[Footnote V-18: This caution is in the original expressed in the following indignant terms: “Heus, tu insidiator, ac alieni laboris et ingenii surreptor, ne manus temerarias his nostris operibus inicias cave. Scias enim a gloriosissimo Romanorum imperatore Maximiliano nobis concessum esse ne quis suppositiciis formis has imagines imprimere seu impressas per imperii limites vendere audeat: q’ per contemptum seu avariciæ crimen secus feceris, post bonorum confiscationem tibi maximum periculum subeundum esse certissime scias.”] Though no other wood engravings with Durer’s mark are found with a date till 1504, yet it is highly probable that several subjects of his designing were engraved between 1498, the date of the Apocalypse, and the above year; and it is also likely that he engraved several copper-plates within this period; although, with the exception of that of the four naked women, there are only four known which contain a date earlier than 1505. About the commencement of 1506 Durer visited Venice, where he remained till October in the same year. Eight letters which he addressed to Bilibald Pirkheimer from Venice, are printed in the tenth volume of Von Murr’s Journal. In the first letter, which is dated on the day of the Three Kings of Cologne, 1506, he informs his friend that he was employed to paint a picture for the German church at Venice, for which he was to receive a hundred and ten Rhenish guilders,[V-19] and that he expects to have it ready to place above the altar a month after Easter. He expresses a hope that he will be enabled to repay out of this money what he had borrowed of Pirkheimer. From this letter it seems evident that Durer’s circumstances were not then in a very flourishing state, and that he had to depend on his exertions for the means of living. The comparatively trifling sums which he mentions as having sent to his mother and his wife sufficiently declare that he had not left a considerable sum at home. He also says, that should his wife want more money, her father must assist her, and that he will honourably repay him on his return. [Footnote V-19: Von Murr says that the subject of this picture was the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, the saint to whom the church was dedicated; and that the painting afterwards came into the possession of the Emperor Rudolf II. and was placed in his gallery at Prague. It seems that Durer had taken some pictures with him to Venice; for in his fifth letter he says that he has sold two for twenty-four ducats, and exchanged three others for three rings, valued also at twenty-four ducats.]