A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF
in copying the pictures of Raphael and Andrea del
Sarto, which, it is said, he did with great accuracy.
He also copied Correggio and Titian. On his
return to his own country he painted some good
portraits ; but liis colouring was too sombre to
give a pleasing effect to his pictures of females,
and his work was frequently so laboured as to be
deprived of all animation. Copies of the works
of the old masters by Als are to be seen in
Denmark. He died in 1775.
ALSLOOT, Denys van, a portrait and landscape painter, who flourished towards the close of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, was born at Brussels, but the date is nowhere recorded, and but little is known of his life. He was, about 1600, painter to the Archduke Albert of Austria, and his pictures were purchased for high prices. He died in the year 1626, or earlier. A landscape with the story of Cephalus and Procris, in the Vienna Gallery, is dated 1608. The figures are by H. de Clerck. Two pictures by him are in the Brussels Gallerj' : they represent the Procession of St. Gudule at Brussels. By mistake, a second painter, Daniel van Alsloot, has been recorded by some writers ; but he apparently never existed. ALT, Jakob, who was bom at Frankfort-on-the- Main in 1789, received his first instruction in art in his native city, and then removed to Vienna and entered the Academy, and soon rose to fame as a landscape painter. He then made various journeys throughout Austria and Italy, painting, as he went along, views in the neighbourhood of the Danube and in the city of Vienna. In later life Alt painted much in water-colour; he was also an engraver on stone. He died at Vienna in 1872. One of liis best works is a ' View in Venice,' in the Belvedere Gallery, signed and dated 1834. He was employed by the Emperor Ferdi- nand to paint in water-colour a series of views of Rome.
ALTDORFER, Albrecht, a painter, engraver, and architect, was bom not later than 1480. In 1505 he was enrolled a burgher of Ratisbon, in which connection he was described as " a painter of Amberg, twenty-five years of age." It is not certain, however, whether this description proves more than that he had fully attained the age (twenty-five years) at which the freedom of the city could be granted ; and, as the registration took place immediately upon his arrival from Amberg, it is possible he was older than the letter of the record appears to state. The pLice of Altdorfer's birth has not been determined, though there are grounds for believing that he was of Ratisbon stock and probably of Ritisbon birth, Amberg being only the home of his young man- hood. But, uncertain though it be whether the migration to h'atisbon in 1505 was a bold adventure among strangers or merely a return home, it is indisputable that events soon justified the young burgher's choi e of a city. In 15 18 he received an ofiicial appointment, and in 1509 the city council gave ten gulden towards the expense of a picture which he painted forthe clioir of St. Peter's church. Four j-ears later he was in a position to buj- a house with a courtyard and a tower, the first of four houses purchased by him during his thirty years of citizenship. Of the famishing of these housss his will gives some inkling, with its notices of chests, pictures, weapons, gems, stuffs, coins, silver goblets, and of " a horse with trapping.?." His worldly prosperity and opulent surroundings account for a great deal both in the form and in the matter of his art, while his practical activity as city architect explains not a little more. The bastions which he erected against the Turks have been swept away, but the public slaughter-house built from hh designs is still standing ; while the important architectural elements of ' Susannah,' ' Poverty and Riches,' ' The Birth of the Virgin,' and other paintings, prove that he was not merely a perfunctory Baumeister but an enthusiast for builded stones. Nor was it only as painter and architect that Altdorfer served Ratisbon ; he was a city councillor, and it is characteristic of " Meister Albrecht" that when a mob burned down the Jews' synagogue — a building of which he had twice made etchings, and which he had used for a back- ground in several pictures — it was " Meister Albrecht's " hand which signed the decree for the Jews' expulsion. By virtue of so wide a knowledge of the world, this wealthy burgher and busy man of affairs was bound to differ strongly from mere studio-artists, and, as the artist in him always had the upper hand — this appears from many incidents, such as his retirement from high ofiBce while he was painting 'The Battle of Arhela' — his variegated and energetic life was almost wholly to his artistic advantage. The widespread belief that Altdorfer, in respect of technical mastery, lags far behind the great artists who devoted themselves almost wholly to their art, is not shared by any competent person who has made it his business to examine dispassionately the whole body of this master's work. Paintings, drawings, etchings, and woodcuts in turn exhibit an extraordinary sense and domination of the particular medium. As a colourist he must be placed very high indeed among the Northern Masters, and his work is full of air. As for his drawings, of which the Berlin Print Room has the most important collection, they are so highly charged with poetical feeling, and are so remark- able for technical accomplishment, that these almost unknown works should alone suffice to lift their creator out of his low estate as a mere " Little Master." The etchings, especially the landscapes and the woodcuts, some at least of which appear to have been cut by his own hand, further establish his right to be ranked immediately after Diirer and Holbein in German art.
Altdorfer has been called "the Giorgione of the North," and the phrase fits its subject neither better nor worse than do most other phrases of the kind. But to his other style of "the Father of Landscape" he can make good a strong claim. His ' St. George ' at Munich astounds the eye which has noted its age (nearly four hundred years) by its overwhelming landscape interest. Five-sixths of the superficial inches of the canvas are covered by the innumerable leaves and twigs of trees crowding up to the edges of the picture on every side, and allowing only a peep through the trunks at the sky low over a rocky horizon. Nearly half of the great ' Battle of Arbela ' is a confusion of clouds and morning light, which Turner might have painted; and the 'Nativity' at Bremen is hardly less wonderful. The etchings of mountains and of fir-trees are as picturesque as these paintings, and only a leisured and curious townsman could have seen and rendered their content of natural beauty.
In expressing the human figure, and especially the forms of children, Al;dorfer was often highly successful, though here also impatience with
