Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places Part 13

Pirkheimer's name is so intimately connected with Durer, and he remained throughout his life so steady and consistent a friend, that no memoir of Durer can be written, however briefly, without his name appearing. He was a man of considerable wealth and influence in Nurnberg, a member of the Imperial Council, and frequently employed in state affairs. He had it, therefore, in his power to aid Durer greatly; he did so, and Durer returned it with a grat.i.tude which ripened to affection, he declares in one of his letters that he had "no other friend but him on earth," and he was equally attached to Durer. The constant intercourse and kindly advices of his friend were the few happy relaxations Durer enjoyed.

Pirkheimer was a learned man, and cheerful withal, as his facetious book "_Laus Podagrae_," or the "Praise of the Gout," can testify. The house in which he resided is still pointed out in the _Egidien Platz_; it has undergone alterations, but the old doorway remains intact, through which Durer must have frequently pa.s.sed to consult his friend. "What is more touching in the history of men of genius than that deep and constant attachment they have shown to their early patrons?" asks Mrs.

Jameson.[225-*] How many men have been immortalised by friendships of this kind; how many of the greatest been rendered greater and happier thereby? When the Elector John Frederick of Saxony met with his reverses in 1547, was driven from his palace, and was imprisoned for five years, the painter Lucas Cranach, whom he had patronised in his days of prosperity, shared his adversity and his prison with him, giving up his liberty to console his prince by his cheerful society, and diverting his mind by painting pictures in his company. He thus lightened a captivity and turned a prison into a home of art and friendship; thus the kindness and condescension of a prince were returned in more value "than much fine gold," in the bitter hour of his adversity, by his humble but warm-hearted artist-friend.

That brotherly unity which ought to bind professional men of all kinds--isolated as they must be from the general world--was more of a necessity in the past time than in the present; and the artists formed a little band of friends within the walls of ancient Nurnberg, consulting with and aiding each other. The peculiarity of thought and tendency of habit which const.i.tute the vitality of the artist-mind, are altogether unappreciated by the general world; completely misunderstood, and most frequently contemned by men of a trading spirit, who look upon artists as "eccentrics," upon art as a "poor business," and judge of pictures solely by their "market value." These things should bind professors more strongly together. Their numbers are few; their time for socialities limited; their world a small select circle; few can sympathise with their cares or their more exquisite sensibilities; they must, therefore, be content with the few whose minds respond to theirs, and they ought not to make the narrow circle narrower, by unworthy jealousies or captious criticism. Well would it be for us all, and infinitely better for the world of art, if we practised still more

"Those gentler charities which draw Man closer with his kind, Those sweet humilities which make The music which they find."[227-*]

Durer was essentially a man to love. His nature was kindly and open; he knew no envy, and was never known to condemn the work of another artist,--which, if bad, he would only criticise with a smile, and a "Well! the master has done his best." His general information was so good, that it was declared of him by a contemporary, that his power as an artist was his least qualification. His personal appearance was dignified, and his face eminently handsome.[227-] Yet, with all these means of being happy, and making others so, few men endured more misery.

In an evil hour his family made a match for him in the household of Hans Frei, whose daughter Agnes he married, and scarcely knew peace after.

She was a heartless, selfish woman, who could have no feeling in common with her husband, and who only valued his art according to the money it realised. "She urged him to labour day and night solely to earn money, even at the cost of his life, that he might leave it to her," says Pirkheimer, in one of his letters to Tscherte, their mutual friend the Viennese architect. All his friends she insulted and drove from the house, in order that their visits might not interfere with his labours.

His aged mother, whom he had taken into his house after his father's death, was subject to contempt and ill-treatment. His letters from Venice are sad, and show no pleasant home-thoughts. Yet he did much for the bad woman to whom he was wedded, and seems to have thought of her gratification by numerous presents. His amiable heart would not allow him to separate from her, thus he bore her ill humours for his life, and patiently endured his lot.[228-*] There were few men more adapted to make a woman happy than Durer: he had a handsome person, much fame, good friends, great talent, and the most kindly amiability; but his wife was perhaps the worst on record, on whom all this was thrown away. Yet she was of very religious habit, and preserved all the externals of propriety; but, as Pirkheimer observes, "one would rather choose a woman who conducts herself in an agreeable manner, than a fretful, jealous, scolding wife, however devout she may be."

