The Paumgartner altar-piece, 1499, stands out from the "ordinary pictures" belonging to this early period. It consists of a charming and gay Nativity in the centre, and two knights in armour on the wings, probably portraits of the donors, Stephan and Lucas Paumgartner, figuring as warlike saints. Stephan, a personal friend of Dürer's, figured again as St. George in the _Trinity and All Saints_ picture painted in 1511. There were originally two panels with female saints beyond these again, but no trace of them remains. Now that the landscape backgrounds have been removed from the side panels, there is no reason to suppose that any one but Dürer had a hand in these works. But in writing to Heller, he tells him that it was unheard of to put so much work into an altar-piece as he was then putting into his _Coronation of the Virgin_, and we may feel certain that Dürer regarded this picture as in the altar-piece category. The two knights are represented against black grounds, and their silhouettes form a very fine arabesque, which the streamers of their lances, artificially arranged, complete and emphasise. This black ground points probably to the influence of Jacopo de' Barbari, whom Dürer had met and been mystified by. (See p. 63.) [Illustration: ST. GEORGE AND ST. EUSTACE Side panels in oils of the Paumgartner Altar-piece in the Alt Pinakothek, Munich] No doubt there was much in such a background that appealed to the draughtsman in Dürer. It insisted on the outline which had probably been the starting-point of his conception. Nothing could be less painter-like, or make the modelling of figures more difficult, as Dürer, perhaps, realised when he later on painted the _Adam and Eve_ at Madrid. These two warriors are, however, most successful and imposing, and immeasurably enhanced now that the spurious backgrounds, artfully concocted out of Dürer's own prints by an ingenious improver of his betters, have been removed. This person had also tinkered the centre picture, painting out two heraldic groups of donors, far smaller in scale than the actual personages of the scene, but very useful in the composition, as giving a more ample base to the masses of broken and fretted quality; useful also now as an additional proof of how free from the fetters of an impertinent logic of realism Dürer ever was. These little kneeling donors and their coats of arms emphasise the surface, and are delightful in their naïvety, while they serve to render the gay, almost gaudy panel more homely, and give it a place and a function in the world. For they help us to realise that it answered a demand, and was not the uncalled-for and slightly frigid excursion of the aesthetic imagination which it must otherwise appear. In the same way the brilliant _Adoration of the Magi_ (dated 1504) in the Uffizi, also somewhat gaudy and frigid, could we but see it where it originally hung in Luther's church at Wittenberg, might invest itself with some charm