Gek, wanneer de oogst van de dag wat beelden en citaten uit een blog blijken te zijn. Andrew Butterfield (Dries Boterveld) bespreekt een paar tekeningen en prenten van Albrecht Dürer. Ik onthoud: de kunstenaar geloofde dat de mens onherroepelijk slecht, zondig en gebrekkig was, zoals zijn werk aantoont. (Het herinnert me ook aan de uitspraak van de wereldwijze Maximilien Morillon in het heetst van de godsdienstoorlog: gereformeerden waren zonder uitzondering “zwartgallige types”, op zoek naar een minder optimistische godsdienst dan het oude katholicisme.) Dürer erkende drie manieren om het innerlijke kwaad te overstijgen.
The third was to work without ceasing. Never stop. The counsel of despair was Satanic and it was everywhere. The resolute warrior in the engraving Knight, Death and Devil rides forward despite the demons at his side taunting him and telling him to give up and give in. Work was a form of prayer and art was a form of praise. Dürer wrote, “[Painting] is useful because God is thereby honored.” But if you ever stopped, you would lose your way and fall into error, like the idle genius in Melencolia I. To quote Staupitz once more, “The first sign of true faith is the battle against the demons.”

The men Dürer admired and whom he depicted at peace are almost all shown in their studios at work at their desks in acts of contemplation and learning. It is remarkable that both possibly the first independent print he ever made, a woodcut of Saint Jerome in 1492, and possibly the last, an engraving of Erasmus in 1526, depict such a scene. Neither image is in the show, but it does feature the most beautiful of all his attempts to imagine this vision of blessedness, the 1514 engraving of Saint Jerome in His Study. Bathed in warm light streaming through the large windows of his room, mindful of death yet unafraid, the saint concentrates with absolute attention on his writing. It is a picture of human good and human happiness. This was the ideal, the one Dürer sought and emulated in his own life.

The counsel of despair was Satanic and it was everywhere. Ware woorden.
En zo komen we via Dürer toch weer bij Sint-Hiëronymus uit, patroonheilige van de humanisten, van Erasmus, van de boekenliefhebbers.

Morillon, geciteerd in Huet & Grieten, Rockox. Burgemeester van de gouden eeuw, Antwerpen, 2010, p. 78.