“It may not be easy for us to see immediately the achievement which lay in this engraving. For the artist is speaking a language which is less familiar to him… The harmonious forms at which he arrived by diligent measuring and balancing with compass and ruler are not as convincing and beautiful as their Italian and classical models. There is some slight suggestion of artificiality, not only in their form and posture, but also in the symmetrical composition. But this first feeling of awkwardness soon disappears when one realizes that Dürer has not abandoned his real self to worship new idols, as lesser artists did. As we let him guide us into the Garden of Eden… and as we notice how Dürer has contrived to let the clear outline of their white and delicately modeled bodies show up against the dark shade of the forest with its rugged trees, we come to admire the first serious attempt to transplant the ideals of the south into northern soil”

Ernst H. Gombrich, “Chapter 17: The New Learning Spreads,” The Story of Art, 15th edition