filled thirty volumes folio, and consisted of 4,273 songs, 1,700 miscellaneous poems, and 208 tragedies, comedies and farces, making an astounding sum-total of 6,181 pieces of all kinds. The humour of his tales is not contemptible; he laughs lustily and makes his reader join him; his manner, so far as verse can be compared to prose, is not unlike that of Rabelais, but less grotesque."[246-*] His most popular productions were broadsheets with woodcuts, devoted to all kinds of subjects, sold about the streets, and stuck "like ballads on the wall" of old English cottages; speaking boldly out to the comprehension and tastes of the people on subjects they were interested in. From a large volume of these "curiosities of literature" now lying before the writer, his immense popularity with the people can be well understood. Here we find fables of never-dying interest, such as "The Old Man and his Ass," reproduced in doggerel they could enjoy, with a humour they could relish, and headed by bold woodcuts. If they wanted morality they had it in "pious chansons" about fair Susannah, "The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah," "Daniel in the Lions' Den," "Twelve short Sermons," &c. Moral allegories suited to every-day life wooed their attention in his "Christian Patience," where the whole human family is depicted as a solitary in a ship on a stormy sea, with the world, death, and the devil, as adversaries to oppose his safe entry into his port, "das vaterland," but who is mercifully guarded by the Most High. If amusing satire were required, it might be found in his "Women setting Traps for Fools;" while the strong religious tendencies of the Reformers were enforced in his rhymes of the "True and False Way," above which was printed a large cut where the Saviour invites all to the open door of his fold, while the pope and his priests hinder all from entering, except by back-doors, holes, and corners. At this period Nuernberg was torn by religious faction; and it ultimately became enthusiastically Protestant. There is no doubt that Hans Sachs helped greatly to foster the feeling in its favour, as his "broadsides" told forcibly, and were immensely popular. They were in fact the only books of the poor.



The portrait of the old cobbler was painted in 1568 by Hans Hoffman, and is a strikingly characteristic resemblance of a man whose

"age is as a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly."

There is an intensity of expression in the clear, deep-set eye, a shrewd observant look in the entire features, while it shows a capacity of forehead that will make Hans pass muster with modern phrenologists. The cobbler-bard wrote and sung, and mended his neighbours' boots in an unpretending domicile in a street leading from the principal market, which street now goes by his name. Since his time the house has been almost rebuilt and entirely new fronted. Its old features have been preserved in an etching by Fleischmann, after a sketch by J. A. Klein, at which period it was a beershop known by the sign of the "Golden Bear." Hans died full of years and honour in the year 1576, and is buried with the great men of his city in the cemetery of St. John.



The domestic life of the old Nuernbergers seems to have been characterised by honourable simplicity, and their posterity appear to follow laudably in their footsteps. They delight in the antiquity of their city, and reverently preserve the relics of their past glories. Their houses seem built for a past generation, their public edifices for the Middle Ages; their galleries abound in the art of the fifteenth century, and admit nothing more modern than the seventeenth. In the old garden upon the castle bastion is a quaint quadrangular tower[250-*] having its entrance therefrom, and this has been fitted up with antique furniture, to give a true idea of the indoor life of Duerer's days. It contains a hall hung with tapestries, from which a staircase leads to a suite of rooms, one fitted as a kitchen, another as a music-room, filled with the most quaint and curious antique instruments, which have ceased "discoursing most eloquent music" for the last two hundred years. The third room (a view of which we engrave) is a boudoir, containing the large antique German stove, built up with ornamental tiles cast in relief, with stories from bible history of saints, and arabesque. Beside it is a bronze receptacle for water, shaped like a huge acorn, the tap having a grotesque head, and the spigot being a small seated figure; this was gently turned when wanted, and a thin stream of water trickled over the hands into the basin beneath; an embroidered napkin hangs beside it; and above it is the old-fashioned set of four hour-glasses, so graduated that each ran out a quarter of an hour after the other. The furniture and fittings of the entire building are all equally curious, and reproduce a faithful picture of old times, worthy of being copied in National Museums elsewhere.



