ENTHRONED

(_After the engraving by =Martin Schongauer=. London: British Museum, B.
71_)

_M.S._]

After this Martin, Albrecht Duerer began to give attention to prints of
the same kind at Antwerp, but with more design and better judgment, and
with more beautiful invention, seeking to imitate the life and to draw
near to the Italian manners, which he always held in much account. And
thus, while still quite young, he executed many works which were
considered as beautiful as those of Martin; and he engraved them with
his own hand, signing them with his name. In the year 1503 he published
a little Madonna, in which he surpassed both Martin and his own self;
and afterwards many other sheets with horses, two in each sheet, taken
from nature and very beautiful. In another he depicted the Prodigal Son,
in the guise of a peasant, kneeling with his hands clasped and gazing up
to Heaven, while some swine are eating from a trough; and in this work
are some most beautiful huts after the manner of German cottages. He
engraved a little S. Sebastian, bound, with the arms upraised; and a
Madonna seated with the Child in her arms, with the light from a window
falling upon her, a small work, than which there is nothing better to be
seen. He also made a Flemish woman on horseback, with a groom at her
feet; and on a larger copper-plate he engraved a nymph being
carried away by a sea-monster, while some other nymphs are bathing. On a
plate of the same size he engraved with supreme delicacy of workmanship,
attaining to the final perfection of this art, a Diana beating a nymph,
who has fled for protection to the bosom of a satyr; in which sheet
Albrecht sought to prove that he was able to make nudes.

[Illustration: HERCULES

(_After the engraving by =Albrecht Duerer=. London: British Museum, B.
73_)

_M.S._]

But although those masters were extolled at that time in those
countries, in ours their works are commended only for the diligent
execution of the engraving. I am willing, indeed, to believe that
Albrecht was perhaps not able to do better because, not having any
better models, he drew, when he had to make nudes, from one or other of
his assistants, who must have had bad figures, as Germans generally have
when naked, although one sees many from those parts who are fine men
when in their clothes. In various little printed sheets he executed
figures of peasant men and women in different Flemish costumes, some
playing on the bagpi