Records of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries

8th September, 1506

Most learned, approved, wise, master of many languages, keen to detect all uttered lies, and quick to recognize real truth, honourable, Herr Wilibald Pirkheimer, your humble servant, Albrecht Dürer, wishes you all health, great and worthy honour, with the devil as much of such nonsense as you like.

I will wager that for this you too would think me an orator of a hundred headings. A chamber must have more than four corners which is to contain gods of memory. I will not addle my pate with it. I will recommend it to you, but I believe that however many chambers there may be in the head, you would have a little bit in each of them. The Margrave would not grant a long enough audience. A hundred headings and to each head say a hundred words: that takes 9 days, 7 hours, 52 minutes, not counting the sighs, which I have not yet reckoned; but you could not get through the whole in one go: it would draw itself out like some dotard’s speech.

I have taken every trouble about the carpets, but I cannot find any wide ones; they are all narrow and long. However, I still look out for them every day, and so does Anthon Kolb.

I gave your respects to Bernhard Hirschvogel and he sent you his service. He is full of sorrow for the death of his son, the nicest boy that I have ever seen. I can’t get any of your fool’s feathers. Oh, if you were only here, how you would admire these fine Italian soldiers! How often I think of you! Would God that you and Kuntz Kamerer could see them! They have scythe-shaped lances with 218 points; if they only touch a man with them he dies, for they are all poisoned. Heigho! but I can do it well, I’ll be an Italian soldier. The Venetians are collecting many men; so is the Pope and the King of France. What will come of it I don’t know, for people scoff at our King a great deal.

Wish Stephen Paumgartner much happiness from me. I can’t wonder at his having taken a taken wife. My greeting to Borsch, Herr Lorenz, and our fair friend, as well as to your Rechenmeister girl, and thank your Club for its greeting; says it’s a dirty one. I sent you olive-wood from Venice to Augsburg, where I let it stay, a full ten hundred weight. But it says it won’t wait, hence the stink.

My picture [the self-portrait Dürer painted?], you must know, says it would give a ducat for you to see it. It is well painted and finely coloured. I have got much praise but little profit by it. I could have easily earned 200 ducats in the time, and I have had to decline big commissions in order to come home.

I have shut up all the painters, who used to say that I was good at engraving, but that in painting I didn’t know how to handle my colours. Now they all say they never saw better colouring.

My French mantle greets you, and so does my Italian coat. It seems to me that you smell of gallantry. I can scent it from here; and they say here, that when you go courting, you pretend to be no more than 25 years old. Oh, yes! Multiply that and I`ll believe it. My friend, there ‘s a devil of a lot of Italians here who are just like you. I don’t know how it is!

The Doge and the Patriarch have seen my picture. Herewith let me commend myself as your servant. I really must sleep, for it’s striking seven at night, and I have already written to the Prior of the Augustines, to my father-in-law, to Mistress Dietrich, and to my wife, and they are all sheets cram full. So I have had to hurry over this. Read according to the sense. You would do it better if you were writing to princes. Many good nights to you, and days too. Given at Venice on Our Lady’s Day in September.

You needn’t lend my wife and mother anything. They have got money enough.

—Albert Dürer