Nuernberg being a "free city" was governed by its own appointed magistrates, having independent courts of law. The executive council of state consisted of eight members, chosen from the thirty patrician families who, by the privilege granted to them from the thirteenth century, ruled the city entirely. In process of time these privileges assumed the form of a civic tyranny, which was felt to be intolerable by the people, and occasionally opposed by them. The fierce religious wars of the sixteenth century assisted in destroying this monopoly of power still more; yet now that it is gone for ever, it has left fearful traces of its irresponsible strength. All who sigh for "the good old times," should not moralise over the fallen greatness of the city, and its almost deserted but noble town-hall; but descend below the building into the dark vaults and corridors which form its basement; the terrible substructure upon which the glorious municipal palace of a free imperial self-ruled city was based in the Middle Ages, into whose secrets none dared pry, and where friends, hope, life itself, were lost to those who dared revolt against the rulers. There is no romance-writer who has imagined more horrors than we have evidences were perpetrated under the name of justice in these frightful vaults, unknown to the busy citizens around them, within a few feet of the streets down which a gay wedding procession might pass, while a true patriot was torn in every limb, and racked to death by the refined cruelty of his fellow-men. The heart sickens in these vaults, and an instinctive desire to quit them takes possession of the mind, while remaining merely as a curious spectator within them. The narrow steps leading to them are reached through a decorated doorway, and the passage below receives light through a series of gratings. You shortly reach the labyrinthine ways, totally excluded from external light and air, and enter one after another confined dungeons, little more than six feet square, cased with oak to deaden sounds, and to increase the difficulty of attempted escape. To make these narrow places even more horrible, strong wooden stocks are in some, and day and night prisoners were secured in total darkness, in an atmosphere which even now seems too oppressive to bear. In close proximity to these dungeons is a strong stone room, about twelve feet wide each way, into which you descend by three steps. It is the torture-chamber. The massive bars before you are all that remain of the perpendicular rack, upon which unfortunates were hung with weights attached to their ankles. Two such of stone, weighing each fifty pounds, were kept here some years back, as well as many other implements of torture since removed or sold for old iron. The raised stone bench around the room was for the use of the executioner and attendants. The vaulted roof condensed the voice of the tortured man, and an aperture on one side gave it freedom to ascend into the room above, where the judicial listeners waited for the faltering words which succeeded the agonising screams of their victim. So much we know and still see, but worse horrors were dreamily spoken of by the old Nuernbergers; there was a tradition of a certain something that not only destroyed life, but annihilated the body of the person sacrificed. The tradition took a more definite form in the seventeenth century, and the "kiss of the Virgin" expressed this punishment, and was believed to consist in a figure of the Virgin, which clasped its victim in arms furnished with poignards, and then opening them, dropped the body down a trap on a sort of cradle of swords, arranged so as to cut it to pieces, a running stream below clearing all traces of it away.



These frightful traditions were received with doubt by many, and with positive disbelief by others, until a countryman of our own, with unexampled patience and perseverance, fully substantiated the truth of all, and after many years traced the absolute "Virgin" herself, which had been hurriedly removed from Nuernberg during the French Revolution, two or three days before the French army entered the town, and then passed into the collection of a certain Baron Diedrich, and was kept by him in a castle called Feistritz, on the borders of Steinmark. Determined to persevere in tracing this figure, our countryman visited this castle in 1834, and there was the machine; it was formed of bars and hoops covered with sheet iron, representing a Nuernberg maiden of the sixteenth century in the long mantle generally worn. It opened with folding doors, closing again over the victim, and pressing a series of poignards into the body, two being affixed to the front of the face, to penetrate to the brain through the eyes. "That this machine had formerly been used cannot be doubted; because there are evident blood-stains yet visible on its breast and part of the pedestal." This machine was introduced to Nuernberg in 1533, and is believed to have originated in Spain, and to have been transplanted into Germany during the reign of Charles V., who was monarch of both countries. At this period there were great tumults in Germany and continual quarrels at Nuernberg between the Catholics and Protestants: the men of that city had no doubt to thank "the most holy Inquisition" for this importation of horrors.

The great leading principles of the Reformation interested Duerer as they did other thinking men. He examined by the biblical test the unwholesome power and pretensions of the papacy, and found it wanting. We have already noted the exhortation to abide by "the written word" which he appended to his famous picture of the Apostles. In his journal he breaks forth into uncontrolled lamentations over the crafty capture of Luther made by his friend the Elector of Saxony, who conveyed him thus out of harm's way, and kept him nearly a twelvemonth in the Wartburg. He exclaims, "And is Luther dead? who will now explain the Gospel so clearly to us? Aid me, all pious Christians, to bewail this man of heavenly mind, and pray God for some other as divinely enlightened." He then exhorts Erasmus to "come forth, defend the truth, and deserve the martyr's crown, for thou art already an old man." Duerer had painted Erasmus's portrait at Brussels in 1520, and appears to have been intimate with that great man as he was with Melancthon, who said of Duerer, that "his least merit was that of his art."



