PBELL DODGSON, C.B.E. 
 
 M. KNOEDLER & CO.,, INc. 
 I4 EAST 57TH STREET 
 NEW YORK 
 1928 
 
as HiGrecht Durer Lonterfeyeinfeinemaler sw 
 Oe L V I. Saree. 
 
 ALBRECHT DURER, AGED 56 
 Size of the original woodcut 1234 x 10 inches 
 From a proof, in the second state, of three, before the 
 monogram of Diirer and the date 1527, 
 in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
DURER’S WOODCUTS 
 
 BY 
 
 CAMPBELL DODGSON, C.B.E. 
 
 Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British 
 
 Museum. Author of the Catalogue of German and 
 
 Flemish Woodcuts in the British Museum and 
 Honorary Secretary of the Durer Society 
 
 M. KNOEDLER & CO, Inc. 
 
 PABBAST 5710 STREET 
 NEW YORK 
 
 1928 
 
Dtrer’s Woonpcuts, by CAMPBELL DopGson, 
 Number Three of The Knoedler Booklets, is reprinted 
 from Tur Print Cotzecrors’ QuarTERLY (VoL- 
 uME Two, NuMBER 2, pp. 148-179) by permission of 
 the Publishers, ]. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. 
 
 It is not for sale, is printed for presentation only 
 and to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of 
 Diurer’s death—April 6th, 1528. 
 
 The illustrations (with the exception of Taz Vir- 
 GIN Mary wits LILITH BENEATH HER Feet by the 
 Master of the Playing Cards) are made from proofs in 
 the possession of M. Knoedler &% Co., Inc. 
 
DURER’S WOODCUTS 
 BY CAMPBELL DODGSON, C.B.E. 
 
 HE first decade of the twentieth century lies not 
 4 (ies far behind us, but perhaps it is not too 
 soon to assert that one of its marked features, in the 
 retrospect of a print-lover, is a great revival or exten- 
 sion of interest in every form of engraving among 
 cultivated people who are not specialists. Increased 
 attention has been paid, among other things, to the 
 German woodcuts of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
 turies, which used to be rather despised by the old- 
 fashioned nineteenth-century collector, with a few 
 enlightened exceptions, as rough and ugly old things 
 which were curious as specimens of antiquity or in- 
 structive as illustrations of the life and religion of 
 the generations that produced them, but were not to 
 be taken very seriously as works of art. That esti- 
 mate is being revised. A generation no longer blind- 
 ed to the merits of primitive art by the worship of 
 Raphael and the antique is ever tapping fresh sources 
 of delight and enriching itself by the perception of 
 
 5 
 
beauty where its fathers saw nought but the gro- 
 tesque and quaint. It is not surprising, indeed, that 
 German art has made slower progress than Italian 
 on the road to popularity. Even the primitives, on 
 the south side of the Alps, shared in the winning 
 grace and suavity of the old Mediterranean culture, 
 while their brethren in the North, the French ex- 
 cepted, were indisputably more rugged and barbar- 
 ous in draughtsmanship and painting, and few of 
 their engravers, except Schongauer, can vie with the 
 Florentines if their achievements are judged by the 
 test of formal beauty. But it is wonderful how, in 
 the North, now and again, art could suddenly blos- 
 som and ripen under the creative impulse of an in- 
 novator, whose successors, rather than the pioneer 
 himself, lay themselves open to the charge of angu- 
 larity and uncouthness. The perfection of the very 
 earliest printed books is a commonplace. Less gen- 
 erally known, perhaps, is the great beauty to which 
 the earliest of all the German engravers known to 
 us at all as a personality, though not by name, was 
 capable of attaining. The ‘‘Master of the Playing- 
 Cards,” who was at work about 1430-40, produced 
 6 
 
THE KNIGHT AND MAN-AT-ARMS, 1495-1498 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 
 From a proof, on Small Crown paper, 
 in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
FEET 
 
 By the Master of the Playing Cards 
 Size of the original engraving 231 x 168 mm. 
 “One of the most splendid and mature creations of 
 the fifteenth century.”’ CAMPBELL DopGson 
 
