[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. BATTLE OF THE SEA-GODS. (After Mantegna) Size of the original drawing, 11½ × 15¼ inches In the Albertina, Vienna] Beginning with the _Death of Orpheus_, engraved by some anonymous North Italian master working in the Fine Manner of the Tarocchi Cards, the next step is Dürer’s pen drawing, dated 1494. The figures of Orpheus and of the two Thracian Mænads remain unchanged, as does also the little child running towards the left. Dürer has, however, changed the lute into a lyre, as being more suited to Orpheus, and has added the beautiful group of trees which reappears, little changed, in his engraving of _Hercules_. There is a drawing of the Mantegna School which Dürer may, or may not, have seen; but the face of Orpheus in his drawing shows certain unmistakable Mantegna characteristics, far removed from the North Italian Fine Manner print. From Mantegna’s engraving, the _Battle of the Sea-Gods_ (right-hand portion), Dürer has borrowed the figure of the reclining woman to the left and the Satyr. That he was acquainted with this engraving by Mantegna is attested by a drawing of 1494. The man standing to the right, with legs spread wide apart, wearing a fantastic helmet in the shape of a cock, recalls the work of Pollaiuolo, by whom there exists a similar drawing, now in Berlin. From these various elements Dürer builds up his composition. Its full meaning he alone knew. It has remained an unsolved riddle from his time to our own. The _Carrying Off of Amymone_ belongs to this same period. Here Dürer has again used the motive taken from Mantegna’s engraving, the _Battle of the Sea Gods_; but in this instance he follows his original much more closely. Dürer alludes to this print in the diary of his journey to the Netherlands as _The Sea Wonder_ (_Das Meerwunder_); and although the interpretations given to it are many and various, its true meaning, as in the case of the Hercules, remains a matter of conjecture. By 1503, the year to which belongs the _Coat-of-Arms with the Skull_, and also, in all probability, the magnificent _Coat-of-Arms with the Cock_, Dürer seems to have overcome successfully all technical difficulties and is absolute master of his medium. From this time onwards, although his manner undergoes certain modifications in the direction of fuller color and of a more accurate rendering of texture, his language is adequate for anything he may wish to say, and he is free to address himself to the solution of scientific problems, such as are involved in the elucidation of his canon of human proportion, or the still deeper questions which stirred so profoundly the speculative minds of his time.