Alpha Book

From Italy as a center, great painting became the heritage of all
Europe. Italian painters were brought to France by Louis XII and
Francis I, and French painters were subsidized to imitate them. Philip
II proved himself a liberal patron of painting throughout his
dominions.
[Sidenote: Duerer]
In Germany, painting was developed by Albrecht Duerer (1471-1528), a
native of Nuremberg, who received a stimulus from Italian work and was
royally patronized by the Emperor Maximilian. The career of Duerer was
honored and fortunate: he was on terms of friendship with all the first
masters of his age; he even visited and painted Erasmus. But it is as
an etcher or engraver, rather than as a painter, that Duerer's
reputation was earned. His greatest engravings--such as the Knight and
Death, and St. Jerome in his Study--set a standard in a new art which
has never been reached by his successors. The first considerable
employment of engraving, one of the most useful of the arts,
synchronized with the invention of printing.


Pages:
413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437