Exhibitions 2
The Age of Diirer and Holbein: German Drawings 1400-1550 (British Museum, till 16 October)
Of men and walruses
Celina Fox
It is something of a relief to come across an exhibition in a national museum whose principal raison d'être is the celebration of quality. At a time when another of our great public collections is being marketed in terms of oafish yobbishness, it was beginning to seem as if the Sixties cant that quality equals elitism had finally pene- Down-to-earth vision in Lucas Cranach's `Head of a peasant' trated their notoriously conservative corri- dors — an ironic state of affairs, given that such notions have long appeared not mere- ly offensively patronising but politically outmoded.
Admittedly, the 'murals under motor- ways' school of art appreciation is scarcely encouraged to patronise an exhibition which is called The Age of Diirer and Holbein: German Drawings 1400-1550. But beneath the deadpan title lurks a wholly life-enhancing, truly — dare one say it — populist show, commemorating a turning-point in European cultural history. For this was the time when the artist emerged as an individual from the anony- mity of mediaeval craftsmanship. Moreov- er, this was the moment when ordinary man and his humdrum life began to pro- vide a source of inspiration for the artist, who elevated the commonplace through the cumulative skill of his training and a new confidence in his own creativity. The significant moment is encapsulated in the career of Albrecht Darer.
It is possible to apply the word genius to Dirrer in the sense used by Berenson: the capacity for productive reaction against one's training. That the training for Ger- man artists was rigorous is amply testified by the drawings at the start of this exhibi- tion. Yet despite the clarity and precision of line that are the hallmark of the German school, these works are far from being arid copybook exercises. Instead, they display a quiet beauty and the tension of restraint, whether in a grey, haunting study of 'Christ Carrying the Cross', a fine decorative drawing of a hallucinating sibyl wearing an elaborate bejewelled headdress, or a charming allegorical study of a girl fanning a fire with a bird's wing.
Diirer's early drawing of knights jousting reveals the brilliance of his draughts- manship even at 18, but his travels to Italy were to take him way beyond the capacity of his masters. His drawings in this show are not confined to specific commissions, but are illustrative of the artist's driving need to give artistic form to anything that came his way — from an alpine larch to the veining in rocks, the reeds in the marshes on the outskirts of Nuremberg, or the distinctive, steeply inclined roofs of farm buildings in this part of Germany. The latter appear in the background to his only surviving drawing for an engraving prior to 1500, that of the Prodigal Son, in which the masterly control he had acquired through training is married to a new freedom in delineating character — man and hogs alike.
No illustration can do justice to his ravishing drawing of a Nuremberg woman going to church, her eyelids demurely lowered beneath her starched butterfly wimple, and wearing a light lime-green pleated gown over a delicate pink fur- hemmed underskirt, tied at the waist with a soft silk sash. Carefully inscribed with the year 1500, the work also testifies to the artist's presence, serving to confirm that this is what he saw. Similarly the extraor- dinary image of the laughing peasant woman bears the artist's famous mono- gram and the date, 1505, prominently displayed in the middle of her bodice, affirming his role with unprecedented bra- vura. Diirer's portrait drawings are breath- taking in their magnificence, their capacity to convey the sense that he could bring anyone to life. He penetrates the character of men of power, using charcoal or chalk to heighten the dramatic possibilities and flat wash backgrounds to focus attention on the head. And with animals, again he captures their essential persona: an elk, a bison and a hapless walrus, encumbered by ungainly tusks and great flabby folds of flesh, impatiently dismissed in the artist's inscrip- tion as 'that stupid animal'.
There is an emphatically down-to-earth quality about the German vision at this date, as opposed perhaps to the more immediately seductive qualities of Italian draughtsmanship. Here we have a peasant with a knobbly, weather-beaten face, flaxen hair and a bushy beard merging into his furry hat, portrayed by Lucas Cranach; or, by the same artist, a middle-aged burgher with tired eyes and five-o'clock shadow. There is a bewildered open-jawed fool by Hans Baldung Grien, an unusually thoughtful young man by Ambrosius Hol- bein and a bevy of wary Tudors from the hand of his more famous brother. They all register as individuals, and it is infinitely poignant to be able to contemplate their recorded presence on earth nearly half a millennium later.
The show is accompanied by a scholarly, fully illustrated catalogue by the British Museum's Keeper of Prints and Drawings, John Rowlands, with a generous number of works reproduced in colour (British Museum Publications, £14.95, but £12.50 during the exhibition). The provenances confirm that English collectors have long appreciated German draughtsmanship (as opposed to German painting). Neverthe- less, it is still astonishing to think that an 18th-century physician, Sir Hans Sloane, should have had the notion to collect over a quarter of the 200 works we can see here on display, including some 40 drawings by Diirer, most of which are in a wonderful state of preservation. How did he come to amass them and how had they survived for 250 years before he acquired them? We are the envy of the world for his foundation bequest to the British Museum and we should never cease to marvel at its riches.
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