Banished from the society of friends, Durer's only solace was in his art. Here only he found peace and pleasure. How earnestly and deeply he laboured, the long catalogue of his productions can prove. The truthfulness of his style is shown in his patient studies from nature, and his works are the reflex of such a habit. The figure of the burly townsman of Jerusalem who lifts his cap in acknowledgment of Joachim and Anna, as they meet at the Golden Gate, in his ill.u.s.trations of the Life of the Virgin (Fig. 243), may be cited for its homely truth, a characteristic which runs through all Durer's works, and gives them a certain _navete_. The figure is an evident study of an honest townsman of Nurnberg, and is as little like an ancient Jew as possible, though admirable as a transcript from nature. Of far higher order are the figures of the apostles, John, Peter, Mark, and Paul, which he painted in 1526, and presented to his native city.[229-*] We engrave the figure of Paul, the drapery of which is simple and majestic. A study for this drapery, made as early as 1523, is in the collection of the Archduke Charles of Austria. In these pictures, which are painted of life-size, he has exerted his utmost ability, and eschewed any peculiarities of his own which might interfere with the greatness of his design. "These pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred the mind of Durer, and are executed with overpowering force. Finished as they are they form the first complete work of art produced by Protestantism.[229-] What dignity and sublimity pervade those heads of such varied character![230-*] What simplicity and majesty in the lines of the drapery! what sublime and statue-like repose in their att.i.tudes! Here we no longer find any disturbing element: there are no small angular breaks in the folds, no arbitrary or fantastic features in the countenances, or even in the fall of the hair. The colouring too is very perfect, true to nature in its power and warmth. There is scarcely any trace of the bright glazing, or of those sharply defined forms seen in other works by him, but everywhere a free pure impasto.

Well might the artist now close his eyes, he had in this picture attained the summit of his art--here he stands side by side with the greatest masters known in history."[231-*]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 243.--Figure from Durer's Life of the Virgin.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 244.--St. Paul, after Durer.]

Of the great contemporaries of Durer--whose works have given undying celebrity to the old town of their residence--we must now discourse a little. Honoured as these works still are by the Nurnbergers, they are little known out of Germany; although, as exemplars of art in general at the particular period when they were executed, they may challenge their due position anywhere. The most remarkable is the bronze shrine of St.

Sebald, the work of Peter Vischer and his five sons, which still stands in all its beauty in the elegant church dedicated to the saint. The shrine encloses, amid the most florid Gothic architecture, the oaken chest encased with silver plates, containing the body of the venerated saint; this rests on an altar decorated with ba.s.so-relievos, depicting his miracles.[231-] The architectural portion of this exquisite shrine partakes of the characteristics of the Renaissance forms engrafted on the mediaeval, by the influence of Italian art. Indeed, the latter school is visible as the leading agent throughout the entire composition. The figures of the Twelve Apostles and others placed around it, scarcely seem to belong to German art: they are quite worthy of the best Trans-alpine master. The grandeur, breadth and repose of these wonderful statues cannot be excelled. Vischer seems to have completely freed his mind from the conventionalities of his native schools: we have here none of the constrained "crumpled draperies," the home-studies for face and form, so strikingly present in nearly all the works of art of this era; but n.o.ble figures of the men elevated above the earthly standard by companionship with the Saviour, exhibiting their high destiny by a n.o.ble bearing, worthy of the solemn and glorious duties they were devoted to fulfil. We gaze on these figures as we do on the works of Giotto and Fra Angelico, until we feel human nature may lose nearly all of its debas.e.m.e.nts before the "mortal coil" is "shuffled off," and that mental goodness may shine through and glorify its earthly tabernacle, and give an a.s.surance in time present of the superiorities of an hereafter. Dead, indeed, must be the soul that can gaze on such works unmoved, appealing as they do to our n.o.blest aspirations, and vindicating humanity from its fallen position, by a.s.serting its innate, latent glories. Here we feel the truth of the scriptural phrase--"In his own image made He them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 245.--Shrine of St. Sebald.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 246.--Peter Vischer's House.]

The memory of Peter Vischer is deservedly honoured by his townsmen. The street in which his house is situated, like that in which Durer's stands, has lost its original name, and is now only known as "Peter Vischer's Stra.s.se;" but these two artists are the only ones thus distinguished.[234-*] Vischer was born in 1460, and died in 1529. He was employed by the warden of St. Sebald's, and magistrate of Nurnberg, Sebald Schreyer, to construct this work in honour of his patron saint; he began it in 1506, and finished it in 1519. Thirteen years of labour were thus devoted to its completion, for which he received seven hundred and seventy florins. "According to tradition, Vischer was miserably paid for this great work of labour and art; and he has himself recorded in an inscription upon the monument, that 'he completed it for the praise of G.o.d Almighty alone, and the honour of St. Sebald, Prince of Heaven, by the aid of pious persons, paid by their voluntary contributions.'"[235-*] The elaboration of the entire work is marvellous; it abounds with fanciful figures, seventy-two in number, disposed among the ornaments, or acting as supporters to the general composition. Syrens hold candelabra at the angles; and the centre has an air of singular lightness and grace. It is supported at the base by huge snails. At the western end there is a small bronze statue of Vischer, which we copy (Fig. 247): he holds his chisels in his hand, and in his workman's dress, with capacious, leather ap.r.o.n, stands unaffectedly forth as a true, honest labourer, appealing only to such sympathies as are justly due to one who laboured so lovingly and so well.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 247.--Peter Vischer.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 248.--Adam Krafft's Sacramentshauslein.]

