the tide behind him which so powerfully stirred and stimulated Dürer.
The resemblances traceable between certain still life studies by the two
men, or even in figures of their engravings, is insignificant compared
with the fact that through Jacopo Dürer probably first felt the energy
and true direction of the great tidal waves which were then rolling
forth from Italy. Even Mantegna's influence was probably less the effect
of a personal affinity than that through him a power streamed direct
from the antique dawn. This great and master influence of those days was
more one of hope, indefinite, incomprehensible, visionary, than one of
knowledge and assured discovery. Raphael may have received it from
Dürer, as well as Dürer from Bellini. Figures and incidents from Dürer's
engravings are supposed to have been adapted in certain works, if not of
his own hand at least proceeding from his immediate pupils. For Raphael,
Dürer was a proof of the excellence of human nature in respect to the
arts, even when it could not form itself on the immediate study and
contemplation of antiques, and thus added to the zest and expectation
with which he improved himself in that direction. These great men did
not distinguish clearly between pregnancy due to their own efforts, that
of their contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and that due to
their more mystic passion for antiquity. Michael Angelo, Titian, and
Correggio were destined to be the signets by which this great power was
to be most often and clearly stamped on the work of future artists.
From the unhappy location of his life Dürer was debarred from any such
obvious and overwhelming effect on after generations. The influences
which helped to shape him were no doubt at work on all the more eminent
artists, his fellow-countrymen; on Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Burgkmair,
Lucas Cranach, or Baldung Grien, to mention only the elect. What the
stimulus of his achievements, of his renown, meant for these men we have
no means of computing; yet we may feel sure that it was vastly more
important and significant than any actual traces of imitation or
plagiarism from his works, which can with difficulty and for the more
part very doubtfully be brought home to them;--vastly more important and
significant too we may be sure than his effect upon his pupils and other
more or less obscure painters, engravers, and block designers, in whose
work actual imitation or adaption of his creations is more certain and
more abundant. His pictures, plates, and woodcuts were copied both in
Italy and in the North, both as exercises for the self-improvement of
artists and to supply a demand for even secondhand reflections of his
genius and skill. He was not destined to lend the impress of his
splendid personality to the tide of fashion like the great Italians;
their influence was to supersede his even in the North.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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