In the old German school we have that homely matter-of-fact feeling,
and dramatic expression, and defiance of all chronological propriety,
which belonged to the time and school. The composition by Albert
Durer, in his series of the Life of the Virgin, has great beauty and
simplicity of expression, and in the arrangement a degree of grandeur
and repose which has caused it to be often copied and reproduced as a
picture, though the original form is merely that of a wood-cut.[1] In
the centre is a bedstead with a canopy, on which Mary lies fronting
the spectator, her eyes half closed. On the left of the bed stands
St. Peter, habited as a bishop: he places a taper in her dying hand;
another apostle holds the asperge with which to sprinkle her with
holy water: another reads the service. In the foreground is a priest
bearing a cross, and another with incense; and on the right, the other
apostles in attitudes of devotion and grief.

[Footnote 1: There is one such copy in the Sutherland Gallery; and
another in the Munich Gallery, Cabinet viii. 161.]

Another picture by Albert Durer, once in the Fries Gallery, at
Vienna, unites, in a most remarkable manner, all the legendary and
supernatural incidents with the most intense and homely reality. It
appears to have been painted for the Emperor Maximilian, as a tribute
to the memory of his first wife, the interesting Maria of Burgundy.
The disposition of the bed is the same as in the wood-cut, the foot
towards the spectator. The face of the dying Virgin is that of the
young duchess. On the right, her son, afterwards Philip of Spain,
and father of Charles V., stands as the young St. John, and presents
the taper; the other apostles are seen around, most of them praying;
St. Peter, habited as bishop, reads from an open book (this is the
portrait of George a Zlatkonia, bishop of Vienna, the friend and
counsellor of Maximilian); behind him, as one of the apostles,
Maximilian himself, with head bowed down, as in sorrow. Three
ecclesiastics are seen entering by an open door, bearing the cross,
the censer, and the holy water. Over the bed is seen the figure of
Christ; in his arms, the soul of the Virgin, in likeness of an infant
with clasped hands; and above all, in an open glory and like a vision,
her reception and coronation in heaven. Upon a scroll over her head,
are the words, "_Surge propera, amica mea; veni de Libano, veni
coronaberis._" (Cant. iv. 8.) Three among the hovering angel