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Journey to the Netherlands, 1520-1521
In that epoch, the Netherlands represented, after Italy, the second
place of great art. The opportunity to go there presented itself to
Durer with the coronation of Charles V in Aachen. The artist needed
to have him confirm the lifelong annuity granted by his predecessor,
Maximilian.
Durer, this time accompanied by his wife and his maidservant,
Susanna, set off 12 July 1520. He arrived first in Bamberg, where he
was the guest of the bishop; Durer gave him a Madonna painting,
among other things, receiving in turn valuable letters of
recommendation and customs admittances that allowed him to continue
his journey with greater ease. Traveling along the Main and the
Rhine, passing through Frankfurt, Mainz, and Cologne, he arrived in
Antwerp, a big metropolis and, at that time, a capital center of
commerce. We have a meticulous and interesting account of
the long trip from the artist's diary.
In Aachen, where he went from Antwerp, Durer joined the delegation
of the town council of Nuremberg, which was bringing the imperial
insignia, kept in the city for the coronation of Charles V. He was
its guest for the duration of his stay, which lasted several weeks,
and on 23 October he attended the coronation. Once back in Antwerp,
the artist was able to attend the triumphant entrance of Charles V
into that city.
Wherever his travels took him—to Antwerp, Bruges, or Brussels—Durer
had an enthusiastic welcome: the artists organized lavish
festivities in his honor, and the city authorities invited him to
processions and banquets. King Christian of Denmark, whose portrait
he painted, had him as his guest at a banquet he organized in honor
of Margaret, the daughter of Maximilian I. The city of Antwerp
offered him an annual salary of 500 florins plus accommodation to
entice him to take up permanent residence there, according to
accounts in his diary.
Durer's portrait-painting activity continued without pause, as the
twenty oil portraits and roughly one hundred drawings prove. He gave
away and sold his paintings and graphic art, which enabled him to
pay his travel expenses. It was in that period that he developed and
polished his characteristic style of portraiture, distinct in being
both imposing and psychologically acute. Unfortunately, many of the
paintings that were executed in those years have been lost, as, for
example, the one from Antwerp of King Christian II of Denmark. From
the portrait of a ninety-three-year-old man, which he writes about
in his diary without mentioning his name, came The Portrait of Saint
Jerome. Several drawings of cityscapes (Antwerp
Harbor) and
animals demonstrate his unwavering curiosity and creativity,
qualities that led him to Zeeland where he had wanted to go to view
from up close a beached whale. He didn't see the whale, but caught a
serious strain of fever—possibly malaria—that brought him terrible,
prolonged suffering.
During his stay in the Netherlands, Durer was able to see churches
and city halls and works of important artists, including the
paintings of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and in Bruges,
Michelangelo's Madonna. He was received by Margaret of Austria,
daughter of Maximilian I, at her residence in Malines, where he had
the opportunity to admire her important art collection. In Brussels,
he was able to see how much had been brought over to Charles V from
the "New Country of Gold." Wherever he was, he tried to acquire or
receive little curiosities, including objects from the Indies, which
were fashionable to collect at that time. He met with many artists,
including Joos van Cleve, Lukas van Leyden, and Joachim Patinier,
the last whose wedding he attended. In Antwerp, he met Erasmus of
Rotterdam and drew his portrait.
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Head of a Woman
c. 1520
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
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Antwerp Harbor
1520
Vienna, Albertina
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St
Jerome
1521
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon |
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Saint Jerome
In 1521, during his sojourn in the Netherlands, Durer depicted in
pen and ink on violet paper an old man of ninety-three from Antwerp,
noch gesunt und ver-muglich (still bright and healthy), as his
annotation reads (W 788), In that study, the expression and the
position of the subject were very similar to those of the Saint
Jerome of the painting, while the gaze is closer to that of the old
man of a later drawing (W 789), in which only the head is shown.
The two drawings and the painting demonstrate an extraordinary
capacity of observation and a mastery of execution. Other drawings
also exist, executed with great care concerning the details of the
painting.
Saint Jerome, one of the four fathers of the Church, translated the
Bible: Durer expresses this with the presence of a pen and ink-pot
and an open book on a book rest. The old man has a melancholic air,
his posture as in his gaze. His index finger, which indicates a
skull, admonishes the spectator: "remember the ephemeral nature of
all earthly things." Already in a famous engraving, Saint Jerome in
His Study (Hieronymus im Gehaus) of 1514, judged as one of the three
all time masterpieces of copper engravings, Durer had added a
skull, placed on the window sill, to the figure of the cardinal
saint. But only in the Lisbon painting is there a clear declaration:
memento mori. At the same time, the presence of the sacred texts
seems intended to recall invariability and continuity. The still
life of the books and the skull, typical of painting in the
Netherlands, reveals the influence of the time and place in which
the painting was made.
