Albert Durer Part 26

C. The third part is of all that a man conceives as subject for painting.

III. The Third Division of the book is the Conclusion; it also hath three parts.

A. The first part shows in what place such an artist should dwell to practise his art; in six ways.

B. The second part shows how such a wonderful artist should charge highly for his art, and that no money is too much for it, seeing that it is divine and true; in six ways.

The third part speaks of praise and thanksgiving which he should render unto G.o.d for His grace, and which others should render on his behalf; in six ways.

III

It is in the variety and completeness of his intentions that we perceive Durer's kinship with the Renascence; he comprehends the whole of life in his idea of art training.

In his persuasion of the fundamental necessity of morality he is akin to the best of the Reformation. It is in the union of these two perceptions that his resemblance to Michael Angelo lies. There is a rigour, an austerity which emanates from their work, such as is not found in the work of t.i.tian or Rembrandt or Leonardo or Rubens or any other mighty artist of ripe epochs. Yet we find both of them ill.u.s.trating the licentious legends of antiquity, turning from the Virgin to Amymone and Leda, from Christ to Apollo and Hercules. By their action and example neither joins either the Reformation or the Renascence in so far as these movements may be considered antagonistic; nor did they find it inconsistent to acknowledge their debt to Greece and Rome, even while accepting the gift of Jesus' example as freely as it was offered.

Not only does Durer insist on the necessity of a certain consonancy between the surrounding influences and the artist's capacity, which should be both called forth and relieved by the interchange of rivalry with instruction, of seclusion with music or society, but the process which Jesus made the central one of his religion is put forward as essential; he must form himself on a precedent example. I have already quoted from Reynolds at length on this point.

I will merely add here some notes from another MS. fragment of Durer's bearing on the same points.

He that would be a painter must have a natural turn thereto.

Love and delight therein are better teachers of the Art of Painting than compulsion is.

If a man is to become a really great painter he must be educated thereto from his very earliest years. He must copy much of the work of good artists until he attain a free hand.

To paint is to be able to portray upon a flat surface any visible thing whatsoever that may be chosen.

It is well for any one first to learn how to divide and reduce, to measure the human figure, before learning anything else.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 90: The following list comes from another sheet of the MS.

(in. 70), but was dearly intended for this place. It is jotted down on a thick piece of paper, on which there are also geometrical designs.]

CHAPTER VII

TECHNICAL PRECEPTS

I

If thou wishest to model well in painting, so as to deceive the eyesight, thou must be right cunning in thy colours, and must know how to keep them distinct, in painting, one from another. For example, thou paintest two coats of mantles, one white the other red; thou must deal differently with them in shading. There is light and shadow on all things, wherever the surface foldeth or bendeth away from the eye. If this were not so, everything would look flat, and then one could distinguish nothing save only a chequerwork of colours.

If then thou art shading the white mantle, it must not be shaded with so dark a colour as the red, for it would be impossible for a white thing to yield so dark a shadow as a red. Neither could they be compared one with another, save that in total absence of daylight everything is black, seeing that colour cannot be recognised in darkness. Though, therefore, in such a case, the theory allows one, without blame, to use pure black for the shadows of a white object, yet this can seldom come to pa.s.s.

Moreover, when thou paintest anything in one colour--be it red, blue, brown, or any mixed colour--beware lest thou make it so bright in the lights that it departs from its own kind. For example, an uneducated man regardeth thy picture wherein is a red coat. "Look, good friend," saith he, "in one part the coat is of a fair red and in another it is white or pale in colour." That same is to be blamed, neither hast thou done it aright. In such a case a red object must be painted red all over and yet preserve the appearance of solidity; and so with all colours. The same must be done with the shadows, lest it be said that a fair red is soiled with black Wherefore be careful that thou shade each colour with a similar colour. Thus I hold that a yellow, to retain its kind, must be shaded with a yellow, darker toned than the princ.i.p.al colour. If thou shade it with green or blue, it remaineth no longer in keeping, and is no longer yellow, but becometh thereby a shot colour, like the colour of silk stuffs woven of threads of two colours, as brown and blue, brown and green, dark yellow and green, chestnut-brown and dark yellow, blue and seal red, seal red and brown, and the many other colours one sees.

If a man hath such as these to paint, where the surface breaketh and bendeth away the colours divide themselves so that they can be distinguished one from another, and thus must thou paint them. But where the surface lieth flat one colour alone appeareth. Howbeit, if thou art painting such a silk and shadest it with one colour (as a brown with a blue) thou must none the less shade the blue with a deeper blue where it is needful. If often cometh to pa.s.s that such silks appear brown in the shadows, as if one colour stood before the other. If thy model beareth such a garment, thou must shade the brown with a deeper brown and not with blue. Howbeit, happen what may, every colour must in shading keep to its own cla.s.s.

