Page:Dürer (1910).djvu/89

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DÜRER
71

traits show that Dürer stood on the threshold of the modern world.

Hieronymus Holzschuer is another of Dürer's strikingly successful efforts to portray both form and mind, and although the colour of the man's face is of a conventional pink, yet the pale blue background, the white hair, the pink flesh, and the glaring eyes stamp themselves indelibly on the mind of the beholder, much to the detriment of the other picture in the Berlin Gallery, Jacob Muffel. Jacob Muffel, contrary to Jerome Holzschuer, looks a miser, a hypocrite, and the more unpleasant, as he does not by any means look a fool. But Dürer's craftsmanship here exceeds that of the Holzschuer portrait, whom we love for the sake of his display of white hair and flaming eyes. The enigma to me is how a man who had painted the three last portraits mentioned, could have fallen to the level of the "Madonna with the Apple" of the same year.