Identifier: artofdresdengall00addi (find matches)
Title: The art of the Dresden gallery; notes and observations upon the old and modern masters and paintings in the royal collection
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Addison, Julia de Wolf Gibbs, 1866-
Subjects: Gemäldegalerie (Dresden, Germany) Painting -- History Painting -- Germany History
Publisher: Boston : L.C. Page & Company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ining all these peculiarities, and reducing themto a composite type, and this type he took, quitearbitrarily, as his ideal. The question of beautywas entirely secondary. He did not seek for beauty,or rather, he found satisfaction in the contemplationof types which to our eyes lack beauty, but whichto him, undoubtedly, were full of some grave Teu-tonic charm, not always easy for us to detect. Somemen are colour-blind. Diirer was beauty-blind. To describe his character, we quote the words ofJoachim Camerarius, an intimate friend, — andthere was never a man more beloved by his friendsthan Diirer: Whatever conduced to pleasantnessand cheerfulness and was not inconsistent with hon-our and rectitude, he cultivated all his life and ap-proved even in his old age. Truly, this is the joyof living. We have here the opposite extremes of Diirersmanner: the famous Dresden Altar, painted in thinchalky tempera, with its shadows hatched in lineartreatment — practically a liquid drawing — and the
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2)urer an^ Ibolbein 211 remarkable little Crucifixion, a miniature panel deepand rich in tone, entirely different in workmanshipand even in feeling from the other. No better con-trasts could be selected to illustrate Diirers versa-tility. The picture known as the Dresden Altar is anearly work. For some time the authenticity of thecentral panel was doubted, but it is now all con-sidered to be the work of Diirer. The central pic-ture shows the Virgin, a homely Teuton enough,bending over her child, who sleeps, laid out on alittle pillow. Beside the sleeping child stands a curi-ous little figure, in scale a pigmy of some six inchesin height, brandishing a sort of fly-brush, — an oddconceit, it is intended as a caricature, but the mod-ern mind has little clue to its humour as such. Pre-sumably it burlesques an angelic attendant, with aholy-water sprinkler; but it rather suggests a me-diaeval page, in hose, tunic, and girdle. The inex-plicable mop held aloft is baffling in its significanc

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