compare it; however, it possesses as little of Angelico's sweet
blissfulness as the Dominican painter possessed of Dürer's accuracy of
hand and searching intensity of visual realisation. Both painters are
interested in individuals, and, representing crowds of faces, make every
one a portrait; both evince a dramatic sense of propriety in gesture,
both revel in bright, clear colours, especially azure; but as the light
in Dürer's masterpiece has a rosy hotness, which ill bears comparison
with the virginal pearliness of Angelico's heaven, so the costumes and
the figures of the Florentine are doll-like, when compared with the
unmistakable quality of the stuffs in which the fully-resurrected bodies
of Dürer's saints rumple and rustle. The wings of his angels are at
least those of birds, though coloured to fancy, while Angelico's are of
pasteboard tinsel and paint. But in spite of the comparative genuineness
of his upholstery, as a vision of heaven there can be no hesitation in
preferring that of the Florentine.
In a frame designed by Dürer and carved under his supervision, this
monument to thoroughness and skill was ensconced in a little chapel
dedicated to All Saints, which in style approaches our Tudor buildings.
There the frame remained till lately with a poor copy of the picture and
an inscription in old German to this effect: ('Matthew Landauer
completed the dedication of this chapel of the twelve brethren, together
with the foundation attached to it, and this picture, in the year 1511
after the birth of Christ,')
Dürer signed his picture with the same Latin formula as that of the
_Coronation_:
"Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg did this the year from when the Virgin
brought forth 1511."
VII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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