II

The great genius Hokusai, who has obtained for popular art in j.a.pan a success comparable to that of the best cla.s.sic masterpieces of that country and to the drawings and etchings of Rembrandt, a master of an altogether kindred nature, wrote a little treatise on the difference of aim noticeable in European and j.a.panese art. From the few Dutch pictures which he had been able to examine, he concluded that European art attempted to deceive the eye, whereas j.a.panese art laboured to express life, to suggest movement, and to harmonise colour. What is meant is easily grasped when we set before the mind's eye a picture, by Teniers and a page of Hokusai's "Mangwa." On the other hand, if one chose a sketch by Rembrandt to represent Dutch art, the difference could no longer be apparent. If the aim of European art had ever in serious examples been to deceive the eye, our painting would rank with legerdemain and Maskelyne's famous box trick; for it is to be doubted if it could ever so well have attained its end as even a second-rate conjurer can. I have cited a pa.s.sage in which Reynolds confronts the work of great artists with the illusions of the camera obscura (see p.

237). The adept musical performer who reproduces the noises of a farmyard is the true parallel to the lesser Dutch artists; he deceives the ear far better than they deceive the eye. For every picture has a surface which, unless very carefully lighted, must immediately destroy the illusion, even if it were otherwise perfect. Nevertheless, Durer in the foregoing pa.s.sage seems to accept Hokusai's verdict that the aim of his painting is to deceive the eye; forgetful of all that he has elsewhere written about the necessity of beauty, the necessity of composition, the superiority of rough sketches over finished works.

When a painter has conceived in his heart a vision of beauty, whether he suggests it with a few strokes of the pen or elaborates it as thoroughly as Jan Van Eyck did, he wishes it to be taken as a report of something seen. This is as different from wishing to deceive the eye as for some one to say "and then a dog barked," instead of imitating the barking of a dog. A circ.u.mstantial description in words and a picture by Van Eyck or Veronese are equally intended to pa.s.s as reports of something visually conceived or actually seen. Pictures would have to be made peep-shows of before they could veritably deceive; and Jan Van Beers, a modern Dutchman, actually turned some of his paintings into peep-shows.

Durer in the following pa.s.sage is speaking of the separate details or objects which go to make up a picture, not of the picture as a whole; he never tried to make peep-shows; his signature or an inscription is often used to give the very surface that must destroy the peep-show illusion a definite decorative value. The rest of his remarks have become commonplaces; nor has he written at such length as to give them their true limitations and intersubordination. They will be easily understood by those who remember that art is concerned with producing the illusion of a true report of something seen, not that of an actual vision. Such a report may be slight and brief; it may be stammered by emotion; it may have been confused or tortured to any degree by the mental condition of him who delivers it: if it produces the conviction of his sincerity, it achieves the only illusion with which art is concerned, and its value will depend on its beauty and the beauty of the means employed to deliver it.

CHAPTER VIII

IN CONCLUSION

After turning over Durer prints and drawings, after meditating on his writings, we feel that we are in the presence of one of those forces which are constant and equal, which continue and remain like the growth of the body, the return of seasons, the succession of moods. This is always among the greatest charms of central characters: they are mild and even, their action is like that of the tides, not that of storms.

"If only you had my meekness," Durer wrote to Pirkheimer (set: p. 85), half in jest doubtless, but with profound truth:--though the word meekness does not indeed cover the whole of what we feel made Durer's most radical advantage over his friend; at other times we might call it navety, that sincerity of great and simple natures which can never be outflanked or surprised. Sometimes it might be called pride, for it has certainly a great deal of self-a.s.surance behind it, the self-a.s.surance of trees, of flowers, of dumb animals and little children, who never dream that an apology for being where and what they are can be expected of them. Such natures when they come home to us come to stop; we may go out, we may pay no heed to them, we may forget them, but they abide in the memory, and some day they take hold of us with all the more force because this new impression will exactly tally with the former one; we shall blush for our inconstancy, our indifference, our imbecility, which have led us to neglect such a pregnant communion. Not only persons but works of art produce this effect, and they are those with whom it is the greatest benefit to live.

It is true that, compared with Giotto, Rembrandt, or Michael Angelo, Durer does not appear comprehensive enough. It is with him as with Milton; we wish to add others to his great gifts, above all to take him out from his surroundings, to free him from the accidents of place and time. In one sense he is poorer than Milton: we cannot go to him as to a source of emotional exhilaration. If he ever proves himself able so to stir us, it is too occasionally to be a reason why we frequent him as it may be one why we frequent Milton. Nevertheless, the greater characters of control which are his in an unmatched degree, his constancy, his resource and deliberate effectiveness, joined to that blandness, that sunshine, which seems so often to replace emotion and thought in works of image-shaping art, are of priceless beneficence, and with them we would abide. Intellectual pa.s.sion may seem indeed sometimes to dissipate this sunshine and control without making good their loss. Such cases enable us to feel that the latter are more essential: and it is these latter qualities which Durer possessed in such fulness. In return for our contemplation, they build up within us the dignity of man and render it radiant and serene. Those who have felt their influence longest and most constantly will believe that they may well warrant the modern prophet who wrote:

The idea of beauty and of human nature perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our animality and of a human nature perfect on the moral side--which is the dominant idea of religion--has been enabled to have; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern the other.