Albert Durer not only excelled as a painter, an engraver on copper, and a designer on wood, but he also executed several pieces of sculpture with surprising delicacy and natural expression of character. An admirable specimen of his skill in this department of art is preserved in the British Museum, to which institution it was bequeathed by the late R. Payne Knight, Esq., by whom it was purchased at Brussels for five hundred guineas upwards of forty years ago. This most exquisite piece of sculpture is of small dimensions, being only seven and three quarter inches high, by five and a half wide. It is executed in hone-stone, of a cream colour, and is all of one piece, with the exception of a dog and one or two books in front. The subject is the naming of John the Baptist.[V-36] In front, to the right, is an old man with a tablet inscribed with Hebrew characters; another old man is seen immediately behind him, further to the right; and a younger man,--said to be intended by the artist for a portrait of himself,--appears entering the door of the apartment. An old woman with the child in her arms is seated near the figure with the tablet; St. Elizabeth is perceived lying in bed, on the more distant side of which a female attendant is standing, and on the other, nearer to the spectator, an elderly man is seen kneeling. It is supposed that the latter figure is intended for Zacharias, and that the artist had represented him in the act of making signs to Elizabeth with his hands. The figures in the fore-ground are executed in high relief, and the character and expression of the heads have perhaps never been surpassed in any work of sculpture executed on the same scale. Durer’s mark is perceived on a tablet at the foot of the bed, with the date 1510. This curious specimen of Durer’s talents as a sculptor is carefully preserved in a frame with a glass before it, and is in most perfect condition, with the exception of the hands of Zacharias and of Elizabeth, some of the fingers of which are broken off. [Footnote V-36: The account of the naming of John the Baptist will be found in St. Luke’s Gospel, chap. i. verse 59-64.] Shortly after Whitsuntide, 1520, Durer set out from Nuremberg, accompanied by his wife and her servant Susanna, on a visit to the Netherlands; and as he took with him several copies of his principal works, engravings on copper as well as on wood, and painted and drew a number of portraits during his residence there, the journey appears to have been taken as much with a view to business as pleasure. He kept a journal from the time of his leaving Nuremberg till the period of his reaching Cologne on his return, and from this curious record of the artist’s travels the following particulars of his visit to the Netherlands have been obtained.[V-37]