which his methods had
undergone, saying, "In his youth he was fond of a florid style and
great combination of colors, and that in looking at his own work he
was always delighted to find this diversity of coloring in any of his
pictures; but afterwards in his mature years he began to look more
entirely to nature, and tried to see her in her simplest form. Then he
found that this simplicity was the true perfection of art; and, not
attaining this, he did not care for his works as formerly, but often
sighed when he looked at his pictures and thought of his incapacity."

CHAPTER VIII.

"The Four Apostles."--Duerer's Later Literary Works.--Four Books of
Proportion.--Last Sickness and Death.--Agnes Duerer.--Duerer described
by a Friend.

Schlegel says that "Albert Duerer may be called the Shakespeare of
Painting;" and it is doubtless true that he filled out the narrow
capabilities of early German art with a full measure of deep and
earnest thought and powerful originality. The equal homage which was
offered to him at Venice and Antwerp, the two art-antipodes, shows how
highly he was regarded in his own day. His earlier works were executed
in the crude and angular methods of Wohlgemuth and his contemporaries;
and most of the pictures now attributed to him, often incorrectly, are
of this character. But in his later works he swung clear of these
trammelling archaisms, and produced brilliant and memorable
compositions.

"The Four Apostles," now in the Munich Pinakothek, were Duerer's last
and noblest works, and fairly justify Pirkheimer's assurance, that if
he had lived longer the master would have done "many more wonderful,
strange, and artistic things." They are full of grand thought and
clear insight, free from exaggeration or conventionalism, perfect in
execution and harmonious simplicity, and so distinct in individuality
that it has been generally believed that the Four Temperaments are
here impersonated. On one panel are Sts. John and Peter, in life-size,
the former deeply meditating, with the Scriptures in his hand, and the
latter bending forward and earnestly reading the Holy Book. The other
panel shows the stately St. Paul, robed in white, standing before the
ardent and impassioned St. Mark. Kugler calls these panels "the first
complete work of art produced by Protestantism;" and the truth and
simplicity of the paintings prefigured the return of a pure and
incorrupt faith.

Late in 1526, Duerer sent t