him a peculiar charm. The grotesqueness disappears as the eye becomes acquainted with the unfamiliar, and the mind is occupied with the emotion, the intellectual idea, and imaginative
Fig. 40.—St. John and the Virgin. Vignette to Dürer’s "Apocalypse."
truth, expressed in these sometimes ugly modes, for they are of that rare value which wins forgiveness for far greater defects of formal beauty than are apparent in Dürer's work. Although his spirit was romantic and uncontrolled, and his imagination dealt with forms not in themselves beautiful, he possessed the greatest energy of genius of all the masters who have intrusted their works to wood-engraving, and with him it was a favorite art.
The first of the four famous series of designs by which his skill in wood-engraving is best known was published in