 From the impression (unique?) in the Biblioteca del 
 Seminario, Padua 
 
work of extraordinary charm, not only in some of 
 the figures, animals and flowers of the playing-cards 
 themselves, but especially in the large engraving of 
 the Virgin Mary with the human-headed serpent, or 
 Lilith, beneath her feet, which is one of the most 
 splendid and mature creations of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. Then, again, the early book illustrators of 
 Augsburg and Ulm, in the seventies, when the use 
 of blocks for such a purpose had only recently come 
 in, produced woodcuts that were never surpassed by 
 any successors in their simple and direct vivacity and 
 strength, with the utmost economy of line. But the 
 real beauty of some of the much earlier single wood- 
 cuts, illustrating, chiefly, the legends of Our Lady 
 and the Saints, has been much less generally appre- 
 ciated. They are very rare, and most of them repose, 
 in a seclusion seldom disturbed, in their boxes in the 
 great European print-rooms or even in Monastic li- 
 braries. They are only beginning to be reproduced, 
 and they are rarely exhibited. But such an exhibition 
 of the earliest German woodcuts as was held at Ber- 
 lin in the summer of 1908 was truly a revelation. 
 The soft and rounded features, the flowing lines of 
 
 9 
 
the drapery, in the prints of the generation before 
 sharp, broken folds were introduced under the in- 
 fluence of the Netherlands, have something of the 
 charm of the Far Eastern art, and the gay coloring 
 with which most of the prints were finished has 
 often a delightfully decorative effect when they are 
 framed and hung at a proper distance from the eye. 
 Such praise is due, of course, only to some of the 
 choicer examples; there are plenty of fifteenth-cen- 
 tury woodcuts in which the line is merely clumsy 
 and the coloring merely gaudy, but these are more 
 often products of the last quarter of the century than 
 of its beginning or middle. It would not be true to 
 say that the advance of time brought with it prog- 
 ress and perfection in the woodcutter’s art; on the 
 contrary, the first vital impulse spent itself all too 
 soon, and gave way to thoughtless and unintelligent 
 imitation. 
 
 What was the state of things when Direr ap- 
 peared upon the scene? He did so long before the 
 close of the fifteenth century, for his first authenti- 
 cated woodcut is an illustration to St. Jerome’s Epis- 
 tles, printed at Basle in 1492. Whether he or an un- 
 
 10 
 
<< WAY 
 a aa = — 
 2 Le aS Ss 3 
 ite aS ee Seat 
 
 Kp) 
 
 y s 22. 1 -O —-_ 4 
 (be EOE og ee 
 
 es 
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. CATHERINE OF 
 
 ALEXANDRIA, 1495-1498 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 
 
 From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
THE HOLY FAMILY WITH THE THREE HARES, 1495-1498 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 
 
 From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
known artist is responsible for a large number of 
 other illustrations produced at Basle about 1493-95, 
 is a question about which no consensus of opinion 
 has been formed, and this is not the place to discuss 
 it. All the woodcuts that the world knows and es- 
 teems as Diirer’s were produced at Nuremberg after 
 his return from the first Venetian journey (1495). 
 Let us see, for a moment, how they stand compari- 
 son with what had gone before them. The older 
 woodcuts are nearly all anonymous, and if they bear 
 any signature, it is that of a woodcutter (Form- 
 schneider or Briefmaler) who was a craftsman al- 
 lied to the joiner, rather than the painter. Just before 
 Diirer’s time the painter begins to make his appear- 
 ance on the scene as a designer of woodcuts. There 
 are a few isolated cases in which the almost univer- 
 sal rule of anonymity is broken, and we learn from 
 the preface to a book the name of the artist who de- 
 signed the illustrations. Breydenbach’s ‘““Travels to 
 the Holy Land” (Mainz, 1486) was illustrated by 
 woodcuts after Erhard Reuwich, or Rewich, a na- 
 tive of Utrecht, who had accompanied the author on 
 his journey, and the immense number of woodcuts 
 
 E3 
 
in the “‘Nuremberg Chronicle” by Hartmann Sche- 
 del (1493) were the work of the painters Wohlge- 
 muth and Pleydenwurff; to whom the much finer 
 illustrations of the “Schatzbehalter” (1491) may 
 also safely be attributed. It is now almost univer- 
 sally believed that the “Master of the Hausbuch,” 
 one of Diurer’s most gifted predecessors in the art of 
 engraving on copper, was also a prolific illustrator, 
 the principal work assigned to him being the nu- 
 merous illustrations in the “Spiegel der mensch- 
 lichen Behaltnis” printed by Peter Drach at Speyer 
 about 1478-80. There are speculations, more or less 
 ill-founded, about the illustrators of a few other 
 woodcut books of the fifteenth century, but I be- 
 lieve it is true that the first book after those already 
 named in which the artist’s name is settled beyond 
 doubt is Diirer’s “Apocalypse” of 1498. 
 
