[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. ST. JEROME IN HIS CELL Size of the original engraving, 9½ × 7¼ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] [Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. VIRGIN SEATED BESIDE A WALL Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 3⅞ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] To this year, 1514, also belongs the _Virgin Seated Beside a Wall_, a plate in which the variety of texture has been carried further than in any other engraving by Dürer. The flesh is simply treated, in line for the most part; but the undergarment, the fur-trimmed wrapper, and the scarf which covers the head of the Virgin, hanging down the back and thrown over the knee, are all carefully differentiated. Again, the various planes in the landscape leading up to the fortified city are beautifully handled, as is also the wall to the right. It is hard to say what technical problems remained for Dürer to solve after such a little masterpiece as this. His growing fame meanwhile had attracted the attention of the Emperor Maximilian, “the last of the Knights,” who in February, 1512, visited Nuremberg. Dürer is commissioned to design the _Triumphal Arch_, the _Triumphal Car_, and similar monumental records of the Emperor’s prowess; not to speak of such orders as the decoration of the Emperor’s Prayer-Book, etc. Such distraction absorbed the greater part of the artist’s time and energies, and there was left little opportunity for the development of his work along the lines he had hitherto followed. It may be that we owe to this fact, and to the quick mode of producing a print such a process offers, the six etchings on iron which bear dates from 1515 to 1518. But, whatever the reason, we are glad that he etched these plates. Discarding, for the moment, the elaborate and detailed method of line work of his engravings on copper, he adopts a more open system, such as would “come well” in the biting--closer work than in his woodcuts, but perfectly adapted to that which he wished to say. There is a tense and passionate quality in _Christ in the Garden_ which places this etched plate among the noteworthy works even of Dürer, while the wind-torn tree to the left of Christ gives the needed touch of the supernatural to the composition. The _Carrying Off of Proserpine_--the spirited drawing for which is now in the J. Pierpont Morgan collection--is the working out, with allegorical accessories, of a study of a warrior carrying off a woman. The last of his plates, the _Cannon_, of 1518, with its charming landscape, was doubtless executed to supply, promptly, a popular demand. It represents a large field piece bearing the Arms of Nuremberg, and the five strangely costumed men to the right, gazing upon the “Nuremberg Field Serpent,” obviously have some relation to the fear of the Turk, then strong in Germany. [Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. CHRIST IN THE GARDEN Size of the original etching, 8¾ × 6⅛ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]