Print collector's quarterly (4.1914)

on the whole, even though we know them only through
their work, they are far more interesting as men than
as artists. And so, he who would study them and get
pleasure from them must, like Montaigne on his trav-
els, he more interested in whether his hosts took water
in their wine than in their theories of Salvation, ethi-
cal or agsthetic. And of them all, Albrecht Altdorfer
was probably the one who took most care of the water
that he mixed with his wine.
II
Albrecht Altdorfer was born about 1480, certainly
not much later; and although there are records of an
earlier Altdorfer—in his time also a burgher of Ratis-
bon—who may have been Albrecht’s father, we know
nothing of his family or where he was born. There
are theories about travels that he may or must have
made in the Tyrol, perhaps to Vienna and to Northern
Italy, and conjectures that Michael Pacher may have
been his master; but of his early life nothing appears
to be known. Otherwise the facts of his career are
simple and straightforward. He acquired the fran-
chise at Ratisbon in 1505, had public contracts, and
bought houses in 1513 and in 1518; in 1519 he was a
member of the lower brauch of the town council that
ordered the expulsion of the Jews and the razing of
the synagogue; in 1526 he was not only a member of
the inner council but also town architect; in 1527 his
wife Anna died, though what her surname was or
when he married her seems to be unknown; a little
later he declined the mayoralty because of the stress
of work that he was under for Duke William IV of

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