Part 6 (1/2)
The Doge and the Patriarch have also seen my picture. Herewith let me commend myself to you as your servant. I must really go to sleep as it is striking the seventh hour of the 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 downright whole sheets full. So I have had to hurry over this letter, read it according to the sense. You would doubtless do better if you were writing to a lot of Princes. Many good nights and days too. Given at Venice on our Lady's day in September.
You need not lend my wife and mother anything; they have got money enough,
ALBRECHT DuRER.
VENICE, _September 23_, 1506.
Your letter telling me of the praise that you get to overflowing from Princes and n.o.bles gave me great delight. You must be altogether altered to have become so gentle; I shall hardly know you when I meet you again.
You must know that my picture is finished as well as another _Quadro_[18] the like of which I have never painted before. And as you are so pleased with yourself, let me tell you that there is no better Madonna picture in the land than mine; for all the painters praise it, as the n.o.bles do you. They say that they have never seen a n.o.bler, more charming painting, and so forth.
But in order to come home as soon as possible, I have, since my picture was finished, refused work that would have yielded me more than 2000 ducats. This all men know who live about me here.
Bernhard Holzbeck has told me great things of you, though I think he does so because you have become his brother-in-law. But nothing makes me more angry than when any one says that you are good-looking; if that were so I should become really ugly. That could make me mad. I have found a grey hair on myself, it is the result of so much excitement. And I fear that while I play such pranks with myself there are still bad days before me, &c.
My French mantle, my doublet, and my brown coat send you a hearty greeting, I should be glad to see what great thing your head-piece can produce that you hold yourself so high.
VENICE, _about October_ 13, 1506.
Knowing that you are aware of my devotion to your service there is no need for me to write to you about it; but so much the more necessary is it for me to tell you of the great pleasure it gives me to hear of the high honour and fame which your manly wisdom and learned skill have brought you. This is the more to be wondered at, for seldom or never in a young body can the like be found. It comes to you, however, as to me, by a special grace of G.o.d. How pleased we both are when we fancy ourselves worth somewhat--I with my painting, and you with your wisdom.
When any one praises us, we hold up our heads and believe him. Yet perhaps he is only some false flatterer who is scorning us all the time.
So don't credit any one who praises you, for you've no notion how utterly and entirely unmannerly you are. I can quite see you standing before the Margrave and speaking so pleasantly--behaving exactly as if you were flirting with Mistress Rosentaler, cringing as you do. It did not escape me that, when you wrote your last letter, you were quite full of amorous thoughts. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, an old fellow like you pretending to be so good-looking. Flirting pleases you in the same way that a s.h.a.ggy old dog likes a game with a kitten. If you were only as fine and gentle a man as I, I could understand it. If I become burgomaster I will serve you with the Luginsland.[19] as you do to pious Zamesser and me. I will have you for once shut up there with the ladies Rechenmeister, Rosentaler, Gartner, Schutz, and Por, and many others whom for shortness I will not name; they must deal with you.
People enquire more after me than you, for you yourself write that both girls and honourable wives ask after me--that is a sign of my virtue.
When, however, G.o.d helps me home I don't know how I shall any longer stand you with your great wisdom; but for your virtue and good temper I am glad, and your dogs will be the better for it, for you will no longer strike them lame. Now however that you are thought so much of at home, you won't dare to talk to a poor painter in the street any more; to be seen with the painter varlet would be a great disgrace for you.
O, dear Herr Pirkheimer, just now while I was writing to you, the alarm of fire was raised and six houses over by Pietro Venier are burnt, and a woollen cloth of mine, for which only yesterday I paid eight ducats, is burnt, so I too am in trouble. There is much excitement here about the fire.
As to your summons to me to come home soon, I shall come as soon as ever I can, but I must first gain money for my expenses. I have paid away about 100 ducats for colours and other things. I have ordered you two carpets for which I shall pay to-morrow, but I could not get them cheap.
I will pack them in with my linen.
And as to your threat that, unless I come home soon, you will make love to my wife, don't attempt it--a ponderous fellow like you would be the death of her.
I must tell you that I set to work to learn dancing and went twice to the school, for which I had to pay the master a ducat. No one could get me to go there again. To learn dancing I should have had to pay away all that I have earned, and at the end I should have known nothing about it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HANS BURGKMAIR--Black chalk drawing on yellowish prepared ground. The lights and background in watercolor may possibly have been added later At Oxford]
In reply to your question when I shall come home, I tell you, so that my lords may also make their arrangements, that I shall have finished here in ten days; after that I should like to ride to Bologna to learn the secrets of the art of perspective, which a man is willing to teach me. I should stay there eight or ten days and then return to Venice. After that I shall come with the next messenger. How I shall freeze after this sun! Here I am a gentleman, at home only a parasite.
III
Sir Martin Conway writes:
He (Durer) enjoyed Venice; he liked the Italians; he was oppressed with orders for work; the climate suited him, and the warm sun was a pleasant contrast to the snows and frost of a Franconian winter. But Durer's German heart was true; its truth was the secret of his success.... The syren voice of Italy charmed to their destruction most Germans who listened to it. Brought face to face with the Italian Ideal of Grace, they one after another abandoned for it the Ideal of Strength peculiarly their own.
We do not resort to these arguments to approve Holbein or Van Dyck for their long residence in England. I am not sure how much false sentiment inspired Thausing when he first praised Durer in this strain; but I must confess I suspect it was no little. I incline to think that the best country for an artist is not always the one he was born in, but often that one where his art finds the best conditions to foster it. We do not honour Durer by supposing that he would have been among that majority of Dutch and German artists who, weaker than Roger van der Weyden and Burgkmair, returned from Italy injured and enfeebled; even if he had pa.s.sed the greater portion of his life with her syren voice in his ears.