Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume V Part 5

If, in the past, Nuremberg has been only too anxious to turn his works into cash, to-day she guards Albert Durer's house with a care and reverence little short of religious. She has sold, in the days of her poverty and foolishness, the master's pictures and drawings, which are his own best monument; but she has set up a n.o.ble monument to his memory (by Rauch, 1840) in the Durer Platz, and his house is opened to the public between the hours of 8 A.M. and 1 P.M., and 2 and 6 P.M. on week days. The Albert-Durer-Haus Society has done admirable work in restoring and preserving the house in its original state with the aid of Professor Wanderer's architectural and antiquarian skill. Reproductions of Durer's works are also kept here.

The most superficial acquaintance with Durer's drawings will have prepared us for the sight of his simple, unpretentious house and its contents. In his "Birth of the Virgin" he gives us a picture of the German home of his day, where there were few superfluous knick-knacks, but everything which served for daily use was well and strongly made and of good design. Ceilings, windows, doors and door-handles, chests, locks, candlesticks, banisters, waterpots, the very cooking utensils, all betray the fine taste and skilled labor, the personal interest of the man who made them. So in Durer's house, as it is preserved to-day, we can still see and admire the careful simplicity of domestic furniture, which distinguishes that in the "Birth of the Virgin." The carved coffers, the solid tables, the s.p.a.cious window-seats, the well-fitting cabinets let into the walls, the carefully wrought metal-work we see there are not luxurious; their merit is quite other than that. In workmanship as in design, how utterly do they put to shame the contents of the ordinary "luxuriously furnished apartments" of the present day!

And what manner of man was he who lived in this house that nestles beneath the ancient castle? In the first place a singularly loveable man, a man of sweet and gentle spirit, whose life was one of high ideals and n.o.ble endeavor. In the second place an artist who, both for his achievements and for his influence on art, stands in the very front rank of artists, and of German artists is "facile princeps." At whatever point we may study Durer and his works we are never conscious of disappointment. As painter, as author, as engraver, or simple citizen, the more we know of him the more we are morally and intellectually satisfied. Fortunately, through his letters and writings, his journals and autobiographical memoirs we know a good deal about his personal history and education.

Durer's grandfather came of a farmer race in the village of Eytas in Hungary. The grandfather turned goldsmith, and his eldest son, Albrecht Durer the elder, came to Nuremberg in 1455 and settled in the Burgstra.s.se (No. 27). He became one of the leading goldsmiths of the town; married and had eighteen children, of whom only three, boys, grew up. Albrecht, or as we call him Albert Durer, was the eldest of these.

He was born May 21, 1471, in his father's house, and Anthoni Koberger, the printer and bookseller, the Stein of those days, stood G.o.dfather to him. The maintenance of so large a family involved the father, skilful artist as he was, in unremitting toil.

His father, who was delighted with Albert's industry, took him from school as soon as he had learned to read and write and apprenticed him to a goldsmith. "But my taste drew me toward painting rather than toward goldsmithry. I explained this to my father, but he was not satisfied, for he regretted the time I had lost." Benvenuto Cellini has told us how his father, in like fashion, was eager that he should practise the "accurst art" of music. Durer's father, however, soon gave in and in 1486 apprenticed the boy to Michael Wolgemut. That extraordinary beautiful, and, for a boy of that age, marvelously executed portrait of himself at the age of thirteen (now at Vienna) must have shown the father something of the power that lay undeveloped in his son. So "it was arranged that I should serve him for three years. During that time G.o.d gave me great industry so that I learned many things; but I had to suffer much at the hands of the other apprentices."

When in 1490 his apprenticeship was completed Durer set out on his Wanderjahre, to learn what he could of men and things, and, more especially, of his own trade. Martin Schongauer was dead, but under that master's brothers Durer studied and helped to support himself by his art at Colmar and at Basle. Various wood-blocks executed by him at the latter place are preserved there. Whether he also visited Venice now or not is a moot point. Here or elsewhere, at any rate, he came under the influence of the Bellini, of Mantegna, and more particularly of Jacopo dei Barbari--the painter and engraver to whom he owed the incentive to study the proportions of the human body--a study which henceforth became the most absorbing interest of his life.