Another characteristic distinguishes this one from other paintings:
Durer represents the saint in a half-length, thus creating a new
type of image. In the Netherlands, the painting and the new manner
would have many imitators (Panofsky, 1955).
In a note in his travel diary, written after the date 16 March 1521
(Lugli, 1995), Durer sais that he gave the painting to "Rodrigo of
Portugal." It would be Rodrigo Fernandez de Almada, of
a Portuguese business agency in Antwerp, with whom Durer had struck
up a friendship. The painting remained property of the de Almada family until the nineteenth century; the Portuguese state
acquired it between 1880 and 1882.
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Portrait of a Man with Baret and Scroll
The last digit of the date is not clearly legible (1 or 4?), but the
fact that the panel is oak indicates that the painting must have
been carried out during Durer's trip to the Netherlands. The
hypotheses regarding the name of the subject are various. The most
frequent are: the one of Lorenz Sterck, an administrator and
financial curator of the Brabant and of Antwerp, and that of Jobst
Plankfelt, Durer's innkeeper in Antwerp. These names are frequently
suggested since Durer writes in his diary that he had done oil
portraits of them (Luigi, 1995). I find it difficult to
imagine an innkeeper who made himself depicted with a scroll in his
hand. Whereas it seems much more plausible that the imposing subject
characterized by a severe and scrutinizing gaze—clad in a silk
shirt, a cloak with a fur collar, and a large beret—corresponds to a
tax collector. But whoever the subject is, the portrait is.;
regardless one of the most beautiful and' incisive that Durer ever
created. He manages, with an image constrained by such a limited
space, to communicate the impression of being in front of a
personality of a supremely concentrated energy—and all that by using
simple and pale colors, whose effect is unfortunately partly
obfuscated by the heavy varnish covering the painting.
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Portrait of a Man with Baret and Scroll
1521
Museo del Prado, Madrid
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Portrait of Bernhard von Reesen
This painting has been in its present location since the eighteenth
century. An annotation Durer made in Antwerp in his travel diary of
the Netherlands in March 1521 reveals: "Item I did Bernhart Resten's
oil portrait. He gave 8 florins to me, a crown to my wife and a
florin worth 24 stuber to Susanna" (the maidservant who accompanied
Durer and his wife) (Lugli, 1995). The name of the subject,
written on the folded letter that he is holding, is still quite
decipherable.
Rodrigo de Almada, portrayed in the same year 1521, poses
in front of a neutral, pale sky-blue background; Durer chose a warm
shade of red for Bernhard von Reesen. The well-preserved state
allows for a full appreciation, from a formal point of view and a
pictorial one, the mastery of the painter.
He gives the thirty-year-old subject an intense physical and
spiritual charm. This work further demonstrates the extraordinary
span of Durer's portraiture up until his final years.
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Portrait of Bernhard von Reesen
1521
Gemaldegalerie, Dresden
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Final Years in Nuremberg, 1521-28
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Upon Durer's return to Nuremberg, the city assigned him to prepare some projects
to renew the decoration of the city hall; at least one of the preparatory
drawings had a classical theme, which represents the Slander of Apelles. However,
his work for the city never went beyond the initial project. At the same time,
he was executing various drawings for an impressive altarpiece, for which work
never even began. The main enterprise of this final period of his life was the
completion of various theoretical texts: a treatise on geometry, 1525; a
treatise on fortification, 1527; and the treatise on human proportions, 1528, which was published posthumously. In any case, there were many
noteworthy portraits, mainly in the form of woodcuts and engravings, but also
oil paintings: from that of Jakob Muffel (Portrait of Jakob Muffel) to that of Johannes Kleberger
(Portrait of Johannes Kleberger). Last, he painted the Four Apostles, which he wanted to leave
to the city as a spiritual inheritance.
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Portrait of Jakob Muffel
This painting was passed into a private Russian collection from the
Schonborn collection in pommersfelden, where it was in 1867. In
1870, in Saint Petersburg, it was transferred on canvas. In 1883, it
was acquired in an auction from the Narischkin collection, in
Paris, for the Berlin art gallery.
Jakob Muffel, first a town councilor, then a mayor for the city of
Nuremberg (1514), was a friend of Durer's. He died 26 April 1526;
the portrait, dated 1526, must have been from the first months of
that year. Even if its dimensions correspond roughly to those of the
portraits Durer executed in the Netherlands, it stands out from
these for some particulars. As in the Portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher, of the same year, Durer brings the head close
to the spectator, moving it upward at the same time. There is no
sign whatsoever of any decoration or of representativeness. On the
contrary, the artist dwells affectionately on the details of the
physiognomy of the subjects. He retouches the pronounced nose of
Jakob in the shape of a duck's beak and brings out the calm
expression of the open face, with the high forehead edged by a
simple black beret decorated with three golden ribbons: a personal
and incisive way to expose the incorruptible virtue of his friend.
