DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0094
CHAPTER VI.
durer’s woodcut publications.
DuRER has thus far told us much of the story of his own life,
but for the next eleven years he remains silent about himself or
at most lets us hear his voice rarely and on unimportant occa-
sions. We are obliged therefore to hunt up a fact or two out of
the stray references of contemporaries and the musty prose of
archives, and these, coupled with the inferences more or less
certainly deducible from the artist’s work, are all the information
we can offer to the most ardent student.
That a certain townsman of Niirnberg uttered libels against
Diirer, and was sent to repeat them to prison walls till the artist
interceded for him and procured his release, is a fact; but it does
not carry us far. The few stray letters which come straggling
in from different quarters present little autobiographical matter ;
still we cannot afford to pass them by. The earliest takes us
back a few years to some months after Durer’s return from
Venice. It is addressed to Hans Amerbach of Little Basel,
a man notable amongst printers. He had been one of
Koburger’s workmen, and Koburger was Durer’s godfather; so
the artist in his boyhood may have known Amerbach at Niirn-
berg. In the same year that Albrecht, aged thirteen, was ap-
prenticed to his father the goldsmith, Amerbach went away and
settled at Basel. Diirer no doubt saw him again when he went
to that town in his Wanderjahre, and the acquaintance implied
in the following letter may have been founded then.
“To the honourable, wise Master Hans, book-printer in the town of
Little Basel, my dear Master.
“First, my ready service to you, dear Master Hans. Your happy
condition is a great pleasure to me, who rejoice in your fortune and
durer’s woodcut publications.
DuRER has thus far told us much of the story of his own life,
but for the next eleven years he remains silent about himself or
at most lets us hear his voice rarely and on unimportant occa-
sions. We are obliged therefore to hunt up a fact or two out of
the stray references of contemporaries and the musty prose of
archives, and these, coupled with the inferences more or less
certainly deducible from the artist’s work, are all the information
we can offer to the most ardent student.
That a certain townsman of Niirnberg uttered libels against
Diirer, and was sent to repeat them to prison walls till the artist
interceded for him and procured his release, is a fact; but it does
not carry us far. The few stray letters which come straggling
in from different quarters present little autobiographical matter ;
still we cannot afford to pass them by. The earliest takes us
back a few years to some months after Durer’s return from
Venice. It is addressed to Hans Amerbach of Little Basel,
a man notable amongst printers. He had been one of
Koburger’s workmen, and Koburger was Durer’s godfather; so
the artist in his boyhood may have known Amerbach at Niirn-
berg. In the same year that Albrecht, aged thirteen, was ap-
prenticed to his father the goldsmith, Amerbach went away and
settled at Basel. Diirer no doubt saw him again when he went
to that town in his Wanderjahre, and the acquaintance implied
in the following letter may have been founded then.
“To the honourable, wise Master Hans, book-printer in the town of
Little Basel, my dear Master.
“First, my ready service to you, dear Master Hans. Your happy
condition is a great pleasure to me, who rejoice in your fortune and