"I was four years absent from Nuremberg," he records, "and then my father recalled me. After my return Hans Frey came to an understanding with my father. He gave me his daughter Agnes and with her 200 florins, and we were married." Durer, who writes so lovingly of his parents, never mentions his wife with any affection; a fact which to some extent confirms her reputation as a Xantippe. She, too, in her way, it is suggested, practised the art of cross-hatching. Pirkheimer, writing after the artist's death, says that by her avariciousness and quarreling nature she brought him to the grave before his day. She was probably a woman of a practical and prosaic turn, to whom the dreamy, poetic, imaginative nature of the artist-student, her husband, was intolerably irritating. Yet as we look at his portraits of himself--and no man except Rembrandt has painted himself so often--it is difficult to understand how any one could have been angry with Albert Durer. Never did the face of man bear a more sweet, benign, and trustful expression.

In those portraits we see something of the beauty, of the strength, of the weakness of the man so beloved in his generation. His fondness for fine clothes and his legitimate pride in his personal beauty reveal themselves in the rich vestments he wears and the wealth of silken curls, so carefully waved, so wondrously painted, falling proudly over his free neck.

[Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

III

OTHER BAVARIAN CITIES

MUNICH[A]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

Art has done everything for Munich. It lies on a large flat plain sixteen hundred feet above the sea and continually exposed to the cold winds from the Alps. At the beginning of the present century it was but a third-rate city, and was rarely visited by foreigners; since that time its population and limits have been doubled and magnificent edifices in every style of architecture erected, rendering it scarcely secondary in this respect to any capital in Europe.[B] Every art that wealth or taste could devise seems to have been spent in its decoration. Broad, s.p.a.cious streets and squares have been laid out, churches, halls and colleges erected, and schools of painting and sculpture established which draw artists from all parts of the world. All this was princ.i.p.ally brought about by the taste of the present king, Ludwig I., who began twenty or thirty years ago, when he was crown-prince, to collect the best German artists around him and form plans for the execution of his grand design. He can boast of having done more for the arts than any other living monarch; and if he had accomplished it all without oppressing his people, he would deserve an immortality of fame....

We went one morning to see the collection of paintings formerly belonging to Eugene Beauharnais, who was brother-in-law to the present King of Bavaria, in the palace of his son, the Duke of Leuchtenberg. The first hall contains works princ.i.p.ally by French artists, among which are two by Gerard--a beautiful portrait of Josephine, and the blind Belisarius carrying his dead companion. The boy's head lies on the old man's shoulder; but for the livid paleness of his limbs, he would seem to be only asleep, while a deep and settled sorrow marks the venerable features of the unfortunate emperor. In the middle of the room are six pieces of statuary, among which Canova's world-renowned group of the Graces at once attracts the eye. There is also a kneeling Magdalen, lovely in her wo, by the same sculptor, and a very touching work of Schadow representing a shepherd-boy tenderly binding his sash around a lamb which he has accidentaly wounded with his arrow.

We have since seen in the St. Michael's Church the monument to Eugene Beauharnais from the chisel of Thorwaldsen. The n.o.ble, manly figure of the son of Josephine is represented in the Roman mantle, with his helmet and sword lying on the ground by him. On one side sits History writing on a tablet; on the other stand the two brother-angels Death and Immortality. They lean lovingly together, with arms around each other, but the sweet countenance of Death has a cast of sorrow as he stands with inverted torch and a wreath of poppies among his cl.u.s.tering locks.

Immortality, crowned with never-fading flowers, looks upward with a smile of triumph, and holds in one hand his blazing torch. It is a beautiful idea, and Thorwaldsen has made the marble eloquent with feeling.

The inside of the square formed by the arcades and the New Residence is filled with n.o.ble old trees which in summer make a leafy roof over the pleasant walks. In the middle stands a grotto ornamented with rough pebbles and sh.e.l.ls, and only needing a fountain to make it a perfect hall of Neptune. Pa.s.sing through the northern arcade, one comes into the magnificent park called the English Garden, which extends more than four miles along the bank of the Isar, several branches of whose milky current wander through it and form one or two pretty cascades. It is a beautiful alteration of forest and meadow, and has all the richness and garden-like luxuriance of English scenery. Winding walks lead along the Isar or through the wood of venerable oaks, and sometimes a lawn of half a mile in length, with a picturesque temple at its farther end, comes in sight through the trees.

