Though it is by no means unlikely that Durer might apply to the Venetian government to prevent the sale of spurious copies of his works within the bounds of their jurisdiction, yet Vasari’s account of his personally visiting that city for the purpose of making a complaint against Marc Antonio, and of the government having forbid the latter to affix Durer’s mark to his engravings in future, is certainly incorrect. The History of the Virgin, the earliest of the two works which were almost entirely copied by Marc Antonio, was not published before 1510, and there is not the slightest evidence of Durer having re-visited Venice after his return to Nuremberg about the latter end of 1506. Bartsch thinks that Vasari’s account of Durer’s complaining to the Venetian government against Marc Antonio is wholly unfounded; not only from the fact of Durer not having visited Venice subsequent to 1506, but from the improbability of his applying to a foreign state to prohibit a stranger from copying his works. Mr. Ottley, however,--after observing that Marc Antonio had affixed Durer’s mark to his copies of the seventeen cuts of the Life of the Virgin and of some other single subjects, but had omitted it in his copies of the cuts of the Little Passion,--thus expresses his opinion with respect to the correctness of this part of Vasari’s account: “That Durer, who enjoyed the especial protection of the Emperor Maximilian, might be enabled through the imperial ambassador at Venice to lay his complaints before the government, and to obtain the prohibition before stated, may I think readily be imagined; and it cannot be denied, that the circumstance of Marc Antonio’s having omitted to affix the mark of Albert to the copies which he afterwards made of the series of the ‘Life of Christ’ is strongly corroborative of the general truth of the story.”[V-28] As two of the cuts in the Little Passion, which Mr. Ottley here calls the “Life of Christ,” are dated 1510, and as, according to Mr. Ottley, Marc Antonio arrived at Rome in the course of that year, it is difficult to conceive how the government of Venice could have the power to prohibit a native of Bologna, living in a state beyond their jurisdiction, from affixing Albert Durer’s mark to such engravings as he might please to copy from the works of that master. [Footnote V-28: Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, vol. ii. p. 782. The objections to the general truth of Vasari’s story appear to be much stronger than the presumptions in its favour. 1. The improbability of Albert Durer having visited Venice subsequent to 1506; 2. The fact of Marc Antonio’s copies of the cuts of the Little Passion _not_ containing Albert Durer’s mark; and 3. The probability of Mark Antonio residing beyond the jurisdiction of the Venetian government at the time of his engraving them.]