Sharing the palm with Vischer for perfect mastery in sculpture (the one as a worker in metal, the other in stone) stands Adam Krafft, whose works are still the princ.i.p.al ornaments of the city. To him were his fellow-townsmen indebted for the grand gate of the Frauenkirche, the series of sculptures on the "Via Dolorosa," numerous others in the churches and public buildings, but princ.i.p.ally for the "Sacramentshauslein," in the Church of St. Laurence (Fig. 248). This marvellous work is placed against a pillar beside the high altar, and is intended as a receptacle for the consecrated bread and wine in its service; a small gallery runs round the lower portion, in which the "host" is kept; over this the sculpture ascends upwards in a series of tapering columns and foliage of the most light and fanciful description, until it reaches the spring of the arched roof, where the crowning pinnacle "bows its beautiful head like the snowdrop on its stem," in the curve of the arch, gracefully completing a work which, for originality, delicacy, and the most extraordinary elaboration of design, is a perfect marvel of stone-carving. The foliations are so flowing and delicate, that it has given rise to a popular tradition that Krafft was possessed of some secret for making stone plastic. We have nothing so delicate in this country, unless it be some of the leaflets on the Percy shrine, and screen of Beverley Minster. Krafft's leaves are as thin and delicate, as crisp and free, as if moulded from nature in plaster of Paris, while the grand curves of his ornamental adjuncts are astonishing, when we reflect on the ma.s.s of stone necessarily cut away to produce these boldly-flowing enrichments.

Krafft was born at Ulm in 1430, and died 1507. His father was the printer, Ulrich Krafft. He commenced this work in the year 1496, and completed it in 1500. In it we see the perfect mastery produced by a life of labour, and in front of it he has sculptured his own effigy, kneeling, mallet in hand, and supporting his favourite work. There is a touching simplicity in this union of the artist and his labours, made in these instances all the more impressive by its utter want of pretension. There is no affectation--no studied artistic or cla.s.sical portraying; we have simply the man and his work before us, appealing by their dumb native eloquence to that homage and love, which are their due by their own inherent greatness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 249.--Adam Krafft.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 250.--The Goose-seller.]

That works based on truth and nature will always possess this power, may be proved by the admiration bestowed on a small work by a pupil of Vischer's, which is popularly loved by the Nurnbergers, and known as "Das Gansemanchen" (Fig. 250). It forms the central figure of a small fountain beside the Frauenkirche, and represents a country boor leaning against a small pillar, with a goose under each arm, waiting a customer in the market; from the mouth of each goose a stream of water descends.

The figure is not more than eighteen inches high, and is, from the smallness of its size, compared with the greatness of its celebrity, a general disappointment to those who see it for the first time. It rivals in celebrity the work of Vischer himself, and was executed by his scholar, Pancratius Labenwolf (born 1492, died 1563); the fountain in the quadrangle of the "Rathhaus" is also by him. The Goose-seller owes its popularity to its perfect truth and simplicity.

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 Nurnberg 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 Nurnberg, had all the delicacy and grace of the missal paintings of Julio Clovio.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 251.--"The Nativity," by Veit Stoss.]

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 ill.u.s.tration 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 252.--"The Entombment," by Adam Krafft.]

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 Durer 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 n.o.ble not quite allowed to decay, but merely existing shorn of its full glories. "Nurnberg--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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sociations 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 Nurnbergers 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 Nurnberg 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 Nurnberg 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 cla.s.s, 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 Nurnberg, 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 cla.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt of the good citizens; and when seventy-seven years had pa.s.sed 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 l.u.s.tily 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 a.s.s," 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 Nurnberg 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 253.--Hans Sachs.]

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 l.u.s.ty 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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 254.--The House of Hans Sachs.]

The domestic life of the old Nurnbergers 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 Durer'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-gla.s.ses, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 255.--Apartment in the Garden of the Castle of Nurnberg.]

Nurnberg 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sisted 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 n.o.ble town-hall; but descend below the building into the dark vaults and corridors which form its bas.e.m.e.nt; the terrible substructure upon which the glorious munic.i.p.al 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 pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.sive 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 Nurnbergers; 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 256.--The Torture-chamber.]

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 Nurnberg during the French Revolution, two or three days before the French army entered the town, and then pa.s.sed 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 Nurnberg 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 Nurnberg 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 Nurnberg 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 Durer 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 G.o.d 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." Durer 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 Durer, that "his least merit was that of his art."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 257.--The Cemetery of St. John.]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 258.--The Grave of Albert Durer.]