Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries | Page 4

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, Drer 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, Drer'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 Drer 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: Drer's wife Wilibald Pirkheimer: Drer's best friend Wolgemut: The master painter to whom Drer began formal training as an apprentice. Later, Drer painted a richly detailed self-portrait of him. Giovanni Bellini: Famous Renaissance painter and contemporary of Drer. 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.