The New Residence is not only one of the wonders of Munich, but of the world. Altho commenced in 1826 and carried on constantly since that time by a number of architects, sculptors and painters, it is not yet finished; if art were not inexhaustible, it would be difficult to imagine what more could be added. The north side of the Max Joseph Platz is taken up by its front of four hundred and thirty feet, which was nine years in building, under the direction of the architect Klenze. The exterior is copied after the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence. The building is of light-brown sandstone, and combines an elegance, and even splendor, with the most chaste and cla.s.sic style. The northern front, which faces the royal garden, is now nearly finished. It has the enormous length of eight hundred feet; in the middle is a portico of ten Ionic columns.

Instead of supporting a triangular facade, each pillar stands separate and bears a marble statue from the chisel of Schwanthaler.

The interior of the building does not disappoint the promise of the outside. It is open every afternoon, in the absence of the king, for the inspection of visitors. We went early to the waiting-hall, where several travelers were already a.s.sembled, and at four o'clock were admitted into the newer part of the palace, containing the throne-hall, ball-room, etc. On entering the first hall, designed for the lackeys and royal servants, we were all obliged to thrust our feet into cloth slippers to walk over the polished mosaic floor. The walls are of scagliola marble and the ceilings ornamented brilliantly in fresco. The second hall, also for servants, gives tokens of increasing splendors in the richer decorations of the walls and the more elaborate mosaic of the floor. We next entered the audience chamber, in which the court-marshal receives the guests. The ceiling is of arabesque sculpture profusely painted and gilded....

Finally we entered the Hall of the Throne. Here the encaustic decoration so plentifully employed in the other rooms is dropt, and an effect even more brilliant obtained by the united use of marble and gold. Picture a long hall with a floor of polished marble, on each side twelve columns of white marble with gilded capitals, between which stand colossal statues of gold. At the other end is the throne of gold and crimson, with gorgeous hangings of crimson velvet. The twelve statues in the hall are called the "Wittelsbach Ancestors" and represent renowned members of the house of Wittelsbach from which the present family of Bavaria is descended. They were cast in bronze by Stiglmaier after the models of Schwanthaler, and then completely covered with a coating of gold; so that they resemble solid golden statues. The value of the precious metal on each one is about three thousand dollars, as they are nine feet in height. We visited yesterday morning the Glyptothek, the finest collection of ancient sculpture except that in the British Museum I have yet seen, and perhaps elsewhere unsurpa.s.sed north of the Alps. The building, which was finished by Klenze in 1830, has an Ionic portico of white marble, with a group of allegorical figures representing Sculpture and the kindred arts. On each side of the portico there are three niches in the front, containing on one side Pericles, Phidias and Vulcan; on the other, Hadrian, Prometheus and Daedalus. The whole building forms a hollow square and is lighted entirely from the inner side. There are in all twelve halls, each containing the remains of a particular era in the art, and arranged according to time; so that, beginning with the clumsy productions of the ancient Egyptians, one pa.s.ses through the different stages of Grecian art, afterward that of Rome, and finally ends with the works of our own times--the almost Grecian perfection of Thorwaldsen and Canova. These halls are worthy to hold such treasures, and what more could be said of them? The floors are of marble mosaic, the sides of green or purple scagliola and the vaulted ceilings covered with raised ornaments on a ground of gold. No two are alike in color and decoration, and yet there is a unity of taste and design in the whole which renders the variety delightful.

From the Egyptian Hall we enter one containing the oldest remains of Grecian sculpture, before the artists won power to mold the marble to their conceptions. Then follow the celebrated Aegina marbles, from the temple of Jupiter Panh.e.l.lenius, on the island of Aegina. They formerly stood in the two porticoes, the one group representing the fight for the body of Laomedon, the other the struggle for the dead Patroclus. The parts wanting have been admirably restored by Thorwaldsen. They form almost the only existing specimens of the Aeginetan school. Pa.s.sing through the Apollo Hall, we enter the large Hall of Bacchus, in which the progress of the art is distinctly apparent. A satyr lying asleep on a goatskin which he has thrown over a rock is believed to be the work of Praxiteles. The relaxation of the figure and perfect repose of every limb is wonderful. The countenance has traits of individuality which led me to think it might have been a portrait, perhaps of some rude country swain.

