Epigraph
Albrecht Dürer’s Records [letters/memoirs] of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries (See the end of this electronic text for information about the edition)
Basic Background
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was probably the greatest graphical artist of the Northern Renaissance. He is the first to have elevated the self-portrait to a high art form, and was known for his fascination with animals, which form the subjects of many of his graphical works. He reveled in portraying men of learning and/or high stature as well as peasants, believing that portraits of the latter could be as instructive as those of the former. His marriage to his wife Agnes was childless and banal, apparently because Dürer was too preoccupied with intellectual matters to be much interested in romantic pursuits.
In the letters below, this unusually modern thinker demonstrates his noble, righteous utilitarian personal philosophy, and meticulously records his personal and travel expenses, while journeying throughout Venice and various other European cities and divided German states. Numerous kings and laypeople sought to meet and host him, since he was renowned and loved as a painter while still alive. He comments on Martin Luther, Erasmus of Rotterdam and painting, and demonstrates his curious, inquiring nature. He also describes his visit to Zeeland to see a beached whale, which washed away before he got there; but during this visit, Dürer may have caught the disease from which he may have died several years later. Like Rembrandt, he enjoyed collecting things, and demonstrates this in his letters.
Brief Excerpt From the Introduction to the 1913 Edition, Written by Roger Fry (1866-1934)
Whatever one’s final estimate of his art, Dürer’s personality is at once so imposing and so attractive, and has been so endeared to us by familiarity, that something of this personal attachment has been transferred to our aesthetic judgment. The letters from Venice and the Diary of his journey in the Netherlands, which form the contents of this volume, are indeed the singularly fortunate means for this pleasant intercourse with the man himself. They reveal Dürer as one of the distinctively modern men of the Renaissance: intensely, but not arrogantly, conscious of his own personality; accepting with a pleasant ease the universal admiration of his genius-a personal admiration, too, of an altogether modern kind; careful of his fame as one who foresaw its immortality. They show him as having, though in a far less degree, something of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific interest, certainly as possessing a quick, though naive curiosity about the world and a quite modern freedom from superstition. It is clear that his dominating and yet kindly personality, no less than his physical beauty and distinction, made him the center of interest wherever he went. His easy and humorous good-fellowship, of which the letters to Pirkheimer are eloquent, won for him the admiring friendship of the best men of his time.
To all these characteristics we must add a deep and sincere religious feeling, which led him to side with the leaders of the Reformation, a feeling which comes out in his passionate sense of loss when he thinks that Luther is about to be put to death, and causes him to write a stirring letter to Erasmus, urging him to continue the work of reform. For all that, there is no trace in him of either Protestantism or Puritanism. He was perhaps fortunate—certainly as an artist he was fortunate—to live at a time when the line of cleavage between the reformers and the Church was not yet so marked as to compel a decisive action.
Cast of [Some of The] Characters
Agnes: Dürer’s wife
Wilibald Pirkheimer: Dürer’s best friend
Wolgemut: The master painter to whom Dürer began formal
training as an apprentice. Later, Dürer painted a richly
detailed self-portrait of him.
Giovanni Bellini: Famous Renaissance painter and
contemporary of Dürer.
Jan van Eyk: Famous Renaissance painter.
Imhof: Hans Imhof, the elder, at Nuremberg; the younger
Imhof was in Venice.
Schott: Kunz Schott, an enemy of the town of Nuremberg.
Weisweber: A Nuremberg general.
Forms of Money Referred to in the Letters
Marcelli: A Venetian coin worth 10 soldi.
Stiver: A Netherlandish coin worth about 80 pfennigs.
Philip’s: A Netherlandish coin worth rather less than a Rhenish florin.
Crown: A Netherlandish coin worth 6.35 marks.
Noble: The Rosennobel = 8 marks, 20 pfennigs. The Flemish noble = 9 marks, 90 pfennigs.
Blanke: A silver coin = 2 stivers.
Angel: An English coin = 2 florins, 2 stivers Netherlandish.
Part 1: Letters From Venice to Wilibald Pirkheimer
Venice, 6th January, 1506
To the Honourable and wise Wilibald Pirkheimer, in
Nuremberg.
My dear Master, To you and all yours, many happy good New Years. My willing service to you, dear Herr Pirkheimer. Know that I am in good health; may God send you better even than that. Now as to what you commissioned me, namely, to buy a few pearls and precious stones, you must know that I can find nothing good enough or worth the money: everything is snapped up by the Germans.
Those who go about on the Riva always expect four times the value for anything, for they are the falsest knaves that live there. No one expects to get an honest service of them. For that reason some good people warned me to be on my guard against them. They told me that they cheat both man and beast, and that you could buy better things for less money at Frankfort than at Venice.
As for the books which I was to order for you, Imhof has already seen to it, but if you are in need of anything else, let me know, and I shall do it for you with all zeal. And would to God that I could do you some real good service. I should gladly accomplish it, since I know how much you do for me.
And I beg of you be patient with my debt, for I think oftener of it than you do. As soon as God helps me to get home I will pay you honourably, with many thanks; for I have to paint a picture for the Germans, for which they are giving me 110 Rhenish gulden, which will not cost me as much as five. I shall have finished laying and scraping the ground-work in eight days, then I shall at once begin to paint, and if God will, it shall be in its place for the altar a month after Easter.
[Editor note: This refers to the [altarpiece called the] “Madonna of the Rose Garlands,” painted for the chapel of S. Bartolommeo, the burial-place of the German colony. About the year 1600 it was bought for a high price by the Emperor Rudolf II, who is said to have had it carried [over the Alps] by four men all the way to Prague to avoid the risk of damage in transport. [It suffered serious water damage during the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648, and many parts of it had to be repainted to replace much of the original paint that was lost, but] it still remains one of the most important [and lavishly colored] of all Dürer’s works.]
The money I hope, if God will, to put by; and from that I will pay you: for I think that I need not send my mother and wife any money at present; I left 10 florins with my mother when I came away; she has since got 9 or 10 florins by selling works of art. Dratzieher has paid her 12 florins, and I have sent her 9 florins by Sebastian Imhof, of which she has to pay Pfinzing and Gartner 7 florins for rent. I gave my wife 12 florins and she got 13 more at Frankfort, making all together 25 florins, so I don’t think she will be in any need, and if she does want anything, her brother will have to help her, until I come home, when I will repay him honourably. Herewith let me commend myself to you.
Given at Venice on the day of the Holy Three Kings (Epiphany), the year 1506. Greet for me Stephen Paumgartner and my other good friends who ask after me.
—Albrecht Dürer
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