For the following dates I am indebted to Albert Dürer’s Diary, contained in the _Foreign Quarterly Review_ for January 1833, a work replete with most interesting information. Albert Dürer was born in 1471; his father taught him the goldsmith’s craft. In 1486 he was bound for three years to Michael Wohlgemuth, an engraver on wood. He was married to Agnes, an _un-lamb-like_ daughter of Hans Frey. He died on the 6th of April, 1528, of a decline. His wife, an avaricious shrew, “_gnawed him to his very heart,--he was dried up to a faggot_.”[418] Little did Albert Dürer think, particularly from the period of his unhappy marriage to the hour of his dissolution, when he was only fifty-seven years of age, that such honours would be paid to his memory.
The following letter is perhaps worth insertion here:--
“MY DEAR SIR,--Shortly after my return from Rome, in 1798, I espied a bust in Rosso Antico, lying under a counter at a broker’s shop, in Great Portland Street. I recognised its antiquity; it was _a Faun_, large as life, in the best style of art. I bought it for the trifling sum of £1. I had it in my study many months. During this period, I often assisted Nollekens in the architectural department of his monuments, receiving no thanks; but an invitation one day, as we talked Italian together. On accidentally mentioning my antique Faun, he came to see it, and was so struck with its beauty, that he would never rest till he got it out of my hands. He succeeded, by offering me some models of his own, and ten pounds. Wishing to oblige him, I let him have the bust, and he sent me two miserable models not much higher than my thumb, of a Bacchus and Ariadne, since broken to pieces.
“This bust was in the collection at his sale, and it was knocked down by Christie to the Duke of Newcastle for a hundred and sixty pounds.
“In the winter of 1815, making a tour of the Netherlands, I was in Bruges when the well-known statue, or rather group, of the ‘Virgin and Child,’ by Michael Angelo Buonarotti, which had been carried from the church of Notre Dame to Paris, was restored, in a packing-case, to that church. On this occasion a procession of the priests and officers of the church, and of some of the municipal officers, took place; and a Mass was celebrated. About a month afterwards, I was again in Bruges, and saw this fine work of art replaced in its former situation, on the altar of one of the small chapels. It is, indeed, a wonderful work.