DURER'S WORKS AS A PAINTER.

Though Durer was most famous as an engraver, yet he executed many large paintings, which occupy a distinguished place in the royal collections of Germany, and other European countries. In the imperial collection at Munich are some of the most celebrated, as Adam and Eve, the Adoration of the Magi, the Crucifixion—a grand composition—the Crowning of the Virgin, the Battle between Alexander and Darius, and many other great works. Durer painted the Wise Men's Offering, two pictures of the Passion of Christ, and an Assumption of the Virgin, for a monastery of Frankfort, which proved a source of income to the monks, from the presents they received for exhibiting them. The people of Nuremberg still preserve, in the Town Hall, his portraits of Charlemagne and some Emperors of the House of Austria, with the Twelve Apostles, whose drapery is remarkable for being modern German, instead of Oriental. He sent his own portrait to Raffaelle, painted on canvas, without any coloring or touch of the pencil, only heightened with shades and white, yet exhibiting such strength and elegance that the great artist to whom it was presented expressed the greatest surprise at the sight of it. This piece, after the death of Raffaelle, fell into the possession of Giulio Romano, who placed it among the curiosities of the palace of Mantua. Besides the pictures already mentioned, there is by him an Ecce Homo at Venice, his own portrait, and two pictures representing St. James and St. Philip, and an Adam and Eve in the Florentine Gallery. There are also some of his works in the Louvre, and in the royal collections in England. As a painter, it has been observed of Durer that he studied nature only in her unadorned state, without attending to those graces which study and art might have afforded him; but his imagination was lively, his composition grand, and his pencil delicate. He finished his works with exact neatness, and he was particularly excellent in his Madonnas, though he encumbered them with heavy draperies. He surpassed all the painters of his own country, yet he did not avoid their defects—such as dryness and formality of outline, the want of a just degradation of the tints, an expression without agreeableness, and draperies broad in the folds, but stiff in the forms. He was no observer of the propriety of costume, and paid so little attention to it that he appears to have preferred to drape his saints and heroes of antiquity in the costume of his own time and country. Fuseli observes that "the coloring of Durer went beyond his age, and in his easel pictures it as far excelled the oil color of Raffaelle in juice, and breadth, and handling, as Raffaelle excelled him in every other quality."