 Dr. Naumann, the editor of a recent facsimile of 
 the cuts in the Speyer book just mentioned, claims 
 for the ‘“‘Hausbuchmeister” that he was the first 
 painter, or painter-engraver, who attempted to get 
 the most out of the craftsmen employed in cutting 
 blocks from his designs. That is rather a speculative 
 
 14 
 
From The Apocalypse, 1498 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% X Il inches 
 From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
SEVEN HEADS AND TEN HORNS 
 
 From The Apocalypse, 1498 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 
 
 From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
opinion, and the woodcuts in question are not, from 
 the technical point of view, superior to many other 
 contemporary illustrations. But there can be no ques- 
 tion that Durer effected an immense reform in this 
 respect, and carried the technique of wood-engrav- 
 ing to a perfection unparalleled in its previous his- 
 tory. Not by his own handiwork, for there is no rea- 
 son to suppose that Durer ever cut his blocks him- 
 self. All the evidence points, on the contrary, to his 
 having followed the universal practice of the time, 
 according to which the designer drew the composi- 
 tion in all detail upon the wood block, and em- 
 ployed a professional engraver to cut the block, pre- 
 serving all the lines intact, and cutting away the 
 spaces between them, so that the result was a fac- 
 simile of the drawing as accurate as the craftsman 
 was capable of making it. Durer set his engravers, 
 we may be sure, a harder task than they had ever 
 had to grapple with before, and he must have suc- 
 ceeded in gradually training a man, or group of 
 men, on whom he could rely to preserve his draw- 
 ing in all its delicacy and intricate complexity. This 
 was a work of time, and perfection was not reached 
 
 Sy 
 
till after Durer’s return from his second journey to 
 Venice, when a great increase of refinement on the 
 technical side becomes noticeable, culminating in 
 that extraordinary performance, the Holy Trinity 
 woodcut of 1511. But even on the large fifteenth- 
 century blocks, the “Apocalypse,” the earlier por- 
 tion of the “Great Passion” and the contemporary 
 single subjects, much cross-hatching is used and the 
 space is filled with detail to an extent hitherto un- 
 known. Without ever losing sight of the general 
 decorative effect, the telling pattern of black and 
 white, Diirer put in a vast amount of interesting 
 little things, with the conscientiousness and care that 
 characterized everything he did, and every detail of 
 the leaves of a thistle or fern, or of the elaborate or- 
 nament, birds and flowers and foliage and rams’ 
 heads, on the base of a Gothic candle-stick, had to 
 be reproduced so that the crisp clearness of the orig- 
 inal pen-drawing lost nothing of its precision. ‘The 
 result was a work so perfectly complete in black and 
 white, as it stood, that nobody ever thought of col- 
 oring it, and that in itself was a great innovation 
 and advance. The fifteenth-century “Illuminirer,” 
 
 18 
 
THE HOLY TRINITY, I511 
 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11% inches 
 ‘“A cut which surpasses all Durer’s other work on 
 wood in technical accomplishment.”’ 
 CAMPBELL Doncson 
 
 From a proof in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
WITH LAMB’S HORNS 
 
 From The Apocalypse, 1498 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 
 From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
or the patron who gave him his orders, seems to 
 have had an instinctive respect for excellent and 
 highly finished work in black and white, which 
 made him leave it alone. Line-engravings of the fif- 
 teenth century are very frequently found colored, 
 but they are usually quite second-rate specimens, and 
 prints by the great men, such as the “Master E. S.” 
 and Schongauer, were respected and left alone. But 
 such consideration was not often shown to wood- 
 cuts, which were frequently colored, especially when 
 used as illustrations, well into the sixteenth century. 
 It was very rarely, however, that any illuminator 
 laid profane hands on anything of Durer’s, woodcut 
 or engraving, and when he did so the result is stupid 
 and disagreeable, for it is always the work of a later 
 generation, out of touch with Durer’s genius. 
 
