Albert was enamoured with art from his earliest years, and spent many of his leisure hours in making sketches and rude drawings, which he gave to his schoolmates and friends. The Imhoff Collection had a drawing of three heads, done in his eleventh year; the Posonyi Collection claimed to possess a Madonna of his fifteenth year; and the British Museum has a chalk-drawing of a woman holding a bird in her hand, whose first owner wrote on it, "This was drawn for me by Albert Dürer before he became a painter." The most interesting of these early works is in the Albertina at Vienna, and bears the inscription: "This I have drawn from myself from the looking-glass, in the year 1484, when I was still a child.--ALBERT DÜRER." It shows a handsome and pensive boy-face, oval in shape, with large and tender eyes, filled with solemnity and vague melancholy; long hair cut straight across the forehead, and falling over the shoulders; and full and pouting lips. It is faulty in design, but shows a considerable knowledge of drawing, and a strong faculty for portraiture. The certain sadness of expression tells that the schoolboy had already become acquainted with grief, probably from the straitened circumstances of his family, and the melancholy deaths of so many brothers and sisters. The great mystery of sorrow was full early thrown across the path of the solemn artist. This portrait was always retained by Dürer as a memorial of his childhood. He says of his father, "For me, I think, he had a particular affection; and, as he saw me diligent in learning, he sent me to school. When I had learned to write and read, he took me home again, with the intention of teaching me the goldsmith's work. In this I began to do tolerably well." He was taken into the goldsmith's workshop in his thirteenth year, and remained there two years, receiving instruction which was not without value in his future life, in showing him the elements of the arts of modelling and design. The accuracy and delicacy of his later plastic works show how well he apprehended these ideas, and how far he acquired sureness of expression. The elder Albert was a skilful master-workman, highly esteemed in his profession, and had received several important commissions. It is said that the young apprentice executed under his care a beautiful piece of silver-work representing the Seven Agonies of Christ.