DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0076
56
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
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, 23 Sept. 1506.
Your letter telling me of the praise that you get to overflowing from
Princes and nobles 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' 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 nobles do you. They say that they have never seen a nobler, more
charming painting, and so forth.
The oil, about which you wrote, I send you by the messenger
Kannengiesser. I hope too that the burnt glass which I sent by the
messenger Farber has reached you safely. As concerns the carpets
I have not bought any yet for I cannot find square ones, they are all
narrow and long. If you would like any of these, I shall be happy to
buy them, but you must let me know.
I may tell you too that I shall be ready to start hence in
four weeks’ time at the latest, but I must first take the portraits of
some people I have promised. 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.
Now let me commend myself to you. I had much more to
write but the messenger is ready to start. I hope moreover to be with
you myself very soon and to learn new wisdom from you. Bernhard
Holzbeck has told me great things of you, though I think he does
1 Prof. Thausing suggests that this ‘ other Quadro ’ is the ‘ Christ among the
Doctors ’ in the Barberini Gallery at Rome—a picture containing seven life-size
half-figures or heads, and dated 1506. The inscription states it to have been
opus quinque dierum. At Brunswick there is an old copy of it. The original studies
for the hands are likewise in existence. In Lorenzo Lotto’s Madonna of 1508 in the
Borghese Gallery at Rome, the head of St Onuphrius is taken from the model who
sat for the front Pharisee on the left in Durer’s picture.
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
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, 23 Sept. 1506.
Your letter telling me of the praise that you get to overflowing from
Princes and nobles 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' 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 nobles do you. They say that they have never seen a nobler, more
charming painting, and so forth.
The oil, about which you wrote, I send you by the messenger
Kannengiesser. I hope too that the burnt glass which I sent by the
messenger Farber has reached you safely. As concerns the carpets
I have not bought any yet for I cannot find square ones, they are all
narrow and long. If you would like any of these, I shall be happy to
buy them, but you must let me know.
I may tell you too that I shall be ready to start hence in
four weeks’ time at the latest, but I must first take the portraits of
some people I have promised. 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.
Now let me commend myself to you. I had much more to
write but the messenger is ready to start. I hope moreover to be with
you myself very soon and to learn new wisdom from you. Bernhard
Holzbeck has told me great things of you, though I think he does
1 Prof. Thausing suggests that this ‘ other Quadro ’ is the ‘ Christ among the
Doctors ’ in the Barberini Gallery at Rome—a picture containing seven life-size
half-figures or heads, and dated 1506. The inscription states it to have been
opus quinque dierum. At Brunswick there is an old copy of it. The original studies
for the hands are likewise in existence. In Lorenzo Lotto’s Madonna of 1508 in the
Borghese Gallery at Rome, the head of St Onuphrius is taken from the model who
sat for the front Pharisee on the left in Durer’s picture.