-Alexander
and Darius both in armour of burnished gold; Alexander on Bucephalus
with his lance in rest advances before his men and presses on the flying
Darius, whose charioteer has already fallen on his white horses, and who
looks back upon his conqueror with all the despair of a vanquished
monarch."

ALBERT DUeRER (1471-1528), by his overpowering genius, may be called the
sole representative of German art of his period. He was gifted with a
power of conception which traced nature through all her finest shades,
and with a lively sense, as well for the solemn and the sublime, as for
simple grace and tenderness; above all, he had an earnest and truthful
feeling in art united with a capacity for the most earnest study. These
qualities were sufficient to place him by the side of the greatest
artists whom the world has ever seen.

One of the earliest portraits by Albert Duerer known to us is that of his
father, Albert Duerer, the goldsmith, dated 1497, in our National
Gallery. In the year 1644, another version of this picture, which was
engraved by Hollar, was in the collection of the Earl of Arundel, and is
now in that of the Duke of Northumberland, at Syon House. Of about the
same time--that is to say, before 1500--are the portraits of Oswald
Krell, at Munich, of Frederick the Wise, at Berlin, and of himself, at
the Prado.

Several of Albert Duerer's pictures of the year 1500 are known to us. The
first and most important is his own portrait in the Munich Gallery,
which represents him full face with his hand laid on the fur trimming
of his robe.

His finest picture of the year 1504 is an _Adoration of the Kings_,
originally painted for Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony,
subsequently presented by the Elector Christian II. to the Emperor
Rudolph II., and finally, on the occasion of an exchange of pictures,
transferred from Vienna to Florence, where it now hangs in the Tribune
of the Uffizi. The heads are of thoroughly realistic treatment; the
Virgin a portrait from some model of no attractive character; the second
King a portrait of the painter himself. The landscape background exactly
resembles that in the well-known engraving of S. Eustace, the period of
which is thus pretty nearly defined. It is carefully painted in a fine
body of colour.

In 1505 Duerer made a second journey into Upper Italy, and remained a
considerable time at Venice. Of his occupations in this city the letters
written to his friend Wilibald