 It may be said that if Durer and his contempora- 
 ries did not cut their own blocks, the woodcuts are 
 not original prints by the masters themselves. It 
 must be conceded that they are not original prints 
 quite in the same sense as engravings and etchings, 
 in which the whole work was carried out upon the 
 plate by the masters’ own hand, but it would be a 
 
 oi 
 
mistake to describe them as examples of reproduc- 
 tive engraving. Such a thing as a reproductive en- 
 graving was, in fact, unknown in the Germany of 
 Diurer’s time. A design originally projected in one 
 medium might be reproduced in another in a case 
 where an engraving by Schongauer, or Meckenen, 
 or Direr himself, was copied by some inferior wood- 
 cutter, as an act of piracy, for a bookseller who was 
 too stingy to pay an artist to draw him a new Virgin 
 or Saint for his purpose. But it would never have oc- 
 curred to anyone to reproduce an engraving or wood- 
 cut, a picture or drawing, done for its own sake, as 
 a separate and complete work of art. Reproductions 
 of pictures scarcely exist in German art of the six- 
 teenth century; they are commoner in the Venetian 
 School, among the woodcutters influenced by Ti- 
 tian, and Rubens established the practice once for all 
 by his encouragement of engraving from his pic- 
 tures, a century after Diirer’s time. But when wood- 
 cutting was taken up by the German painters, with 
 Diirer as their leader, for the purpose of circulating 
 their compositions at a cheaper price than they could 
 charge for engravings of their own, they always had 
 oa) 
 
\ 4 fi 
 Nr 
 ‘I 
 
 CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS 
 
 From The Great Passion, 1497-1500 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11% inches 
 From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
From The Great Passion, 1497-1500 
 Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 ¥% inches 
 From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
a strictly legitimate object according to the canons 
 of graphic art. Rarely working even from sketches, 
 never from a work already finished in another me- 
 dium, they drew the subjects intended for printing 
 directly upon the block in a technique adapted for 
 the purpose, avoiding such combinations of lines as 
 the most skilful craftsmen would be unable to cut. 
 Their actual handiwork was preserved upon the sur- 
 face of the block, much as in the modern original 
 lithograph the artist’s actual work survives upon the 
 surface of the stone; if it was in any way disfigured, 
 as often, no doubt, it was, that must be set down to 
 failure on the cutter’s part. Anything original that 
 the cutter puts in, any swerving that accident or 
 clumsiness permits him to make from the line fixed 
 by the painter’s pen for him to follow, is a blemish, 
 and the best woodcuts of Durer, Holbein, Baldung, 
 Cranach, Burgkmair and the rest of their genera- 
 tion have no such blemishes. They are strictly auto- 
 graphic: the lines that the artist’s pen has traced re- 
 main and are immortalized by the printing-press; the 
 white spaces, also limited by his controlling will and 
 purpose, result from the mere mechanical cutting 
 
 me 
 
away of blank wood that any neat-handed workman 
 can perform. So when we speak of the woodcuts of 
 Millais, Rossetti, Whistler, Walker, Pinwell, Sandys 
 and the rest of the ““Men of the Sixties” we know 
 that the blocks were cut by Dalziel or Swain, but 
 every good print is none the less what the designer 
 meant it to be, and what none but himself could have 
 made it. 
 
 Of Diirer’s woodcutters, unluckily, we know noth- 
 ing till the comparatively late period when he had 
 been enlisted in the service of the Emperor Maxi- 
 milian, whose imposing, but somewhat ponderous 
 and pedantic, Triumphal Arch was cut from the de- 
 signs of Diirer and his school by Hieronymus An- 
 dread. There is much more information about the 
 Augsburg cutters than about those of Nuremberg, 
 and there is no single artist in the latter city whose 
 work is so strongly marked out by its excellence 
 from that of his contemporaries as was Lutzelburg- 
 er’s, who cut Holbein’s “Dance of Death.” 
 
