chapter I

have spoken of the fashion in female dress then prevalent; how it underlined whatever is most essential in the physical attributes of womanhood, and how probably something of good taste is shown in this fashion (see pp. 92 and 93). What I there said will explain Dürer's choice in this matter; and also that what Thausing felt bow in him was not taste, but his prejudices in regard to womanly attractiveness, and his misconception as to where the beauty of an engraving should be looked for and in what it consists. These same prejudices and misconceptions render Mrs. Heaton (as is only natural in one of the weaker sex) very bold. She says, "A large naked winged woman, whose ugliness is perfectly repulsive." This object, I must confess, appears to me, a coarse male, "welcome to contemplation of the mind and eye." The splendid Venus in Titian's _Sacred and Profane Love_, or his _Ariadne_ at Madrid; or Raphael's _Galatea_; or Michael Angelo's _Eve_ (on the Sistine vault) are all of them doubtless far more akin to the _Aphrodite_ of Praxiteles, or to her who crouches in the Louvre, than is this _Nemesis_; but we must not forget that they are works on a scale more comparable with a marble statue; and that in works of which the scale is more similar to that of our engraving, Greek taste was often far more with Dürer than with Thausing. This is an important point, though one which is rarely appreciated. However, there is no reason why we should condemn "misled by cold definite rules of taste" even such pictures as Rembrandt's _Bathing Woman_ in the Louvre, though here the proportions of the work are heroic. Oil painting was an art not practised by the Greeks, and this medium lends itself to beauties which their materials put entirely out of reach. Besides, Rembrandt appealed to an audience who had been educated by Christian ideals to appreciate a pathos produced by the juxtaposition of the fact with the ideal, and of the creature with the creator, to appeal to which a Greek would have had to be far more circumspect in his address--even if he had, through an exceptional docility and receptiveness of character, come under its influence himself. These considerations when apprehended will, I believe, suffice to dispel both prejudice and misconception in regard to this matter; and we shall find in Professor Thausing's remarks relative to the treatment of the "female form divine" in this engraving no additional reason for considering it a comparatively early work. And we shall only smile when he tells us "The _Nemesis_ to a certain _degree_ (sic) marks the extreme _point_ (sic) reached by Dürer in his unbiased study of the nude. His further progress became more and more influenced by his researches into the proportions of the human body." The bias will appear to us of rather more recent date, and we shall be ready to consider with an open mind how far Dürer's practice was influenced for good or evil by his researches into the proportions of the human body.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 80: See page 258.]

[Footnote 81: See page 260.]

[Footnote 82: See Frontispiece.]

[Footnote 83: See page 19.]

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