Stories of the German Artists (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Stories of the German Artists

The existence of a book like Sandrart's Teutsche Akademie made it possible for me to carry out the present volume on the lines mapped out for the whole series. Sandrart, however, is no Vasari, and it would not have been advisable merely to furnish a translation of Sandrart alone. After once having given the reader an impression of quasi contemporary criticism as it is to be found in Sandrart, I have considered it necessary, in most cases, to add such facts and corrections as had been left for later ages to discover. But although Sandrart, the main source of the present book, lived more than a hundred years after the great epoch of German art, his accounts may be accepted as in a way contemporary. For he always endeavoured, and was sometimes able, to interview old men whose teachers had seen and spoken with the great artists, and whose vivacious accounts Sandrart thus had by word of mouth.

The plan of the book has imposed restrictions upon the present writer.

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