In the Hall of Niobe, which follows, is one of the most perfect works that ever grew into life under a sculptor's chisel. Mutilated as it is, without head and arms, I never saw a more expressive figure. Ilioneus, the son of Niobe, is represented as kneeling, apparently in the moment in which Apollo raises his arrow, and there is an imploring supplication in his att.i.tude which is touching in the highest degree.

His beautiful young limbs seem to shrink involuntarily from the deadly shaft; there is an expression of prayer, almost of agony, in the position of his body. It should be left untouched. No head could be added which would equal that one pictures to himself while gazing upon it.

The Pinacothek is a magnificent building of yellow sandstone, five hundred and thirty feet long, containing thirteen hundred pictures selected with great care from the whole private collection of the king, which amounts to nine thousand. Above the cornice on the southern side stand twenty-five colossal statues of celebrated painters by Schwanthaler. As we approached, the tall bronze door was opened by a servant in the Bavarian livery, whose size harmonized so well with the giant proportions of the building that until I stood beside him and could mark the contrast I did not notice his enormous frame. I saw then that he must be near eight feet high and stout in proportion. He reminded me of the great "Baver of Trient," in Vienna. The Pinacothek contains the most complete collection of works by old German artists anywhere to be found. There are in the Hall of the Spanish Masters half a dozen of Murillo's inimitable beggar-groups.

It was a relief, after looking upon the distressingly stiff figures of the old German school, to view these fresh, natural countenances. One little black-eyed boy has just cut a slice out of a melon, and turns with a full mouth to his companion, who is busy eating a bunch of grapes. The simple, contented expression on the faces of the beggars is admirable. I thought I detected in a beautiful child with dark curly locks the original of his celebrated infant St. John. I was much interested in two small juvenile works of Raphael and his own portrait.

The latter was taken, most probably, after he became known as a painter.

The calm, serious smile which we see on his portrait as a boy had vanished, and the thin features and sunken eye told of intense mental labor.

[Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]

[Footnote B: This was written about 1848. The population of Munich is now (1914), 595,000. Munich is rated as third in importance among German cities.]

AUGSBURG[A]

BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN

In ancient times--that is to say, upward of three centuries ago--the city of Augsburg was probably the most populous and consequential in the kingdom of Bavaria. It was the princ.i.p.al residence of the n.o.blesse, and the great mart of commerce. Dukes, barons, n.o.bles of every rank and degree, became domiciled here. A thousand blue and white flags streamed from the tops of castellated mansions, and fluttered along the then almost impregnable ramparts. It was also not less remarkable for the number and splendor of its religious establishments. Here was a cathedral, containing twenty-four chapels; and an abbey or monastery (of Saints Ulric and Afra) which had no rival in Bavaria for the size of its structure and the wealth of its possessions. This latter contained a Library, both of MSS. and printed books, of which the recent work of Braun has luckily preserved a record; and which, but for such record, would have been unknown to after ages. The treasures of this library are now entirely dispersed; and Munich, the capital of Bavaria, is the grand repository of them. Augsburg, in the first instance, was enriched by the dilapidations of numerous monasteries; especially upon the suppression of the order of the Jesuits. The paintings, books, and relics, of every description, of such monasteries as were in the immediate vicinity of this city, were taken away to adorn the town hall, churches, capitals and libraries. Of this collection (of which no inconsiderable portion, both for number and intrinsic value, came from the neighboring monastery of Eichstadt), there has of course been a pruning; and many flowers have been transplanted to Munich.

The princ.i.p.al church, at the end of the Maximilian Street, is that which once formed the chief ornament of the famous Abbey of Sts. Ulric and Afra. I should think that there is no portion of the present building older than the fourteenth century; while it is evident that the upper part of the tower is of the middle of the sixteenth. It has a nearly globular or mosque-shaped termination--so common in the greater number of the Bavarian churches. It is frequented by congregations both of the Catholic and Protestant persuasion; and it was highly gratifying to see, as I saw, human beings a.s.sembled under the same roof, equally occupied in their different forms of adoration, in doing homage to their common Creator.

