Records of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries

Albrecht DürerProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
132K words
Chapters
14

Tags

English Originals Travel Geographic NotesTravel DiaryArtistic JourneyPersonal ObservationLow CountriesVeniceCultural ChangeRenaissanceSocial ObservationEuropean Impressions

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Records of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries by Albrecht DürerAuthor: Dürer, Albrecht, 1471-1528,Language: English, Class: ND: Fine Arts: Painting, Release Date: May 1, 2002

Editor's review

This text presents Dürer's records of his journeys to Venice and the Low Countries, offering first-hand material from the artist's own experience. Its appeal lies not in a complete autobiographical narrative but in the scattered, diary-like strokes: travel expenses, observations, comments on works and people, and attention to his own circumstances and creative work, all interwoven into a portrait of early sixteenth-century European art and urban life. For art-history readers, it shows how a Northern Renaissance painter viewed Venice and the Netherlands and how he discussed payment, patronage, and fellow artists; for general readers, it offers a close-to-daily travel perspective, with short fragments easy to read in stops and starts. One need not seek narrative continuity; read it as historical material and essays, note the specific names, places, prices, and works, and understand the weight of these records in light of Dürer's life and his prints and paintings.

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Reading tips

  1. Read a brief introduction to Dürer's life and times before the travel records themselves.
  2. Read in segments by journey and note places, people, and expenses as you go.
  3. Look at Dürer's prints and paintings alongside the text to grasp the artistic concerns in the records.
  4. Do not seek narrative continuity; a few pages a day with brief notes works well.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14

FAQ

Are these records a complete autobiography or travel notes? They are closer to travel notes and diary-style records than to a complete autobiography. The content consists mostly of scattered fragments—travel observations, expenses, impressions of people and works—without a continuous plot. Read them as first-hand historical material and essays, not as a complete life narrative unfolding along a timeline.
Can I read this without knowing Dürer? You can, but a little background beforehand will make it more rewarding. At minimum, know that Dürer was a major painter and printmaker of the Northern Renaissance and understand the artistic standing of Venice and the Low Countries at the time. This makes it easier to understand why he paid attention to certain works, fellow artists, and patronage relationships.
Is this book suitable as an introduction to art-history research? It is suitable as supplementary material, not as an introductory textbook. It offers a first-hand perspective from the artist's own experience that can add to an understanding of the early sixteenth-century art world, travel, and patronage; but it lacks systematic explanation, so beginners should use it alongside general art-history surveys and catalogues of Dürer's works.
What are the difficulties of reading the English edition? The main difficulties are sixteenth-century names of people, places, and institutions, and the jumps between diary fragments. It is advisable to look up places and people as you read, using an annotated edition or related background materials; you need not read word by word—just grasp the specific observations and the author's concerns.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Albrecht Dürer Author · German · 1471–1528

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a German Renaissance painter, printmaker, and art theorist born in Nuremberg. He is known for the woodcut series Apocalypse, the engravings Knight, Death and the Devil and Melencolia I, and numerous self-portraits, works that combine precise linear craftsmanship with profound symbolic meaning. He also studied perspective and human proportions, and wrote the Four Books on Proportion, uniting artistic practice with theoretical inquiry. The library holds four of his works—Of the Just Shaping of Letters, Deutsche Landschaften, Records of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries, and Albert Durer a Venise et dans les Pays-Bas—covering letter construction, German landscapes, and travel records from Venice and the Low Countries, showing that his writing and documentation extended beyond images to textual norms and travel observation.