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Updated: June 21, 2025
The plague broke out in Nuremberg before he came away; but this is not likely to have been his principal motive for leaving home, as many richer men, such as his friend Pirkheimer, from whom he borrowed money for the journey, stayed where they were. Nor do Duerer's letters reveal any alarm for his friend's, his mother's, his wife's, or his brother's safety.
"I didn't mean it," he said. "Don't be angry." The flush faded. The artist turned to the easel, taking up a brush, as if to seek in work a vent for his disturbed thought. "You'll spoil it!" said Pirkheimer quickly. "I shall finish it," replied Dürer, without looking up. The other moved restlessly about. "Well ... I must go. Good-by, Dürer." He came and stood by the easel, holding out his hand.
When, on April 6, 1528, Duerer died suddenly, two volumes of his great work on "Human Proportions" were ready for the press, and enough raw material, notes, drawings, &c., to enable his friend Pirkheimer to prepare and issue the remaining two with them. Of the misunderstanding of this the most important of Duerer's writings I shall say nothing here, as I have devoted a separate chapter to it.
But before I could speak a single word Cousin Maud, with whom were the Magister and old Pirkheimer the member of council, cried out as soon as she saw me: "Only imagine, Margery, what rare tidings his Excellency has brought us."
Thus lived and laboured Dürer in the city of his adoption, studying nature most diligently, and combining therewith high imaginings of his own. In 1506 he undertook a journey to Venice, and its influence improved him greatly. In the letters he wrote on this journey to his intimate friend Pirkheimer he acknowledges this; in one of them he declares “the things which pleased me eleven years ago please me no longer.” He also notes the popularity which had preceded him, and says, “the Italian artists counterfeit my works in the churches and wherever else they can find them, and yet they blame them, and declare that as they are not in accordance with ancient art they are worthless.”[223-
O, dear Herr Pirkheimer, just now while I was writing to you, the alarm of fire was raised and six houses over by Pietro Venier are burnt, and a woollen cloth of mine, for which only yesterday I paid eight ducats, is burnt, so I too am in trouble. There is much excitement here about the fire.
While luxuriating in Venetian heat, Durer wrote home to his friend Pirkheimer: "Oh, how I shall freeze after this sunshine!" He was a lover of warm, beautiful colour, gay and tender life. Most of all he loved the fatherland, and all the honours paid him and all the invitations pressed upon him could not keep him long from Nuremberg.
In this case the chief actors in the show piece were men of mark of an exceptionally entertaining character; with many of them Duerer and Pirkheimer were soon on the best of terms.
It was the return to Nuremburg of Willibald Pirkheimer, one of the friends of Dürer's childhood, between whom and himself there had always existed a strong affection.
We can well understand that the model boy, to whom "God had given diligence," with his long hair lovely as a girl's, and his consciousness of being nearly always in the right, had much to suffer from his fellow prentices. Besides, very likely, he already consorted with Willibald Pirkheimer and his friends, who were the aristocrats of the town.
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