Art of the Housebook Master

One of the finest early engravers was an anonymous artist known as the Housebook Master because scholars have linked his work with drawings in the same style in a manuscript called the Hausbuch. Here is an excerpt from an online encyclopedia; Master of the Housebook (Meister des Hausbuchs), fl. 1475–1500, German graphic artist. The master

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Baffled to Fight Better

The place for the comforter is not that of one who preaches, but of the comrade who says nothing, but prays to God about the matter. The biggest thing you can do for those who are suffering is not to talk platitudes, not to ask questions, but to get into contact with God, and the

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Sometimes, perhaps, the spiritual blood runs slow,

And soft along the veins of will doth flow, Seeking God’s arteries from which it came. Or does the etherial, creative flame Turn back upon itself, and latent grow?– It matters not what figure or what name, If thou art in me, and I am not to blame. GM

It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,

Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent— Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes! Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks! Or are they loose, roaming about the bent, The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?— My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream. GM

But, like a virtuous medicine, self-diffused

Through all men’s hearts thy love shall sink and float; Till every feeling false, and thought unwise, Selfish, and seeking, shall, sternly disused, Wither, and die, and shrivel up to nought; And Christ, whom they did hang ‘twixt earth and skies, Up in the inner world of men arise. GM