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Portrait of Jakob Muffel
1526
Staatliche Museen, Berlin |
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Portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher
This painting belonged to the family until it was acquired by the
Gemaldegalerie in 1884.
As in the case of Jakob Muffel, portrayed the same
year. Durer portrayed Holzschuher (1469-1529)—another friend who was a
mayor many times in Nuremberg—without arms or hands, from the
shoulders up. The head almost touches the upper edge of the
painting.
The person, clad in an overcoat trimmed with a fur collar, is drawn
slightly from the side, and the animated eyes are looking with
severe gaze at the spectator in the opposite direction. This
technique was adopted by Durer in only one other instance, for the
Portrait of Oswolt Krell.
The face, from the well-defined lips is framed by flowing, wavy
hair, and thus takes on a particularly alive expression, chiefly due
to the brightness of the eyes.
This is the penultimate portrait that Durer has left us. One more
time, the master unfolds his exquisite ability in finely sketching
out with a brush the details of the fur, the beard, and the hair,
distinguishing one from the other. It is an ability that was highly
appreciated and praised by his colleagues during his Venetian
sojourns.
This portrait, besides being a masterful interpretation of
the subject's character, has another characteristic: along
with the very simple frame, the sliding lid that was used to
protect the painting was preserved.
It is not a portrait meant to be hung, but rather, to be put away,
perhaps in a wardrobe.
The date is reproduced on the lid, as are the coats of arms of the
Holzschuher family and the Muntzer family, the latter the wife
Dorotea's.
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Portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher
1526
Staatliche Museen, Berlin |
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Portrait of Johannes Kleberger
1526
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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Portrait of Johannes KlebergerIn 1564, Willibald Imhoff, the child from the first marriage of Johannes
Kleberger's second wife, Felicita Pirckheimer (who had first married Hans Imhoff),
acquired the painting in Lyon from Johannes's son, David Kleberger. In 1588, it
was sold by Willibald's heirs to Emperor Rudolph II. From Prague, it went to the
Schatzkam-mer in Vienna and, in 1748, to the gallery. Among the three portraits
Durer painted in 1526—Hieronymus Holzschuher, Jakob Muffel, and Johannes
Kleberger (1486-1546)—the last was distinct for the format of the frame and for
the depiction: the man, in fact, is sketched in a bas relief, in a half-bust,
and inserted, classically, in a clypeus. It is an unusual depiction among
Durer's works, which has largely puzzled art historians. But since portraits in
bas-relief on medallions were often found on the facades of Renaissance
buildings in France, where Kleberger lived for a long time, it is quite likely
that the patron himself had requested the artist to portray him in this way.
Durer's innovation was that of vivifying the portrait in bas relief on a
medallion of fake stone, giving him the colors of a live, if pale, complexion.
Durer, as has already been noted (by, among others, Rabel, 1991), takes up again
the age-old theme of the comparison of the figurative arts, or, more
specifically, the discussion of the predominance of one on the other. He
interprets this discussion by presenting an image in sculpture, with its light
and shadow, giving at the same time the signs of a painted portrait. Thus, even
while maintaining, in the steadiness of the gaze, the immobile plasticity of a
sculpted image, characteristic of the portraits of emperors during classical
times, the result is a particularly vivid portrait, since it expresses the power
of the subject and his extremely ambitious character. Johannes Kleberger, on the
whole, had good reason to be proud of himself working for the Imhoff merchants
in Bern and especially in Lyon—a city that, because of its geographical
position, had become a huge trading center with branches of very important
German merchants—he
had accumulated a sizable wealth that allowed him, in 1522, to
provide a loan for Francis I of France. During his sojourn in
Nuremberg, in 1525-26, he had Durer paint his portrait and, after
having married the daughter of Willibald Pirckheimer, Felicita, the
widow of Hans Imhoff, he returned to Lyon, where he acquired various
properties. In 1543, Francis I appointed him his valet de chambre.
Johannes Kleberger thus became one of the ten wealthiest and most
influential inhabitants of Lyon. He gave enormous financial
donations to the city, as in 1531 when, during the plague epidemic,
he gave 500 livres to benefit the orphans of the plague victims. He
was called le bon Allemand (Kellenberg, 1977; Rabel, 1990), and a
monument was erected in his honor, of which a replica still exists
today. Upon his death, along with the bequests to the hospitals in
Bern and Geneva, he left the French city huge sums to assign to
charities. Yet the portrait Durer delivers shows a very hard-looking
man: a hardness underscored from the classical type of pose and from
the indication of the coldness of the stone. Behind the inscription
lies the cabbalistic sign of the sol in corde leonis, which is the
conjunction of the brightest star of Leo, with the sun that was
taken from the De occulta philosophia of Agrippa von Nettesheim
(1510). He, too, was a German whom Kleberger likely met in Lyon, and
according to whom the men born under this sign were destined for
greatness. The symbol also represents an amulet against melancholy.