 To understand Durer’s woodcuts aright, it is nec- 
 essary to get to know them in their chronological se- 
 quence. In conservative collections, where they are 
 
 26 
 
AAA 
 
 THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE 
 From The Life of the Virgin, 1504-1505 
 Size of the original woodcut 115% x 8% inches 
 From a proof, on High Crown paper, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
From The Life of the Virgin, 1510 
 Size of the original woodcut 1154 x 8% inches 
 From a proof, on High Crown paper, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
arranged by order of subject, on the system of 
 Bartsch, the student is continually confused by the 
 juxtaposition of quite incongruous pieces, placed to- 
 gether merely because “‘Jéréme,”’ for instance, comes 
 in alphabetical order next after “Jean.”’ The British 
 Museum collection has been arranged for more than 
 ten years past in chronological order, which, in 
 Direr’s case, is unusually easy to determine with 
 approximate accuracy, because his methodical turn 
 of mind caused him to be fond of dates, while the 
 undated pieces can be fitted in without much difh- 
 culty by the evidence of style. The justification of 
 the system became all the more apparent when the 
 woodcuts were exhibited for a few months in 1909, 
 and fell naturally into consistent and coherent groups 
 upon the screens, while separated, as a matter of 
 practical convenience, from the engravings. Since 
 then two even more interesting experiments have 
 been made, in exhibitions made at Liverpool and 
 Bremen, toward a reconstruction of Diirer’s entire 
 life-work in its chronological sequence, his pictures, 
 drawings, engravings and woodcuts — represented 
 mainly, of course, by reproductions—being merged 
 
 2) 
 
in a single series. That is a timely warning against 
 the risks of excessive concentration upon one single 
 side of his many activities, but here we will not di- 
 gress further from the woodcuts, which are at pres- 
 ent our theme. 
 
 The series opens magnificently with the group of 
 large and stately woodcuts, abounding in vitality 
 and dramatic invention, produced by Direr between 
 1495 and 1500. These include the fifteen subjects 
 of the “Apocalypse,” the seven early subjects of the 
 “Great Passion” (not completed until 1510-11) and 
 seven detached pieces uniform with the two series 
 already named in dimensions and style, but inde- 
 pendent of them in subject. The blocks of the ma- 
 jority of these single pieces are now, by the way, in 
 an American collection, that of Mr. Junius S. Mor- 
 gan, but they have suffered sadly from the ravages 
 of the worm. There is a certain exaggeration and 
 over-emphasis of gesture in the ““Apocalypse”’ wood- 
 cuts, but Diirer never invented anything more sub- 
 lime than the celebrated Four Riders or the St. Mi- 
 chael defeating the Rebel Angels, which I regard as 
 at least equal to the subject more frequently praised. 
 
 30 
 
AN) 
 
 Nir, AM 
 
 1 eg 
 
 K( 
 
 SSS SS US 
 
 ABW YO 
 
 SS 
 
 Bee co 
 
 ~~ 
 
 JOHN, I510 
 Size of the original woodcut 416 x 334 inches 
 From a proof in the possession of 
 ebiyc: 
 
 ST 
 Knoedler & Co 
 
 e 
 
 M 
 
 CHRIST ON THE CROSS BETWEEN THE VIRGIN AND 
 
ginal woodcut 4% x 3% inches 
 
 f, formerly in the A. Artaria Collection, 
 
 CAIN AND ABEL, I511 
 
 Wy 
 
 st 
 
 in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
 Size of the ori 
 
 From a proo 
 
Superb, too, is the Angels Restraining the Four 
 Winds. The landscape at the foot of St. John’s Vi- 
 sion of the Four-and-Twenty Elders (B. 63) is a 
 complete picture by itself, and there is a rare early 
 copy of this portion alone, which is itself a beautiful 
 print, and doubtless the earliest pure landscape wood- 
 cut in existence. Samson and the Lion, the mysteri- 
 ously named Ercules and Knight and Man-at-arms, 
 often described as its companion, and the Martyr- 
 dom of St. Catherine are among the finest of the 
 single subjects. After this tremendously impressive 
 group, there is for a time a certain relaxation of en- 
 ergy, or rather Durer was more bent on other things, 
 especially engraving. To the years 1500-04 belong a 
 number of woodcuts of Holy Families and Saints, 
 much smaller than the “Apocalypse,” and rather 
 roughly cut. Some critics have wished to dismiss one 
 or another of them as pupil’s work, but for this there 
 is really no justification. Then comes another very 
 good period, that of the “Life of the Virgin,” of 
 which set Diirer had finished seventeen subjects be- 
 fore he left for Venice in 1505, while the Death of 
 the Virgin and The Assumption were added in 
 
