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.”

DURER’S WORKS AS AN ENGRAVER.

Durer derived most of his fame from his engravings, and he is allowed to have surpassed every artist of his time in this branch of art.  Born in the infancy of the art, he carried engraving to a perfection that has hardly been surpassed.  When we consider that, without any models worthy of imitation, he brought engraving to such great perfection, we are astonished at his genius, and his own resources.  Although engraving has had the advantage and experience of more than three centuries, it would perhaps be difficult to select a specimen of executive excellence surpassing his print of St. Jerome, engraved in 1514.  He had a perfect command of the graver, and his works are executed with remarkable neatness and clearness of stroke; if we do not find in his plates that boldness and freedom desirable in large historical works, we find in them everything that can be wished in works more minute and finished, as were his.  To him is attributed the invention of etching; and if he was not the inventor, he was the first who excelled in the art.  He also invented the method of printing wood-cuts in chiaro-scuro, or with two blocks.  His great mathematical knowledge enabled him to form a regular system of rules for drawing and painting with geometrical precision.  He had the power of catching the exact expression of the features, and of delineating all the passions.  Although he was well acquainted with the anatomy of the human figure, and occasionally designed it correctly, his contours are neither graceful nor pleasing, and his