uerdank," and "The Wise King," written in ponderous folios after the
fashion of the old romances, by Melchior Pfintzing, who resided in the
old parsonage house of St. Sebald (he being a canon of that church), a
picturesque building on the sloping ground beside it, which rises upward
to the Schlossberg, and which still retains the aspect it bore in his
days; its beautiful oriel and open balcony still testify to the taste of
mediaeval architects. It is but a short distance from Duerer's house, and
he must have frequently visited here. Here also, came the emperor to
examine the progress of these works: and the great interest he took in
superintending them has been recorded; for it is said that during the
time when Jerome Retzsch was engaged in engraving on wood the triumphal
car from the drawing by Duerer, the emperor was almost a daily visitant
to his house. This anecdote may naturally lead here to the consideration
of the question--did Duerer _engrave_ the cuts which bear his name, or
did he only _draw them_ upon the wood for the engraver? It is generally
considered that all cuts bearing an artist's mark are engraved by that
artist, but this is in reality an error resulting from modern practice.
It is now the custom for wood-engravers to place _their_ names or marks
on their cuts, and very seldom those of the artists who draw the designs
for them upon the wood. It was the reverse in the old time; then it was
usual to place that of the designer alone, and as he drew upon wood
every line to be engraved, after the manner of a pen-and-ink drawing,
the engraver had little else to do than cut the wood from between the
spaces: hence his art was a very mechanical one, and his name was seldom
recorded. That of Retzsch does not appear on the car just named, but the
mark of Duerer solely; and when we consider the vast amount of labour
performed by Duerer as an artist, it is not likely that he wasted time in
the mechanical labour of cutting out his own drawings when he could
employ it more profitably. The Baron Derschau, himself a collector of
old cuts, assured Dr. Dibdin "that he once possessed a journal of
Duerer's, from which it appeared that he was in the habit of drawing upon
the blocks, and that his men performed the remaining operation of
cutting away the wood." Bartsch is decidedly of opinion "that he had
never employed himself in this kind of work." Mr. W. A. Chatto, in his
anonymous "History of Wood Engraving," has gone into