Part 7 (2/2)
But, at Hans Imhof's persuasion, and having regard to the fact that you ordered the picture of me, and also because I should prefer it to find a place at Frankfurt rather than anywhere else, I have consented to send it to you for 100 florins less than it might well have brought me.
I am reckoning that I shall thus render you a pleasing service; otherwise I know well how I could draw far greater pecuniary advantage from it, but your friends.h.i.+p is dearer to me than any such trifling sum of money. I trust however that you would not wish me to suffer loss over it when you are better off than I. Make therefore your own arrangements and commands. Given at Nurnberg on Wine-Tuesday before James'.
ALBRECHT DuRER.
NuRNBERG, _August 26_, 1509. First my willing service to you, dear Herr Jacob h.e.l.ler. In accordance with your last letter I am sending the picture well packed and seen to in all needful points. I have handed it over to Hans Imhof and he has paid me another 100 florins. Yet believe me, on my honour, I am still out of pocket over it besides losing the time which I have bestowed upon it. Here in Nurnberg they were ready to give 300 florins for it, which extra 100 florins would have done very nicely for me had I not preferred to please and serve you by sending you the picture. For I value the keeping of your friends.h.i.+p at more than 100 florins. I would also rather have this painting at Frankfurt than anywhere else in all Germany.
If you think that I have behaved unfairly in not leaving the payment to your own free-will, you must bear in mind that this would not have happened if you had not written by Hans Imhof that I might keep the picture as long as I liked. I should otherwise gladly have left it to you even if thereby I had suffered a greater loss still. My impression of you is that, supposing I had promised to make you something for about ten florins and it cost me twenty, you yourself would not wish me to lose by it. So pray be content with the fact that I took 100 florins less from you than I might have got for the picture--for I tell you that they wanted to take it from me, so to speak, by force.
I have painted it with great care, as you will see, using none but the best colours I could get. It is painted with good ultramarine under, and over, and over that again, some five or six times; and then after it was finished I painted it again twice over so that it may last a long time.
If it is kept clean I know it will remain bright and fresh 500 years, for it is not done as men are wont to paint. So have it kept clean and don't let it be touched or sprinkled with holy water. I feel sure it will not be criticised, or only for the purpose of annoying me; and I answer for it it will please you well. No one shall ever compel me to paint a picture again with so much labour. Herr Georg Tausy himself besought me to paint him a Madonna in a landscape with the same care and of the same size as this picture, and he would give me 400 florins for it. That I flatly refused to do, for it would have made a beggar of me.
Of ordinary pictures I will in a year paint a pile which no one would believe it possible for one man to do in the time. But very careful nicety does not pay. So henceforth I shall stick to my engraving, and had I done so before I should to-day have been a richer man by 1000 florins.
I may tell you also that, at my own expense, I have had for the middle panel a new frame made which has cost me more than six florins. The old one I have broken off, for the joiner had made it roughly; but I have not had the other fastened on, for you wished it not to be. It would be a very good thing to have the rims screwed on so that the picture may not be shaken.
If anyone wants to see it, let it hang forward two or three finger breadths, for then the light is good to see it by. And when I come over to you, say in one, two, or three years' time, if the picture is properly dry, it must be taken down and I will varnish it over anew with some excellent varnish, which no one else can make; it will then last 100 years longer than it would before. But don't let anybody else varnish it, for all other varnishes are yellow, and the picture would be ruined for you. And if a thing, on which I have spent more than a year's work, were ruined it would be grief to me. When you have it set up be present yourself to see that it gets no harm. Deal carefully with it, for you will hear from your own and from foreign painters how it is done.
Give my greeting to your painter Martin Hess. My wife asks you for a _Trinkgeld_, but that is as you please, I screw you no higher, &c. And now I hold myself commended to you. Read by the sense, for I write in haste. Given at Nurnberg on Sunday after Bartholomew's, 1509.
ALBRECHT DuRER.
NuRNBERG, _October 12_, 1509.
DEAR HERR JACOB h.e.l.lER, I am glad to hear that my picture pleases you, so that my labour has not been bestowed in vain. I am also happy that you are content about the payment--and that rightly, for I could have got 100 florins more for it than you have given me. But I preferred to let you have it, hoping, as I do, thereby to retain you as my friend down in your parts.
My wife thanks you very much for the present you have made her; she will wear it in your honour. My young brother also thanks you for the two florins _Trinkgeld_ you sent him. And now I too thank you myself for all the honour &c. In reply to your question how the picture should be adorned I send you a slight design of what I should do if it were mine, but you must do what you like. Now, many happy times to you. Given on Friday before Gall's, 1509. ALBRECHT DuRER.
Durer must have commenced the All Saints picture almost immediately after having finished h.e.l.ler's _Coronation of the Virgin_. Perhaps he had practically accepted the commission from Matthsus Landauer before he wrote to h.e.l.ler that he would never again undertake a picture with so much work and labour in it, for he afterwards was as good as his word.
This new work was for the chapel of an almshouse founded by Landauer and Erasmus Schiltkrot for twelve old men citizens of Nuremberg. The original frame designed by Durer is now in the Germanic Museum, though a copy has replaced the picture. After the completion of the _Trinity and All Saints_, Durer apparently carried out his threat and gave up painting for a dozen years, devoting his energies more especially to a magnificent series of engravings on copper. He also completed his series of wood engravings and published them with text, and produced a number of single cuts, many of them among his very best, like the _a.s.sumption of the Magdalen_, and the _St. Christopher_, here reproduced.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. CHRISTOPHER Woodcut, B. 103]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE a.s.sUMPTION OF THE MAGDALEN Woodcut, B. 121]
II
In 1514 his mother died. He has recounted her death twice over, as he did that of his father already cited; for the single surviving leaf of the ”other book” happens to contain this also. In the briefer chronicle he says:
Two years after my Father's death (i.e., 1504) I took my Mother into my house, for she had nothing more to live upon. So she dwelt with me till the year 1513, as they reckon it; when, early one Tuesday morning, she was taken suddenly and deadly ill, and thus she lay a whole year long.
And a whole year after the day she was first taken ill, she received the holy sacraments and christianly pa.s.sed away two hours before nightfall--it was on a Tuesday, the 17th day of May in the year 1514. I said the prayers for her myself. G.o.d Almighty be gracious to her.
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