A History Of Wood Engraving by George E Woodberry

Author:George E Woodberry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper & Brothers
Published: 1883-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

ta, yok—From Oi* "Epktak tli Sm HienMywo.** Feirara, 1497-

jERMANY produced one artist who freed himself from the limitations of taste and interest which the place of his birth imposed upon him, and took rank with the great masters who seem to belong rather to the race than to their native country. Hans Holbein was nei ther German nor Italian, neither clas sical nor mediaeval. The ideal of his art was not determined by the culture of any single 'school, at home or abroad; far less was it a jarring compromise be tween the aims and methods of different schools; it grew out of a faithful study of all, and in it were rationally blend ed the elements which were right in each. In style, theme, and spirit he advanced so far beyond his contemporaries that he became the first modern artist — the first to clear his vision from the deceptions of religious enthusiasm, and to subdue in himself the lawlessness of the romantic spirit; the first to perceive that only the purely human interest gives lasting significance to any artistic work, and to depict humanity simply for its own sake; the first to express his

meaning in a way which seems truthful and beautiful uni versally to all cultivated men. In this lies the peculiar and profound value of his works.

Holbein was born at Augsburg, in 1495 or *49 6 * i nto a family of artists. In that city, then the centre of German culture, he grew up amid the stir of curiosity and thought which attended the discovery of the Western World and the first movements of the Reformation. He handled the pen cil and the brush from boyhood, and produced wwks as wonderful for their precocious excellence as the early efforts of Mantegna; he was deeply impressed by the secular and picturesque genius of Burgkmaier, the great artist of Augs burg, w r ho may have first opened to him the value of beau ty of detail, and inculcated in him that carefulness in re spect to it which afterward distinguished him; he seems, too, even at this early period, to have been touched by some Italian influence which may have reached Augsburg in consequence of the close commercial relations between that city and Venice. Holbein, however, did not arrive at any mature development until after he left Augsburg and removed to Basle, whither he went in 1515, in order to earn his bread by making designs for books—a trade which was then flourishing and lucrative in that city. Basle offered conditions of life more favorable, in some respects, to the development of energetic individuality than did Augsburg; it was already the seat of humanistic literature, at the head of which was Erasmus, and it soon became the safest refuge of the persecuted Reformers. In such a city there was nec essarily a vigorous intellectual life and a free and liberal spirit, which must have exerted great influence upon the young artist, who by his profession was brought into IntI-

mate relations with the most learned and advanced thinkers about him.

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