"The Portfolio" for 1877 contains a long series of articles by Prof.
Sidney Colvin on "Albert Duerer: His Teachers, his Rivals, and his
Scholars," treating exhaustively of his relations as an engraver to
other contemporary masters,--Schongauer, Israhel van Meckenen,
Mantegna, Boldini and the Florentines, Jacopo de' Barbari (Jacob
Walch), Marc Antonio, Lucas van Leyden, and certain other excellent
but nameless artists.

Vasari says, "The power and boldness of Albert increasing with time,
and as he perceived his works to obtain increasing estimation, he now
executed engravings on copper, which amazed all who beheld them."
Three centuries later Von Schlegel wrote, "When I turn to look at the
numberless sketches and copper-plate designs of the present day, Duerer
appears to me like the originator of a new and noble system of
thought, burning with the zeal of a first pure inspiration, and eager
to diffuse his deeply conceived and probably true and great ideas."

In 1497 Duerer painted the excellent portrait of his father, which the
Rath of Nuremberg presented to Charles I. of England, and which is now
at Sion House, the seat of the Earl of Northumberland. It shows a man
aged yet strong, with grave and anxious eyes, compressed lips, and an
earnest expression. Another similar portrait of the same date is in
the Munich Pinakothek. He also executed two portraits of the pretty
patrician damsel, Catherine Fuerleger; one as a loose-haired Magdalen
(which is now in London), and the other as a German lady (now at
Frankfort).

In 1498 Duerer painted a handsome portrait of himself, with curly hair
and beard, and a rich holiday costume. His expression is that of a man
who appreciates and delights in his own value, and is thoroughly
self-complacent. This picture was presented by Nuremberg to King
Charles I. of England; and, in the dispersion of his gallery during
the Commonwealth, it was bought by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. It is
now in the Uffizi Gallery, though Muendler calls this Florentine
picture a copy of a nobler original which is in the Madrid Gallery.

During this year Duerer published his first great series of woodcuts,
representing the Apocalypse of St. John, in fifteen pictures full of
terrible impressiveness and the naturalistic quaintness of early
German faith. The boldness of the youth who thus took for his theme
the marvellous mysteries of Patmos was warranted in the grand
weirdness and perennial fascination of th