As a young man, I wanted to be an artist. I proved to have no talent for drawing or painting. I stumbled on a book of Albrecht Durer’s woodcuts and was wowed. The only art works I was ever able to sell were some carved wood plaques based on Durer’s work. There is a real value in trying to copy an artist's work. It allows you to appreciate the excellence of the original work – and it teaches humility as you realize just how far short of the original your poor efforts fall.
You’d think Durer would be able to get all the attention he deserves without people creating a myth about him. What Michaelangelo was to the Italian Renaissance and Rembrandt was to the Dutch masters, Durer was to the Northern Renaissance. Many scholars describe him as the most important figure of that era.
The term “Renaissance Man” is thrown around today for anybody who can walk and chew gum at the same time, but Durer qualifies under the traditional definition. He was an artist in many different mediums. He was a writer, an inventor, a religious scholar, a politician… even a mathematician. His influence has affected the world for centuries, even unto this day.
Born in Nuremburg in 1471, the son of a wealthy goldsmith, Durer’s talents were recognized early and he was apprenticed both to his father and to a painter whose studio produced woodcuts to illustrate books. Gutenberg had revolutionized printing one generation earlier, so books were being produced in increasing numbers.
Durer’s woodcuts and metal plate engravings took the illustration of books to new artistic heights.
He was also a painter in oils and watercolors. Though he painted many sacred and secular subjects, including creating many famous altarpieces in central Europe, he complained that oil painting took lots of time and didn’t pay very well. It was his woodcuts and engravings that made him famous throughout Europe and influenced artists everywhere.
Part of Durer’s gift to us today is that he wrote a lot, with much of his writing still preserved… and that he took care to make sure his art works would survive. We have a huge selection of his work available. Three examples for you – a woodcut of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (not Notre Dame football, the real end-of-the-world Revelations guys!), an oil of Jesus as a young boy confounding the “doctors” in the Temple in Jerusalem, and an amazing self-portrait.
BTW, if you think the picture looks arrogant, like AD was illustrating himself as looking Christ-like… well, Durer was a friend of Martin Luther and believed that the Christ could be found in each one of us – so he quite consciously painted himself looking Christ-like. Still… doesn’t look like this was an artist who suffered too much from a lack of self-esteem!
So it might be considered ironic that Durer’s best known “work” was actually just a sketch he did for the hands of a character he was painting in an altarpiece in Vienna. The sketch was originally called just “Hands” or sometimes, “Hands of the Apostle.” But today we know it as “Praying Hands.” The original is a brush and ink drawing, highlighted with white, on blue-tinted paper. It is about 8” by 12” and is currently held by the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna.
The art should speak for itself… but no… somebody had to turn it into a saccharine sermon on how none of us get through life on our own. There is a story about “Praying Hands” that used to get printed in Christian magazines every now and then. It is now eternal as it gets circulated as fact around the internet. In this version, Albrecht is one of 18 children (true… though only three survived to adulthood) in a poor family (false – they were really quite wealthy) and his brother Albert makes a great sacrifice to allow Albrecht to study art, going down into the mines to support his brother and suffering, as a consequence, the destruction of his own artistic hands. As a testimonial, Albrecht supposedly painted his brother’ crushed and damaged hands. Of course, the hands in Praying Hands are not broken and distorted, but the attenuated devout hands of an apostle in rapture - but why let facts interfere with a story???
Christians use the two hands held together and clasped over the heart as a gesture of prayer. The Hindu gesture of prayer, the anjali mudra, is identical… and in Buddhist traditions the same gesture is used as a sign of greeting, respect, and veneration.
Enter a hosta… H. ‘Praying Hands’ – perhaps the oddest hosta ever. It was registered in 1996 by G. Williams and is listed as “parentage unknown.” It makes an upright clump of narrow green leaves with white margins that stay very tightly rolled up. It must have reminded someone of the hands held together and pointing upward as illustrated in the picture of praying hands.
From here it gets odd. The parentage is unknown, but Zillis speculates anyway. He says “but most likely a sport of some Fortunei.” He goes on to suggest planting it with other weird, distorted hostas such as Embroidery and Tortifrons and other oddballs. As I walk around my garden, I can’t help but wonder about the Fortunei connection. It sure looks more like it has rectifolia or Tardflora in its heritage… I don’t see any Fortunei in it.
I think sometimes I pay too much attention to Zillis. I put off adding Praying Hands to my collection, thinking it was an expensive folly – like Embroidery, an expensive hosta with uncertain growth potential, planted just for converstational purposes.
How wrong I was! When I finally put in a small plant, it immediately grabbed my attention. It has grown well, reasonably vigorous, no pest concerns… and it just gets better looking every year. It has so impressed me that I have started to agitate for its selection for Hosta of the Year 2011!
So please… check out my main man, AD. It is possible to still buy woodcut prints made from his original blocks. Check out his self-portrait at the Louvre, if it happens to be one of the rare hours that those responsible for the gallery are not standing out back smoking evil-smelling cigarettes and making rude comments about Americans. You can even check out his Praying Hands sketch. Just please, please, please don’t send out the tacky, sappy story – I think it cheapens the work of this consummate artist.
And check out the hosta, too… I think it belongs in every garden!