 a3 
 
1510, and the frontispiece in 1511, when the whole 
 work came out as a book, assuredly one of the most 
 desirable picture-books the world has ever seen! It is 
 impossible to weary of the beautiful compositions, 
 and details drawn with such loving care, the tender 
 and homely sentiment, the humor, even, displayed 
 in the accessory figures of The Embrace of Joachim 
 and Anne, the beer-drinking gossips in the Birth of 
 the Virgin, where the atmosphere of St. Anne’s 
 chamber is sweetened by an angelic thurifer, and the 
 merry group of angelic children playing around Jo- 
 seph, bent on his carpenter’s business, while their 
 elders keep solemn watch round Mary at her distaff 
 and the Holy Child in the cradle. We find land- 
 scapes at least as beautiful as those in Diuirer’s best 
 engravings in the pastoral background of the An- 
 nunciation to Joachim and the mountainous distance 
 of the Visitation. The architectural setting of the 
 Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the tall 
 cross held aloft, with the happiest effect on the com- 
 position, by the Apostle kneeling on the left in 
 Mary’s death-chamber, are among the memorable 
 features of the set. 
 
 34 
 
MARY MAGDALEN 
 
 CHRIST APPEARING TO ST 
 
 I510 
 7 inches 
 
 1508- 
 
 , 
 
 From The Little Passion 
 Size of the original woodcut 5 x 3 
 
 From an impression 
 
 with 
 
 > 
 
 ? 
 
 = 
 — 
 vay 
 Lo | 
 ~S 
 Ba 
 Boe 
 a ae 
 0G 
 eecee 
 2 O 
 eae 
 vo od 
 ashy 
 oe 
 q-= 5 
 nae eS 
 aoe =: 
 wal 
 
 Latin text 
 M 
 
THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS 
 
 From The Little Passion, 1508-1510 
 Size of the original woodcut 5 x 37% inches 
 From an impression, in the first edition, 1511, with 
 Latin text, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc, 
 
Beautiful again, especially in the proofs, is the 
 next and latest of the long sets, the “Little Passion,” 
 consisting of thirty-six subjects and a title-page, be- 
 gun in 1509 and finished, like all the other books, 
 in 1511. But it has not the monumental grandeur 
 of the earlier religious sets, and there is an inevitable 
 monotony about the incessant recurrence of the fig- 
 ure of Our Lord, when the history of the Passion is 
 set forth in such detail. The most original and im- 
 pressive subjects, in my opinion, are Christ Appear- 
 ing to St. Mary Magdalen and the next following it, 
 The Supper at Emmaus. 
 
 The years 1510 and 1511 were the most prolific 
 of all, and witnessed the publication of other con- 
 nected pieces, the Beheading of John the Baptist and 
 Salome bringing the Baptist’s Head to Herod, and 
 then the three little woodcuts, Christ on the Cross, 
 Death and the Soldier,and The Schoolmaster, which 
 Direr brought out on large sheets at the head of his 
 own verses, signed with a large monogram at the 
 end of all. The single sheets of 1511 include, be- 
 sides the marvelous Trinity already mentioned, the 
 
 large Adoration of the Magz, the Mass of St. Greg- 
 37 
 
ory, a St. Jerome in his Cell, which is the best, after 
 the celebrated engraving of 1514, of Direr’s re- 
 peated versions of that delightful subject; the Can 
 and Abel, which is one of the great rarities; two 
 rather unattractive Holy Families; and the beautiful 
 square Saint Christopher, of which many fine im- 
 pressions are extant to bear witness to its technical 
 virtues. The average level of all the work of the year 
 I51I is so astonishingly high, that it must be re- 
 garded as the culminating period of the woodcuts, 
 just as a slightly later time, the years 1513-14, wit- 
 nesses the climax of the engravings. In the next few 
 years Diirer’s time was much taken up with carry- 
 ing out the emperor’s important but rather tiresome 
 commissions for the Triuamphal Arch and two Trt- 
 umphal Cars, the small one which forms a part of 
 the Procession, and the much bigger affair, with the 
 twelve horses and allegorical retinue, which did not 
 appear until 1522. All this group offers a rich field 
 of research to the antiquary, but is simply unintelli- 
 gible without a learned commentary, and appeals 
 much less than the sacred subjects to the average 
 collector and lover of art, who cannot unearth the 
 
