In accordance with a custom of the time, he was placed as a page in the house of a nobleman of Antwerp. To the talented and restless boy this life was intolerable, and he soon induced his mother to allow him to enter the studio of Van der Haeght, a resident artist of some repute and a close follower of Italian Art. He was only thirteen at this time. Here he learned to draw skillfully and, through the influence of his teacher, he acquired a love of landscape art which never left him. From Van der Haeght and his mild but correct art, Rubens, feeling his weakness in figure work, went to the studio of the irascible and forcible painter Van Noort, about whom critics have delighted to tell stories of brutality.

The artist’s reputation was now fully established. In 1509, he was made a member of the Council that governed the city and he was granted the important commission of painting two pictures for the relic chamber in Nuremberg. In this room, which was in a citizen’s house, the crown jewels were kept on Easter night, the time of their annual exhibition to the public. Sigismund and Charlemagne were the subjects selected, the former probably because it was he who first gave to Nuremberg the custody of the precious jewels, and the latter because Charlemagne was a favorite hero with the Germans. The Charlemagne is here reproduced. In wonderful jeweled coronation robes, with the coat of arms of France on one side and that of Germany on the other, he is a fine figure well suited to make us feel Durer’s power as a painter.

In accordance with a custom of the time, he was placed as a page in the house of a nobleman of Antwerp. To the talented and restless boy this life was intolerable, and he soon induced his mother to allow him to enter the studio of Van der Haeght, a resident artist of some repute and a close follower of Italian Art. He was only thirteen at this time. Here he learned to draw skillfully and, through the influence of his teacher, he acquired a love of landscape art which never left him. From Van der Haeght and his mild but correct art, Rubens, feeling his weakness in figure work, went to the studio of the irascible and forcible painter Van Noort, about whom critics have delighted to tell stories of brutality.

The artist’s reputation was now fully established. In 1509, he was made a member of the Council that governed the city and he was granted the important commission of painting two pictures for the relic chamber in Nuremberg. In this room, which was in a citizen’s house, the crown jewels were kept on Easter night, the time of their annual exhibition to the public. Sigismund and Charlemagne were the subjects selected, the former probably because it was he who first gave to Nuremberg the custody of the precious jewels, and the latter because Charlemagne was a favorite hero with the Germans. The Charlemagne is here reproduced. In wonderful jeweled coronation robes, with the coat of arms of France on one side and that of Germany on the other, he is a fine figure well suited to make us feel Durer’s power as a painter.