Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries Part 1

Memoirs of Journeys to Venice.

by Albrecht Durer.

BASIC BACKGROUND

Albrecht Durer (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 ba.n.a.l, apparently because Durer was too preoccupied with intellectual matters to be much interested in romantic pursuits.

In the letters below, this unusually modern thinker demonstrates his n.o.ble, 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, Durer 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, Durer'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 Durer 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 superst.i.tion. 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- fellows.h.i.+p, of which the letters to Pirkheimer are eloquent, won for him the admiring friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionate 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: Durer's wife Wilibald Pirkheimer: Durer's best friend Wolgemut: The master painter to whom Durer began formal training as an apprentice. Later, Durer painted a richly detailed self-portrait of him.

Giovanni Bellini: Famous Renaissance painter and contemporary of Durer.

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.

n.o.ble: The Rosenn.o.bel = 8 marks, 20 pfennigs. The Flemish n.o.ble = 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 sc.r.a.ping the ground-work in eight days, then I shall at once begin to paint, and if G.o.d 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 Durer's works.]

The money I hope, if G.o.d 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 Durer

7th February, 1506

First my willing service to you, dear Master. If it is well with you, I am as whole-heartedly glad as I should be for myself. I wrote to you recently. I hope the letter reached you. In the meantime my mother has written to me, chiding me for not writing to you, and has given me to understand that you are displeased with me because I do not write to you; and that I must excuse myself to you fully. And she is much worried about it, as is her wont. Now I do not know what excuse to make, except that I am lazy about writing and that you have not been at home. But as soon as I knew that you were at home or were coming home, I wrote to you at once; I also specially charged Castel (Fugger) to convey my service to you. Therefore I most humbly beg you to forgive me, for I have no other friend on earth but you; but I do not believe you are angry with me, for I hold you as no other than a father.

How I wish you were here at Venice, there are so many good fellows among the Italians who seek my company more and more every day--which is very gratifying to me--men of sense, and scholarly, good lute-players, and pipers, connoisseurs in painting, men of much n.o.ble sentiment and honest virtue, and they show me much honour and friends.h.i.+p. On the other hand, there are also amongst them the most faithless, lying, thievish rascals; such as I scarcely believed could exist on earth; and yet if one did not know them, one would think that they were the nicest men on earth. I cannot help laughing to myself when they talk to me: they know that their villainy is well known, but that does not bother them.

I have many good friends among the Italians who warn me not to eat and drink with their painters, for many of them are my enemies and copy my work in the churches and wherever they can find it; afterwards they criticize it and claim that it is not done in the antique style and say it is no good, but Giambellin (Giovanni Bellini) has praised me highly to many gentlemen. He would willingly have something of mine, and came himself to me and asked me to do something for him, and said that he would pay well for it, and everyone tells me what an upright man he is, so that I am really friendly with him. He is very old and yet he is the best painter of all.

[Editor's note: The character of Bellini agrees with all we know of him. Camerarius tells an amusing story of the two artists, to the effect that Bellini once asked Durer for one of the brushes with which he painted hairs. Durer produced several quite ordinary brushes and offered them to Bellini.

Bellini replied that he did not mean those, but some brush with the hairs divided which would enable him to draw a number of fine parallel lines such as Durer did. Durer a.s.sured him that he used no special kind, and proceeded to draw a number of long wavy lines like tresses with such absolute regularity and parallelism that Bellini declared that nothing but seeing it done would have convinced him that such a feat of skill was possible.]

And the thing which pleased me so well eleven years ago pleases me no longer, and if I had not seen it myself, I would not have believed anyone who told me. And you must know too that there are many better painters here than Master Jacob (Jacopo de Barbari), though Antonio Kolb would take an oath that there was no better painter on earth than Jacob. Others sneer at him and say if he were any good, he would stay here. I have only today begun the sketch of my picture, for my hands are so scabby that I could not work, but I have cured them.

And now be lenient with me and do not get angry so quickly, but be gentile like me. You will not learn from me, I do not know why. My dear, I should like to know whether any of your loves is dead--that one close by the water, for instance, or the one like [drawing of a flower] or [drawing of a brush]

or [drawing of a running dog]'s girl so that you might get another in her stead.

Given at Venice at the ninth hour of the night on Sat.u.r.day after Candlemas in the year 1506. [Editor's note: Reckoning from sunset, at this season [this] would be about 2:30 a.m.]

Give my service to Stephen Paumgartner and to Masters Hans Harsdorfer and Volkamer.

--Albrecht Durer

28th February, 1506

First my willing service to you, dear Herr Pirkheimer. If things go well with you, then I am indeed glad. Know, too, that by the grace of G.o.d I am doing well and working fast.

Still I do not expect to have finished before Whitsuntide.

I have sold all my pictures except one. For two I got 24 ducats, and the other three I gave for these three rings, which were valued in the exchange as worth 24 ducats, but I have shown them to some good friends and they say they are only worth 22, and as you wrote to me to buy you some jewels, I thought that I would send you the rings by Franz Imhof. Show them to people who understand them, and if you like them, keep them for what they are worth. In case you do not want them, send them back by the next messenger, for here at Venice a man who helped to make the exchange will give me 12 ducats for the emerald and 10 ducats for the ruby and diamond, so that I need not lose more than 2 ducats.