 38 
 
THE MASS OF ST. GREGORY, I511 
 
 Size of the original woodcut 1134 x 8% inches 
 From a proof, on High Crown paper, formerly in the 
 F. von Hagens Collection, in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
SAINT CHRISTOPHER, I5 a 8 
 Size of the original woodcut 8°46 x 8% inches 
 From a proof, formerly in the Paul Davidsohn Collection, 
 in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
heaps of pedantic Latin and German literature in 
 which the motives by which Durer was inspired, if 
 I may use the word, lie buried. Inspiration certainly 
 flagged under the influence of Wilibald Pirkheimer 
 and other learned humanists who encouraged Max- 
 imilian in his penchant for allegory, and compelled 
 Durer, probably somewhat against his will, to use a 
 multitude of symbols, intelligible only to the learn- 
 ed, instead of speaking directly to the populace in 
 the familiar pictorial language derived from the old 
 tradition but enriched and ennobled by his own 
 matchless art. 
 
 The later woodcuts are comparatively few in 
 number. They include a few that are primarily of 
 scientific interest, such as the celestial and terrestrial 
 globes and the armillary sphere, besides the numer- 
 ous illustrations to Durer’s own works on Measure- 
 ment, Proportion and Fortification. But among 
 them are the two splendid portraits made from 
 drawings now in the Albertina, the Emperor Maxz- 
 milian of 1518 and the Ulrich Varnbiiler of 1522. 
 Of the fofmer several varieties exist, from no less 
 than four different blocks, and it is now established 
 
 41 
 
that the only original version is the very rare one in 
 which the letters “‘ae”’ of the word, ““Caesar’’ are dis- 
 tinct, not forming a diphthong and placed within the 
 large ““C.” The other cuts are all copies, produced 
 probably at Augsburg, the fine large one, with an 
 ornamental frame and the imperial arms supported 
 by griffins, being indisputably the work of Hans 
 Weidlitz. Only three impressions of the original are 
 known, in the British Museum, the Berlin Kupfer- 
 stichkabinett, and the Hofbibliothek at Vienna, in 
 addition to which the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Paris 
 possess a fragment damaged by fire at the time of 
 the Commune, when it was still in private hands. It 
 is more generally known that the handsome chiar- 
 oscuro impressions of the Varnbiiler date, like those 
 of the Rhinoceros, from the seventeenth century, the 
 color blocks having been added in Holland. The 
 brown and green varieties belong to different edi- 
 tions, distinguished by the wording of the publish- 
 er’s address at the foot, which in the majority of 
 cases has been cut off. 
 
 The Virgin with the many Angels, of 1518, is 
 
 one of Diirer’s most accomplished woodcuts, and 
 
 42 
 
VLRICHVS VARNBVLER-ZC.MDXXII2, 
 
 ULRICH VARNBULER, 1522 
 
 Size of the original woodcut 17 x 13 inches 
 From a proof, in the first state (before the damage to the 
 left eye), in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
adh Chriffuc gepurt.¢1z. Far. Adi.f. ay, Sat msn dent grofmedtigen Bunig von Portugal Enraudl gar LyfaSona prachtanf Fndia/cin Pollidy eendig Thier. Das neanen fie 
 Nburocersa.D.rs ft yemic aller ferer geftal Ipebdicee state doen ra wie pramcabe ens otra Didift v6 dala ‘Sebhaten ¢ Faft fot, Dad if in der qrdf alo der Modfande 
 Wer mydererechtiger von paynen/ ond fff rwerhajfrig, Es hac an fdparff (karct Hor vow auf der nafeu/ Das Geqyunds co alGeg yu wear wo cb Boy ftaynen Das dolig Chier if oes elf? 
 Fann tode fegtide. Der delfFande firrdyt 3 faft wbel/Sane wo coFn anFumsbe fo Lau|ft Im dao Chier mie dem Lope srnifchen dye fordernt paynt ond reyft den Celffande onder ant pauch aulf 
 vai crnvibrgge Jn/ Deo mag e fidy me erwernt. Dann das Chier iff al gerwapent/das_jm Der Selffanrde micheo Ban chun, Sue fagen audy das der Whynocerus Sdynell/ Sraydig wnd Lifkig icy. 
 