Amid the strong dissensions of the Reformation, at a time when old Nuernberg was tottering to its fall, worn down by mental toil, and withered at heart by one of the worst wives on record, died Albert Duerer at the age of fifty-seven.



In the old cemetery of St. John lies all that is mortal of the artist who has given lasting celebrity to Nuernberg. Let us take a walk in that direction. Passing out of the town by the gate opposite Duerer's house, the sculptured representations of the scenes of Christ's Passion, by Adam Krafft, already alluded to, will guide our footsteps on our way. About three-quarters of a mile from the town, we reach the gate beside which stands Krafft's group of the Crucifixion.[257-*] We enter, and stand in a graveyard thickly covered with gravestones. Here the burgher aristocracy of Nuernberg have been buried for centuries.

The heavy slabs which cover the graves are in many instances highly enriched by bronze plates elaborately executed, containing coats of arms, emblems, or full-length figures. Each grave is numbered, and that of Duerer is marked 649. The stone had fallen into decay, when Sandrart the painter had it renewed in 1681.[258-*] This honourable act of love from a living artist to a dead brother, enabled the memorial to stand another century of time. The artists of Nuernberg now look after its conservation; it has recently been repaired by them, and on the anniversary of the Spring morning when the great master departed, they reverently visit his resting-place. The inscription upon it runs thus:—

ME. AL. DU. QUICQUID ALBERTI DURERI MORTALE FVIT SUB HOC CONDITUR TUMULO. EMIGRAVIT. VIII. IDUS. APRILIS M.D.XXVIII.

The sentiment of this epitaph has been beautifully rendered by Longfellow—

"Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies; Dead he is not,—but departed—for the artist never dies."

Thus ends our brief review of the life and labours of Duerer and his fellow artists. If it has "called up forgotten glories," it has not been a labour ill-bestowed. If it should induce others to leave England for Nuernberg, as the writer hereof was induced, he can venture to predict full satisfaction from the journey. Any one who may ramble through its streets, know its past history, feel its poetic associations, like the American bard we have just quoted, will say, as he has done, of old Nuernberg and the great and good Albert Duerer—

"Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!"

FINIS.

PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD, LONDON.

FOOTNOTES:

[190-*] Sir E. Head's introduction to the English translation of Kuegler's "Handbook of Painting." Part II.

[191-*] Longfellow's "Spanish Student."

[212-*] Engravings of these will be found in the Art-Journal for 1854, pp. 307-8.

[212-[+]] Longfellow.

[215-*] They have been presented from time to time to such potentates as the townsmen wished to conciliate. Thus, his Four Apostles, bequeathed by the artist to his native town, was presented by the council to the Elector Maximilian I., of Bavaria, and are now in the Pinacothek in Munich.

[218-*] "Guido seems to have availed himself of some of these figures in his celebrated fresco of the Car of Apollo, preceded by Aurora, and accompanied by the Hours."—CHATTO'S History of Wood Engraving, p. 303.

[221-*] For a general notice of Duerer's works, and several engravings of the best of them, see the Art-Journal for 1851, pp. 141-144 and pp. 193-196. See also, "Vignettes d'Albert Duerer," par George Franz.

[223-*] These incipient bastions and horn-works may be seen in our cut, p. 194.

[223-[+]] Marc Antonio had copied Duerer's cuts on copper, but they are poor substitutes for the originals. They, however, did Duerer an injury of which he complained.

[225-*] In her "Visits and Sketches of Art at Home and Abroad," 4 vols. 8vo., 1834.

[227-*] L. E. L.

[227-[+]] Mrs. Jameson speaks of his portrait as "beautiful, like the old heads of our Saviour; and the predominant expression is calm, dignified, intellectual, with a tinge of melancholy. This picture was painted at the age of twenty-eight; he was then suffering from that bitter domestic curse, a shrewish, avaricious wife, who finally broke his heart." We have engraved this portrait in the head-piece to this subject (p. 187), along with those of his wife and of his friend Pirkheimer.

