The marriage of the monk and the nun gave only a brief advantage to the enemies of reform. The great German artists of that generation were friends of Luther. No name is more distinguished in the early annals of German art than Albert Dürer, painter, engraver, sculptor, and author. He did not employ his pencil in furtherance of Luther's cause, nor did he forsake the communion of the ancient Church, but he expressed the warmest sympathy with the objects of the reformer. A report of Luther's death in 1521 struck horror to his soul. "Whether Luther be yet living," he wrote, "or whether his enemies have put him to death, I know not; yet certainly what he has suffered has been for the sake of truth, and because he has reprehended the abuses of unchristian papacy, which strives to fetter Christian liberty with the incumbrance of human ordinances, that we may be robbed of the price of our blood and sweat, and shamefully plundered by idlers, while the sick and needy perish through hunger." These words go to the heart of the controversy. Holbein, nearly thirty years younger than Dürer, only just coming of age when Luther nailed his theses to the castle church, did more, as the reader has already seen, than express in words his sympathy with reform. The fineness and graphic force of the two specimens of his youthful talent given on pages 72, 73,[12] every reader must have remarked. Only three copies of these pictures are known to exist. They appeared at the time when Luther had kindled a general opposition to the sale of indulgences, as well as some ill feeling toward the classic authors so highly esteemed by Erasmus. They are in a peculiar sense Lutheran pictures, and they give expression to the reformer's prejudices and convictions. A third wood-cut of Holbein's is mentioned by Woltmann, dated 1524, in which the Pope is shown riding in a litter surrounded by an armed escort, and on the other side Christ is seen on an ass, accompanied by his disciples. These three works were Holbein's contribution to the earlier stage of the movement. [Footnote 12: From "Holbein and his Time," p. 241-243, by Alfred Woltmann; translated by F. E. Bunnett, London, 1872.]