Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places Part 14

In the old cemetery of St. John lies all that is mortal of the artist who has given lasting celebrity to Nurnberg. Let us take a walk in that direction. Pa.s.sing out of the town by the gate opposite Durer's house, the sculptured representations of the scenes of Christ's Pa.s.sion, 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 Nurnberg 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 Durer 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 Nurnberg 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 Durer 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 Nurnberg, 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 a.s.sociations, like the American bard we have just quoted, will say, as he has done, of old Nurnberg and the great and good Albert Durer--

"Fairer seems the ancient city, and the suns.h.i.+ne 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 Kugler'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 Durer'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 Durer," par George Franz.

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

[223-] Marc Antonio had copied Durer's cuts on copper, but they are poor subst.i.tutes for the originals. They, however, did Durer 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 ent.i.tled "The Artist's Married Life, being that of Albert Durer." It teaches much by its pure philosophy.

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

[229-] Durer 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 Nurnberg.

[230-*] There is an old tradition that Durer 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-*] Kugler. 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 pa.s.sed 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 Nurnberg, 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 Durer'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 Durer's friend, Pirkheimer; his grave is No. 1414.