Augsburg was once distinguished for great learning and piety, as well as for political consequence; and she boasts of a very splendid martyrological roll. At the present day, all is comparatively dull and quiet; but you can not fail to be struck with the magnificence of many of the houses, and the air of importance hence given to the streets; while the paintings upon the outer walls add much to the splendid effect of the whole. The population of Augsburg is supposed to amount to about thirty thousand. In the time of Maximilian and Charles V. it was, I make no doubt, twice as numerous.[B]

[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Taur,"

published in 1821.]

[Footnote B: Augsburg has now (1914) a population of 102,000. Woolen and cotton goods and machinery are its manufactured products.]

RATISBON[A]

BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN

It was dark when we entered Ratisbon, and, having been recommended to the Hotel of the Agneau Blanc, we drove thither, and alighted--close to the very banks of the Danube--and heard the roar of its rapid stream, turning several mills, close, as it were, to our very ears. The master of the hotel, whose name is Cramer, and who talked French very readily, received us with peculiar courtesy; and, on demanding the best situated room in the house, we were conducted on the second floor, to a chamber which had been occupied, only two or three days before, by the Emperor of Austria himself, on his way to Aix-la-Chapelle. The next morning was a morning of wonder to us. Our sitting-room, which was a very lantern, from the number of windows, gave us a view of the rushing stream of the Danube, of a portion of the bridge over it, of some beautifully undulating and vine-covered hills, in the distance, on the opposite side--and, lower down the stream, of the town walls and water-mills, of which latter we had heard the stunning sounds on our arrival. The whole had a singularly novel and pleasing appearance.

The Town Hall was large and imposing; but the Cathedral, surrounded by booths--it being fair-time--was, of course, the great object of my attention. In short, I saw enough within an hour to convince me that I was visiting a large, curious, and well-peopled town; replete with antiquities, and including several of the time of the Romans, to whom it was necessarily a very important station. Ratisbon is said to contain a population of about 20,000 souls.[B]

The cathedral can boast of little antiquity. It is almost a building of yesterday; yet it is large, richly ornamented on the outside, especially on the west, between the towers--and is considered one of the n.o.blest structures of the kind in Bavaria. The interior wants that decisive effect which simplicity produces. It is too much broken into parts, and covered with monuments of a very heterogeneous description. Near it I traced the cloisters of an old convent or monastery of some kind, now demolished, which could not be less than five hundred years old. The streets of Ratisbon are generally picturesque, as well from their undulating forms, as from the antiquity of a great number of the houses. The modern parts of the town are handsome, and there is a pleasant intermixture of trees and gra.s.s plats in some of these more recent portions. There are some pleasing public walks, after the English fashion; and a public garden, where a colossal sphinx, erected by the late philosopher Gleichen, has a very imposing appearance. Here is also an obelisk erected to the memory of Gleichen himself, the founder of these gardens; and a monument to the memory of Kepler, the astronomer; which latter was luckily spared in the a.s.sault of this town by the French in 1809.

But these are, comparatively, every-day objects. A much more interesting source of observation, to my mind, were the very few existing relics of the once celebrated monastery of St. Emmeram--and a great portion of the remains of another old monastery, called St. James--which latter may indeed be designated the College of the Jacobites; as the few members who inhabit it were the followers of the house and fortunes of the Pretender, James Stuart. The Monastery or Abbey of St. Emmeram was one of the most celebrated throughout Europe; and I suspect that its library, both of MSS. and printed books, was among the princ.i.p.al causes of its celebrity. Of all interesting objects of architectural antiquity in Ratisbon, none struck me so forcibly--and, indeed, none is in itself so curious and singular--as the Monastery of St. James. The front of that portion of it, connected with the church, should seem to be of an extremely remote antiquity. It is the ornaments, or style of architecture, which give it this character of antiquity. The ornaments, which are on each side of the doorway, or porch, are quite extraordinary.