 Isis 
 
 ¢ RHINOCERVS 
 
 THE RHINOCEROS, 1515 
 Size of the original woodcut 83% x 1154 inches 
 
 ‘‘The rhinoceros was presented by the Sultan of Guz- 
 erat (or King of Cambay, as the Portuguese writers 
 call him) to Diogo Fernandez de Béja. . . . It is 
 quite likely, therefore, that the rhinoceros may have 
 arrived at Lisbon in 1 May, 1515, the year in which 
 Direr made the drawing, and in which the woodcut 
 was published.”’ CampBELL Dopcson 
 
 From a proof of the first edition, with the heading in 
 five lines, on paper with watermark of an anchor in 
 circle, in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
quite good impressions of it are comparatively com- 
 mon today. The latest of his compositions of this 
 class, the Holy Family with Angels, of 1526, is, on 
 the other hand, extremely rare. Some critics doubt 
 its being an authentic work of Diirer, but in spite of 
 certain rather eccentric and unpleasant peculiarities 
 in the drawing, I consider this scepticism unfounded. 
 Quite at the end of Diirer’s life comes that rather 
 fascinating subject, The Siege of a Fortress, unique 
 among Durer’s woodcuts in the tiny scale on which 
 its countless details are drawn. Of the many her- 
 aldic woodcuts and ex-libris attributed by Bartsch 
 and others to Durer, very few can be regarded as his 
 genuine work, and most of them are very rare. The 
 best authenticated are his own coat of arms; the 
 arms of Ferdinand I in the book on Fortification; 
 those of Michel Behaim, of which the block is ex- 
 tant with a letter written by Durer on the back; the 
 arms of Roggendorf, mentioned in the Netherlands 
 Journal, of which only one impression is known, and 
 the arms of Lorenz Staiber, of which the original 
 version is also unique. There can be no doubt that 
 
 the Ebner book-plate of 1516 is by Durer; the much 
 45 
 
Cnty 
 ogg YT TS SSS 
 «ns fants, —— 
 
 il 
 
 Size of the original woodcut 754 x 5% inches 
 From a proof, on High Crown paper, formerly in the 
 A. Artaria Collection, 
 in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
SALOME BRINGING THE BAPTIST’S HEAD TO 
 
 HEROD, I511 
 
 Size of the original woodcut 75% x 5% inches 
 From a proof in the possession of 
 M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 
 
earlier Pirkheimer book-plate is intimately connect- 
 ed with the illustrations to the book by Celtes, and 
 cannot be regarded as a certain work of the master 
 himself, while the arms of Johann Tschertte are also 
 doubted. 
 
 It is a fortunate circumstance for the museums 
 and collectors of today that Dtrer’s prints have al- 
 ways been esteemed, and his monogram was held in 
 such respect and so generally recognized as a mark 
 of something good that they have been preserved 
 during four centuries, while so much that was in- 
 teresting was allowed to perish because it was un- 
 signed or its signature was not recognized as the 
 work of any one important. It may be paradoxical 
 to say that Dirers are common; few of them are to 
 be had at any particular moment when one wants to 
 get them; but they are commoner than any other 
 prints of their period, and a large number of im- 
 pressions of some subjects must come into the mar- 
 ket in the course of every ten years. But the sort of 
 Diirer the collector wants, the really beautiful, fresh, 
 clean impression, with the right watermark and 
 genuine, unbroken border-line, is not, and never 
 
 48 
 
has been, common. It is surprising how few, even of 
 the famous museums of Europe, have a really fine 
 collection of the woodcuts, perhaps because so many 
 of them were formed some generations ago in un- 
 critical times, when people were apt to think it 
 enough if the subject was represented, in whatever 
 condition it might be. The first-rate proofs are 
 scarce, and getting scarcer every year; when they 
 
 are to be had, they should be grasped and treasured. 
 
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