[228-*] Leopold Schefer has constructed a novelette on his domestic career, which has been cleverly translated by Mrs. Stodart. It is entitled "The Artist's Married Life, being that of Albert Duerer." It teaches much by its pure philosophy.

[229-*] They are now in the Pinacothek at Munich.

[229-[+]] Duerer had warmly espoused the Reformation, and had placed quotations from the gospels and epistles of the Apostles beneath each picture, containing pressing warnings not to swerve from the written word, or listen to false prophets and perverters of the truth. When the town presented these pictures to the Roman Catholic Elector Maximilian I., of Bavaria, in 1627, they cut off these inscriptions, and affixed them to the copies they had made for themselves by Vischer, and which are now in the Landauer Gallery at Nuernberg.

[230-*] There is an old tradition that Duerer intended these figures also as embodiments of the four mental temperaments—John, representing the melancholic; Peter, the meditative, or phlegmatic; Mark, the sanguine; and Paul, the resolute or choleric.

[231-*] Kuegler. Mrs. Jameson, in her "Visits at Home and Abroad," also speaks of them as "wonderful! In expression, in calm religious majesty, in suavity of pencilling, and the grand, pure style of the heads and drapery, quite like Raffaelle."

[231-[+]] Among the rest is the very marvellous one performed during a journey in winter, when he was nearly destroyed by cold, and entered a peasant's cottage, hoping to find relief. The poor man had no fuel, so the saint made up a fire from the icicles which hung around the house, completing his good acts by mending his broken kettle, "by blessing it, at the request of his host," and converting stones into bread by the same simple process.

[234-*] Vischer's house is situated on the other side of the River Pegnitz, which divides the town; it is in a steep street rising suddenly from the water. The house has undergone some alterations in its external aspect, apparently about the latter half of the seventeenth century. It is now a baker's shop, having that quiet aspect which characterises such trades in Germany, the central window on the ground-floor being that through which bread is passed to applicants, who may mount the steps in front, or rest on them while waiting. The beam projecting from the large window in the roof is used as a crane to lift wood and heavy stores to the upper floors, which are the depositaries for such necessities, and not the cellars, as with us.

[235-*] Murray's "Handbook of Germany."

[240-*] His grave is in the cemetery of St. John, No. 268.

[243-*] This grave, surrounded by sculpture, forms a little external chapel, at the back of the choir of St. Sebald's Church. We have already mentioned Schreyer as the originator of Vischer's shrine in that church.

[244-*] Mrs. Jameson, "Sketches of Art at Home and Abroad." The curious series of views in Nuernberg, published there by Conrad Monath, about 1650, are remarkably identical with the present aspect of each locality engraved.

[245-*] The crown and royal robes of Charlemagne were those found in his tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle, afterwards used in the coronation of the German emperors for many centuries, and only transferred to Vienna during the great political changes of the last century. "The sacred relics" are also at Vienna, and were among the most valued and venerated of church treasures. They also were publicly exhibited at the coronations, and consisted of the lance which pierced the Saviour's side when upon the cross; a piece of the cross, showing the hole made by the nail which pierced one of the Saviour's hands; one of the nails; and five of the thorns of the crown put upon his head by the soldiers; a portion of the manger of Bethlehem; a piece of the table-cloth used at the Last Supper; and a piece of the towel with which Christ wiped the Apostles' feet; an arm-bone of St. Anne; a tooth of St. John the Baptist; a piece of the coat of St. John the Evangelist; and three links of the chains which bound St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John in the Roman prison.

[246-*] Edgar Taylor's "Lays of the Minnesingers."

[250-*] It is seen in our view from Albert Duerer's house, and is close beside the gate of the town.

[257-*] Our engraving (Fig. 257) is taken from a sketch made on this spot, looking back towards the city, and its ancient castle on the rock. Krafft's sculptures are seen to the left, at intervals, on the road-side.

[258-*] He also is interred in this cemetery. So is Duerer's friend, Pirkheimer; his grave is No. 1414.



Transcriber's Note

Corrections:

95 Gealic changed to Gaelic 173 Figs 212, changed to Figs. 212, 174 Fig 215 represents changed to Fig. 215 represents 247 classical pourtraying changed to classical portraying

cross bar / cross-bar Duerer / Durer DUeRER / DURER Duerer's / Durer's ironwork / iron-work Pinacotheck / Pinacothek

THE END