As to the time when Durer came into the world, it was truly a wonderful age in which to live! Less than twenty-five years after his birth, Columbus found a vast new world. People were already much agitated over the evil practices in the old established church. Durer knew and loved Luther and Melancthon but he was quite as much attached to the scholarly Erasmus, who wished not to break away from the old church, but merely to correct its abuses. In short Durer belonged to the Conservative class which found it possible to accept the food in the new doctrines and retain the pure from the old without revolution. Such were the citizens of Nuremberg and thus did the ancient city as easily accept the new doctrines as she did the morning sunshine pouring in at her storied windows. Thus, too, were preserved the ancient buildings and institutions, which, through the wisdom of her citizens, were not called upon to withstand sieges and other military attacks.

Durer was above everything a true representative of the German people, and so we ought to take note of some of the qualities of the German mind. As Goethe, their greatest poet, says, one of their strongest characteristics is that of wishing to learn and to do rather than to enjoy. The Germans love truth and they do not stop short in their imaginings when they wish to drive it home. So in German art, the toiling man or woman is often accompanied by angels and demons, the equal of which were never pictured by any other people. The greatest extremes of beauty and ugliness have these people given in their art. In either extreme, however, thoughts on the deepest questions of human life are at the foundation.

On a summer's day in 1455, there wandered into the far-famed city of Nuremberg a young goldsmith from Hungary. The ramparts of the city with their towers and gateways, the splendid buildings enclosed, were like miracles to the youth. It was a fête day in celebration of the marriage of the son of a prominent citizen, Pirkheimer by name. Albrecht Durer, for that was the youth's name, long studied the gay throng, little thinking how in the future the name of his son and that of the bridegroom there would together be known to fame, the one as the greatest artist, the other as the most learned man of Nuremberg. The wandering youth was the father of our artist and the bridegroom was the father of Wilibald Pirkheimer, Durer's life long friend and companion.

The young goldsmith loved the city at once and, encouraged by the business activity of the place, he made it his permanent abode. He found employment with Hieronymus Holper, and soon married his master's comely daughter, Barbara. They resided in a little house which was a sort of appendage to the great house of Pirkheimer. A few months after a much longed for son came to bless the Pirkheimers, a little boy was born in the goldsmith's house whom they named, for his father, Albrecht Durer. As the years went by, seventeen other children came to the Durer home. Three only of all these children grew to maturity.

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.

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.

Agnes Frey, the woman selected by Durer's father, was a handsome woman of good family with a small fortune of her own. She has come down to us with a most unenviable record as a scold who made life almost unendurable for her husband. It is now quite certain, however, that for all these years she has been grossly misrepresented, simply because her husband's friend Pirkheimer, for small reason, became offended with her. It seems that in his lifetime Durer, who had collected many curious and valuable things, had gathered together some remarkably fine stag-horns. One pair of these especially pleased Pirkheimer. The widow, without knowing Pirkheimer's desire for these, sold them for a small sum and thus brought upon herself the anger of her husband's choleric friend, who wrote a most unkind letter concerning her which has been quoted from that day to this to show how Albrecht Durer suffered in his home. The truth seems really to be that Agnes Durer was as sweet-tempered as the average woman, fond of her husband and a good housekeeper.