DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0095
CH. VI.]
STRAY LETTERS.
75
health and in that of all in whose welfare you are interested, especially
your honourable wife, to whom I wish well with all my heart. Pray
write and tell me what good thing you are bringing out now, and pardon
me for obliging you to read my simple writing. Now many good nights
to you. Given at Niirnberg, 20 October 1507.
Albrecht Durer.”
The next letter is without date, but must have been written
a little before 1511, in which year Michael Behaim, to whom it is
addressed, is known to have died. He was a prominent man in
Niirnberg and a member of the Town Council. He had engaged
Durer to furnish a design for a wood-cut of his coat of arms.
He seems not to have been satisfied with the result and wanted
the drawing altered. To this the artist would not accede. The
print is numbered 159 in Bartsch’s Catalogue.
“ Dear Master Michel Behaim,
I send you back the coat of arms again. Pray let it stay as
it is. No one could improve it for you, for I made it artistically and
with care. Those who see it, and understand such matters, will tell you
so. If the leaf-work on the helm were tossed up backwards it would
hide the fillet.
Your humble Servant,
Albrecht Durer.”
It might be imagined from the language of the Heller letters
that, during the progress of the great pictures, Dtirer did no
other work at all. Such, however, was not the case. He used
the daylight for painting ; but, like so many other artists from
Tintoret to Gainsborough, he spent the long winter evenings in
making numberless drawings and designs in black and white.
He prepared many blocks for the woodcutter and doubtless kept
Hieronymus Andreae and other Formschneiders frequently em-
ployed. But he could not get time, nor perhaps money, enough
to publish the volumes of prints he had on hand. Moreover his
mind was at the meridian of its strength; he chafed under the
demands made upon his time by a single painting; his imagina-
tion was weighed down with a multitude of conceptions which he
could not realize by any such slow and tedious process. He there-
fore broke himself free from the slavery of painting and for a time
STRAY LETTERS.
75
health and in that of all in whose welfare you are interested, especially
your honourable wife, to whom I wish well with all my heart. Pray
write and tell me what good thing you are bringing out now, and pardon
me for obliging you to read my simple writing. Now many good nights
to you. Given at Niirnberg, 20 October 1507.
Albrecht Durer.”
The next letter is without date, but must have been written
a little before 1511, in which year Michael Behaim, to whom it is
addressed, is known to have died. He was a prominent man in
Niirnberg and a member of the Town Council. He had engaged
Durer to furnish a design for a wood-cut of his coat of arms.
He seems not to have been satisfied with the result and wanted
the drawing altered. To this the artist would not accede. The
print is numbered 159 in Bartsch’s Catalogue.
“ Dear Master Michel Behaim,
I send you back the coat of arms again. Pray let it stay as
it is. No one could improve it for you, for I made it artistically and
with care. Those who see it, and understand such matters, will tell you
so. If the leaf-work on the helm were tossed up backwards it would
hide the fillet.
Your humble Servant,
Albrecht Durer.”
It might be imagined from the language of the Heller letters
that, during the progress of the great pictures, Dtirer did no
other work at all. Such, however, was not the case. He used
the daylight for painting ; but, like so many other artists from
Tintoret to Gainsborough, he spent the long winter evenings in
making numberless drawings and designs in black and white.
He prepared many blocks for the woodcutter and doubtless kept
Hieronymus Andreae and other Formschneiders frequently em-
ployed. But he could not get time, nor perhaps money, enough
to publish the volumes of prints he had on hand. Moreover his
mind was at the meridian of its strength; he chafed under the
demands made upon his time by a single painting; his imagina-
tion was weighed down with a multitude of conceptions which he
could not realize by any such slow and tedious process. He there-
fore broke himself free from the slavery of painting and for a time