3-011-416 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Albert Durer's tomb, 1864. '...the Old-world city of Nuremberg...is rich in everything of the past, and owes nothing to the present...To find oneself there is to be thrown back 300 or 400 years, for it is a purely mediaeval city...The streets speak of a generation long passed away. Here the eye rests on some gorgeous oriel of the most exquisite tracery; here, as we look up, we see the high-pitched roofs, with story on story of pointed dormers; here, again, some richly carved excrescence seems clinging to the eaves and rising high above them with its delicate spire...We will walk to the churchyard of St. John to see the tomb of this father of German art. Alas! some sacrilegious hands have moved his honoured dust. He lies not there - the sketch is but that of a cenotaph. It matters not: one of the world's wisest, who lived twenty-three centuries ago, has told us that "the whole world is the tomb of illustrious men." With Albert Dürer, the worthiest of the sons of Nuremberg, we take our leave for the present of that city, which Melanchthon called, in his day, "Lumen, oculus, decus et ornamentum praecipuum Germaniae!".' From "Illustrated London News", 1864.