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MEMOIRS OF JOURNEYS TO VENICE AND THE LOW COUNTRIES
MEMOIRS OF JOURNEYS TO VENICE AND THE LOW COUNTRIES ALBRECHT DURER Albrecht D?rer's Records [letters/memoirs] of Journeys to
Venice and the Low Countries
(See the end of this electronic text for information about
the edition)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) BASIC BACKGROUND ABOUT ALBRECHT D?RER AND THESE LETTERS
2) EXCERPT FROM ROGER FRY'S INTRODUCTION TO THE 1913 EDITION
3) CAST OF [SOME OF THE] CHARACTERS APPEARING IN THE LETTERS
4) DESCRIPTION OF FORMS OF MONEY REFERRED TO IN THE LETTERS
5) PART 1: LETTERS FROM VENICE TO WILIBALD PERKHEIMER
6) PART 2: DIARY OF A JOURNEY IN THE NETHERLANDS
7) INFORMATION ABOUT THIS ELECTRONIC EDITION
BASIC BACKGROUND
Albrecht D?rer (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 D?rer
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 D?rer 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.
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BRIEF EXCERPT FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO THE 1913 EDITION
WRITTEN BY ROGER FRY (1866-1934):
Whatever one's final estimate of his art D?rer'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 D?rer 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.
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CAST OF [SOME OF THE] CHARACTERS:
Agnes: D?rer's wife
Wilibald Pirkheimer: D?rer's best friend
Wolgemut: The master painter to whom D?rer began formal
training as an apprentice. Later D?rer painted a richly
detailed self-portrait of him.
Giovanni Bellini: Famous Renaissance painter and
contemporary of D?rer.
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.
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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.
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