The following is my property, which I have with difficulty acquired by the labour of my hand, for I have had no opportunity of great gain. I have moreover suffered much loss by lending what was not repaid me, and by apprentices who never paid their fees, and one died at Rome whereby I lost my wares. In the thirteenth year of my wedlock (Le., 1507-8) I have paid great debts with what I earned at Venice. I possess fairly good household furniture, good clothes, chests, some good pewter vessels, good materials for my work, bedding and cupboards, and good colours worth 100 florins Rhenish. The wares that Dürer lost in Rome were doubtless chiefly woodcuts and engravings which his prentice had taken to sell during his _wanderjahre_, as Dürer himself during his own had very likely sold prints for Wolgemut. One of the reasons which had taken him to Venice may have been to summon Marc Antonio before the Signoria, for having copied not only his engravings, but the monogram with which he signed them; in any case he obtained a decree defending him against such artistic forgery. Dürer's most steady resource seems to have been the sale of prints; it is these that his wife had sold in his absence, and in the diary of his journey to the Netherlands there is constant mention of such sales. Nuremberg was very much behind Antwerp or Venice in the price paid for works of art; and the possibilities of such a market as Rome had very likely tempted Dürer to trust his prentice with an unusual quantity of prints. His worldly affairs were neither brilliant nor secure; yet we shall find him tempted on receiving an important commission to spend so much in time and material as to make it impossible for him to realise a profit. We are accustomed to think that these trials were spared to artists in the past by the munificence of patrons: but apart from the fact that patrons often paid only with promises or by granting credit, at Nuremberg there were few magnificent patrons, and its burghers were in no way so generous or so extravagant as those of Venice or Antwerp. In fact, Dürer's position was very similar to that of the modern artist, who finds little and insufficient patronage, and can make more if he is lucky by the reproduction of his creations for the great public. But Dürer still had one advantage over his fellow-sufferers of to-day--that of being his own publisher. Doubtless portraits were as popular then as nowadays; but if the public taste had not been prostituted by a seductive commercialism to the degree that at present obtains, on the other hand, at Nuremberg at least, the fashion seems to have been very little developed; and most of Dürer's important portraits seem to have been the result of his sojourns away from home. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 15: Thus far the original is in bad Italian.] [Footnote 16: The retainers of Konz Schott, a neighbouring baron, at one time a conspicuous enemy of Nürnberg.] [Footnote 17: These words are in Italian in the original.]