rkation on his true vocation, as well as the reluctance of the
elder Albert to allow his noble and beloved boy to pass out from his
desolated household into other scenes, and away from his
companionship.

Wohlgemuth was one of the early religious painters who stood at the
transition-point between the school of Cologne and that of the Van
Eycks, or between the old pietistic traditions of Byzantine art
and the new ideas of the art of the Northern Reformation. The
conventionalisms of the Rhenish and Franconian paintings were being
exchanged for a fresher originality and a truer realism; and the
pictures of this time curiously blended the old and the new.
Wohlgemuth seems to have considered art as a money-getting trade
rather than a high vocation, and his workroom was more a shop than a
studio. He turned out countless Madonnas and other religious subjects
for churches and chance purchasers, and also painted chests and carved
and colored images of the saints, many of which were executed by his
apprentices. A few of his works, however, were done with great care
and delicacy, and show a worthy degree of sweetness and simplicity.
Evidently the young pupil gained little besides a technical knowledge
of painting from this master,--the mechanical processes, the modes of
mixing and applying colors, the chemistry of pigments, and a certain
facility in using them. It was well that the influences about him were
not powerful enough to warp his pure and original genius into servile
imitations of decadent methods. His hands were taught dexterity; and
his mind was left to pursue its own lofty course, and use them as its
skilful allies in the new conquests of art.

Wood-engraving was also carried on in Wohlgemuth's studio, and it is
probable that Duerer here learned the rudiments of this branch of art,
which he afterwards carried to so high a perfection. Some writers
maintain that his earliest works in this line were done for the famous
"Nuremberg Chronicle," which was published in 1493 by Wohlgemuth and
Pleydenwurf.

The three years which were spent in Wohlgemuth's studio were probably
devoted to apprentice-work on compositions designed by the master, who
was then about fifty years old, and at the summit of his fame. But few
of Duerer's drawings now existing date from this epoch, one of which
represents a group of horsemen, and another the three Swiss leaders,
Fuerst, Melchthal, and Staufacher. The beautiful portrait of Duerer's
fathe