With such a family to support we can easily imagine that the father’s life was a hard one. He was a pious and industrious man whom his illustrious son never tires of praising. In one place he says of him, “He had a great reputation with many who knew him, for he led an honorable Christian life, was a patient man, gentle, in peace with everyone and always thankful to God. He had no desire for worldly pleasures, was of few words, did not go into society and was a God-fearing man. Thus my dear father was most anxious to bring up his children to honor God. His highest wish was that his children should be pleasing to God and man; therefore he used to tell us every day that we should love God and be true to our neighbors.”
Durer sorrowed deeply when his father died in 1502. On his death-bed he commended the mother to her son. Durer was faithful to his trust and cared tenderly for his mother until her death, several years later. Never did boy or man more faithfully keep the command, “Honor thy father and mother,” than did our artist.
For many reasons Albrecht seemed to be his father’s favorite child. We find him, in spite of numerous other cares, taking great pains with the boy’s education. He taught him to read and write well and must have given him instruction in Latin. These were years when thirst for learning was abroad in the land. Free Latin schools were established to meet the needs. Durer’s father was filled with this spirit and he communicated it to his son.
DORMER WINDOW IN THE BISHOP’S HOUSE, NUREMBERG
On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days,
Sat the poet Melchoir singing Kaiser Maximilian’s praise. —Longfellow
As was customary at the time, the son was trained to follow his father’s trade and so he learned the goldsmith’s art in his father’s shop. It is said that in his tender years he engraved, on silver, events from Christ’s passage to Calvary. Albrecht’s drawing was superior to that usually done in a goldsmith’s shop. In his free hours he drew to entertain his companions. After a while he began to feel that he might paint pictures instead of merely drawing designs for metal work. He loved the work and so had the courage to tell his father of his wish to become a painter. The elder Durer was patient with the boy, regretting only that he had lost so much time learning the goldsmith’s trade. Albrecht, then only sixteen, was surely young enough to begin his life work! His father put him to study with Wolgemut, the foremost painter of the city, which is not high praise, for the art of painting was then new in the prosperous city of the Pegnitz. Wolgemut was, however, a good engraver on wood and so perhaps was able to direct the young apprentice in quite as valuable a line as painting.
Here Durer remained for three years, until 1490. He was now but nineteen, full of hope and perhaps conscious, to a certain extent, that his was no ordinary skill of hand. He was now ready, according to the custom of his countrymen, for his “wanderschaft” or journeyman period, when he should complete his art education by going abroad to other towns to see their ways and thus improve his own method. For four years he traveled among neighboring towns. The evidence is strong that the last year was spent in Venice. We have little certain knowledge of where he spent these years but we feel quite sure that one of the places he visited was Colmar, where he became acquainted with the artist, Martin Schougauer.
He was called home rather suddenly in 1494 by his father, who had arranged what he thought was an acceptable marriage for his son. A short time before Durer had sent his father a portrait of himself in which he figured as a remarkably handsome and well-dressed young man. It is supposed that the father sent for this portrait to help him along in his arrangements for the marriage of his son. However Albrecht may have felt about the matter of making his marriage merely a business affair, he never expressed himself, but was married shortly after his return to Nuremberg.