Page:Dürer (1910).djvu/57

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DÜRER
45

less describe, the feelings that would be stirred in you if a modern painter represented the Crucifixion with Nicodemus and the man from Arimathea in frock-coats, Mary and the Magdalen in "walking costume," and a company of Horse-guards in attendance. The abyss of over four centuries divides us from Dürer; my suggestion sounds blasphemous almost, yet it is a thought based on fact and worthy of most careful note.

Owing to a convention—then active, now defunct—Dürer grasped the hands of all the living, bade them stop and think. Not one of those who beheld his work could pass by without feeling a call of sympathy and understanding. "Everyman" Dürer!— that is his grandeur. To this the artists added their appreciation; what he did was not only truly done, but on the testimony of all his brothers in Art well done. So with graver, pen, and brush he