Dürer's life was in reality uneventful. He died suddenly on April 6, 1528, in Nuremberg, having in all probability laid the foundations of his illness on his celebrated journey into Flanders in 1520-21, where he was fêted everywhere, and right royally received both by the civic authorities and his own brothers of the palette.
His stay at Venice as a young man, and this last-mentioned journey, were the greatest adventures of his body. His mind was ever adventurous, seeking new problems, overcoming new difficulties. It is so tempting to liken him to his own "Jerome in his Study," yet St. Jerome's life was the very antithesis of our Dürer. In Dürer there was nothing of the "Faust-Natur," as the Germans are fond of expressing an ill-balanced, all-probing mind. Dürer's moral equilibrium was upheld by his deep and sincere religious convictions. He is firmly convinced that God has no more to say to humanity than the Bible records. Dürer's difficulties end where Faust's began.
The last years of Dürer's life were spent in composing books on the theory and practice of Art.
To write an adequate "Life of Dürer" then is impossible in so small a compass. And if anything I said were wise, it were surely the fact that I wanted you, reader, in the very beginning to expect no more than a dim light on the treasure store of Dürer's Thought and Dürer's Art.
But however dim the light, I hope it has been a true light.
And here my conscience smites me! All along I may have appeared querulous, seeking to divulge Dürer's limitations rather than his excellences.
Perhaps! There are so many misconceptions about Dürer. He was a deep-thinking man; he was like the churches of the North—narrow, steep, dimly religious within, full of traceries, lacework, gargoyles, and grotesques without.
I have read that it used to be said in Italy: All the cities of Germany were blind, with the exception of Nuremberg, which was one-eyed. True! True also of Dürer and German Art.
In 1526, two years before his death, Dürer presented a panel to his native city, now cut in two, robbed of its Protestant inscription, and hanging in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich. Dürer's last great work!
It is as though he felt that the divine service of his life was drawing to its close. His life and Art I have likened to a Gothic Cathedral; his last works were as the closed wings of a gigantic altar-piece, before which he leaves posterity gazing overawed.