Records of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries

Venice, January 1506. Albrecht Dürer, a painter from Nuremberg, writes to his friend Willibald Pirckheimer. He hunts out pearls and stones for him among the deceitful merchants of the Riva, paints the Feast of the Rosary for the German colony, and faces Venetian painters who copy and disparage him. Among them, only old Giovanni Bellini praises him. Ten lively, mocking letters, anxious about money, until the day the Doge and the Patriarch come to see the painting. "Here I am a gentleman, at home a parasite."

Fourteen years later, in July 1520, Dürer leaves Nuremberg with his wife for the Low Countries. He travels down the Main and the Rhine, showing his safe-conduct at every toll, then settles in Antwerp, where the painters receive him with great honour. Day by day, he notes everything: charcoal portraits, prints sold or given away, meals, gifts, expenses counted down to the last stuiver. In Brussels he discovers the treasures brought back from the land of gold, attends the coronation of Charles V at Aachen, draws Erasmus and nearly perishes at sea off Zeeland.

Two texts in his own hand, in which the Renaissance can be read at the level of everyday life. What does the greatest German artist of his time earn, spend and receive? And what news, one day in May 1521, wrings from him the one great lament of his diary?