Even the symbol of Leo surrounded by stars, depicted in the
upper-left corner of the painting, would have a divinatory
significance and again, according to Agrippa von Nettesheim (Rebel,
1990), it would represent the particularly fortunate position of the
person portrayed. In the lower corners, to the left and right, are
the redende Wappen (figurative coats of arms) of the Kleberger
family.
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The Four Holy Men
1526
Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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The Four Apostles
The Apostles John and Peter
The Apostle Paul
and Mark the Evangelist
Durer did not paint these four paintings on commission. It was he
who wanted to donate them to Nuremberg, his native city. The city
accepted and reciprocated by giving the sum of 100 florins. The four
monumental figures remained in the municipality of Nuremberg until
1627, when, following threats of repression, they had to be sold to
the elector of Bavaria, Maximilian I, a great enthusiast of Durer's
work.
On that occasion, however, the prince had the inscriptions, at the
bottom of the paintings, sawed off and sent back to Nuremberg, as
they were considered heretical and injurious to his position as the
sovereign Catholic. The city handed them over to the museum in
Munich in 1922, where they were rejoined with their respective
panels.
As it was common in many cities in Italy to bestow the town hall
with a work of art that would serve as an example of buon governo,
so did Durer want to provide his native city with a work of his that
had been purposefully made to this end. The Four Apostles, witnesses
to the faith, were to simultaneously function as a warning. For
this, their figures had inscriptions affixed that the calligrapher
Johann Neudorfer had added to the bottom of the panels, which
reproduced biblical passages from the recent translation of Martin
Luther (1522). The first line of both are references to the
Apocalypse of Saint John (22:18 ff.), but the essential content has
another origin: it is a reproach to the secular powers not to
conceal the divine word in seductive human interpretation. Besides,
it reads that everyone should take the warning of the "four
excellent men" to heart: almost a formulation of the symbolic
program represented in the choice of the four figures, of three
apostles and an evangelist, Mark, an unusual choice that Durer does
not explain or illustrate.
The Four Apostles undoubtedly represents his personal religious
credo through the inscriptions. His position is to be on guard
against the "false prophets." This becomes understandable if one
considers the political-religious background of that time and the
violence and passion of the religious upheavals, which favored the
onset of false doctrines.
Durer knew that his support of the Lutheran movement, which surely
came out from the words of the inscriptions, would have been shared
by important and influential citizens; in fact, different from the
majority of Nuremberg sovereignties, firmly embraced Protestantism
in toto. In his Bulletin on the Artists and Artisans in Nuremberg of
1546, the aforementioned Neudorfer writes that Durer wanted to
represent a sanguine, a choleric, a phlegmatic, and a melancholic.
Panofsky (1943) believed that it was possible to subdivide them
according to the following attributions: John would be the sanguine,
Peter the phlegmatic, Paul the melancholic, and Marco the choleric.
In addition, each temperament would correspond to one of the four
ages of life. Preparatory drawings exist for the heads in Berlin and
Bayonne (W 870-72).
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The Four Holy Men ( Peter)
1526
Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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The Four Holy Men (Mark)
1526
Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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The Four Holy Men (Paul)
1526
Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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Madonna and Child
(Madonna with the Pear)
In the beginning of the eighteenth century, this painting was in the
guardaroba (cloakroom) of the Pitti Palace. From there, it moved to
the Villa di Poggio a Caiano, It has been at the Uffizi since 1773.
Durer made the pear smaller as the painting process progressed.
Despite its small scale, the Madonna is depicted in a half-bust; the
child is seated, though it is unclear on what—maybe the mother's
arm. The artist leaves that up to the spectator.
According to Anzelewsky (1991), it is the last and most
stylistically mature version of the Madonna's image painted by Durer.
The image of Munich from 1516, though not revealing any
emotional rapport between the mother and child, like this one, is
nevertheless fascinating for its iconic aspect; but the Florentine
image lacks intimate and formal tension.
Here, too, the Madonna is frontally depicted, holding a pear in her
left hand— of which we see only the fingers. And here again, the
long blond hair falls on her shoulders almost symmetrically to the
right and left. The necklines of the white blouse and red dress are
also nearly symmetrical, contrasting with her softly curved facial
features. Her downward gaze shows meditation and pensiveness. Even
the gaze of the clothed child is absorbed and immobile. The right
hand holds on to the edge of the mother's cloak, and the left hand's
fingers close around a nondescript flower. Evidently, this
devotional image also was intended for meditation on the mother of
God and on the Passion and Redemption of Christ, even if until now
it has not been possible to discern any connection between the pear
and the flower.
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Madonna and Child with the Pear
1526
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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