Page:Dürer (1910).djvu/84

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DÜRER

So the Paumgaertner portraits, at one time supposed to represent Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen—the Reformation knights—show a marvellous grasp of character, wholly astonishing in the unconventional attitude, whilst the portrait of his aged master, Michael Wohlgemut, overstates in its anxiety not to understate.

His portrait of Kaiser Maximilian, quiet, dignified, is yet somewhat small in conception.

Two years later, however, he painted a portrait now in the Prado, representing presumably the Nuremberg patrician, Hans Imhof the Elder.

Purely technically considered this picture appears to be immeasurably above his own portrait of 1500, and above any other excepting the marvellous works of 1526. Whoever this Hans Imhof was, Dürer has laid bare his very soul. These later por-