[Illustration: DURER]

ALBRECHT DURER.

1471-1528.

In our study of the great artists so far, we have found that each
glorified some particular city and that, whatever other treasures that
city may have had in the past, it is the recollections of its great
artist that hallow it most deeply today. Thus, to think of Antwerp is
to think instantly of Rubens. Leyden and Amsterdam as quickly recall
to our minds the name of Rembrandt. Seville without Murillo would lose
its chief charm, while Urbino _is_ Raphael and, without the revered
name of the painter, would seldom draw the visitor to its secluded
precincts.

To the quaintest of European cities the name of Albrecht Durer
instinctively carries us--to Nuremberg.

"That ancient, free, imperial town,
Forever fair and young."

Were we to study Durer without first viewing his venerable city which
he so deeply loved all his life that no promise of gain from gorgeous
Venetian court or from wealthy Antwerp burgers could detain him long
from home, we should leave untouched a delightful subject and one
deeply inwoven in the life and thought of the artist. Were we to omit
a brief consideration of his time and the way the German mind looked
at things and naturally represented them in words and in pictures, we
should come away from Durer impressed only with his great homely
figures and faces and wondering why, in every list of the great
artists of the world, Durer's name should stand so high.

Having these things in mind, it will not then seem so far away to
speak of Nuremberg and Luther before we rehearse the things which make
up the life of Albrecht Durer.

Nuremberg does not boast a very early date, for she began her
existence just after the year one thousand when men, finding out
surely that the end of the world was not come, took as it were a new
lease of life. The thing she does boast is that her character as a
mediaeval town has been almost perfectly preserved up to the present
day.

There were many things which made Nuremberg an important city in early
times. She was conveniently located for traders who shipped vast
amounts of merchandise from Venice to the great trade centers in the
Netherlands. For many years she was a favorite city of the Emperor and
here were kept the crown jewels which were displayed with great pomp
once a year.

The country immediately about Nuremberg was sandy but carefully
cultivated. There were also large banks of clay very us