"I can truthfully say," wrote Durer to the Council, "that in the thirty years I have stayed at home, I have not received from people in this town work worth 500 gulden--truly an absurd and trifling sum--and not a fifth part of that has been profit." After his death his fellow-citizens became more fully alive to the value of his works, and the worthy shopkeepers began those transactions which gradually stripped Nuremberg of almost all the master's drawings and paintings. I borrow the following account from Mr Lionel Cust's excellent monograph on "The Paintings and Drawings of Albert Durer":-- "The greater part of his drawings, which were made for his own use, appear to have passed into the possession of his life-long friend, Pirkheimer, perhaps handed over by Durer's widow to redeem the many financial obligations under which Durer lay to his friend. The sketch-books used by Durer in the Netherlands seem to have passed into the possession of the Pfinzing family, and were dispersed by their next owner. At Pirkheimer's death the whole of his collections, including the paintings and drawings by Durer, became the property of the Imhoff family, the bankers and usurers of Nuremberg. The Imhoffs, as befits a good, steady, money-making firm, seem to have regarded Durer's works as a marketable commodity. At the end of the sixteenth century, when the Emperor Rudolph II. was forming his great collection of works of art and curiosities, the Imhoffs, knowing his intense admiration for the works of Durer, pressed upon him the collection of paintings and drawings which they possessed. The Town Council of Nuremberg seem to have followed suit with the paintings which were immediately under their control, if not actually in their possession. In a short time Rudolph became possessed of the bulk of Durer's paintings and drawings at Prague or Vienna. Several of the paintings remain in the Imperial collection to this day, and a large portion of the drawings now forms the nucleus of what is known as the 'Albertina' collection at Vienna. Another portion of the Imhoff collection found its way through a collector in the Netherlands, perhaps through one of the Austrian governors, into that of Sir Hans Sloane, and is now in the print-room at the British Museum. These two collections, together with the great collection, which official industry and acumen have brought together at Berlin, are the best field for the study of Durer's work as a draughtsman, although in some of the smaller public or private collections some of the most remarkable examples are to be found.