Agnes Dürer

Agnes Dürer
Portrait by Albrecht Dürer, her husband, 1521
Born	1475 Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire
Died	December 28, 1539(1539-12-28) (aged 63–64) Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire
Spouse	Albrecht Dürer ​ ​ (m. 1494; died 1528)​

Agnes Dürer née Frey (1475– December 28, 1539) was a Nuremburger business woman, as well as the wife of German artist Albrecht Dürer. During their marriage she was portrayed several times by Dürer.

Life and Marriage

Agnes Frey was born in Nuremberg in 1475 to Anna and Hans Frey. Her mother was a member of the patrician family Rummel, and her father was a copper smith and lute maker.

On 7 July 1494, aged 19-20, Agnes married Albrecht Dürer, at the St. Sebaldus church in Nuremberg. According to Dürer's family chronicle, the marriage had been arranged by their fathers, and Agnes had a dowry of 200 guilders, which later aided him in purchasing the house that would become the Dürer workshop.

The first known drawing of Agnes is from 1494. Agnes was mostly responsible for the marketing of her husband's prints. They regularly visited fairs in order to sell his engravings, but usually sold his prints at the Nuremberg weekly market. Their participation in fairs at Leipzig and Frankfurt is also documented. From September 1505 until May 1506 she did not return to her hometown from a visit to Frankfurt, probably because plague had broken out in Nuremberg.

During her husband's second trip to Italy, she ran the workshop. In the years 1520 and 1521 the couple traveled together in the Netherlands. The last known portrait of her, which was painted on their 27th wedding anniversary, was from this period.

Her marriage to Albrecht Dürer remained childless. Their relationship was not a generally happy one, as indicated by Dürer's letters in which he quipped to Willibald Pirckheimer in extremely rough tones about his wife. He called her an "old crow" and made other vulgar remarks. Pirckheimer also made no secret of his antipathy towards Agnes, describing her as a miserly shrew with a bitter tongue, who contributed to Dürer's death at a young age. One author believes Albrecht was bisexual, if not homosexual, due to several of his works containing themes of homosexual desire, as well as the intimate nature of his correspondence with certain very close male friends.

After the death of her husband –she was his only heir– Agnes Dürer continued to sell his works. This was confirmed by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1528 with his purchase of Dürer's book Of Human Proportions. She died in 1539 in Nuremberg.

Literature

• Hans Rupprich (ed. ): Dürer Written papers. Volume 1, autobiographical writings, correspondence, seals, inscriptions, notes and reports, certificates for personal life, German Association for the Arts, Berlin 1956
• Albrecht Durer: The Complete Works The Complete Paintings, drawings, engravings and woodcuts. The monograph "Albrecht Dürer, work and impact" by Fyodor Anzelewsky. Changed edition, Direct Media Publ, Berlin 2000, 1 CD-ROM (Digital Library; 28th) ISBN 3-89853-128-7
• Corine Schleif: "Das pos weyb Agnes Frey Dürer: Geschichte ihrer Verleumdung und Versuche der Ehrenrettung," ("The Bad Wife Agnes Frey Dürer: History of her Defamation and Attempts at her Rehabilitation"), in: Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 86 (1999), 47-79
• Corine Schleif: "Agnes Frey Dürer, verpackt in Bildern und vereinnahmt in Geschichten," ("Agnes Frey Dürer, Packaged in Pictures and Appropriated in Stories"), in: Am Anfang war Sigena. Ein Nürnberger Frauengeschichtsbuch, edited by Gaby Franger and Nadja Bennewitz, Cadolzburg 1999, 2000, 67-77
• Corine Schleif: "Albrecht Dürer between Agnes Frey and Willibald Pirckheimer," in: The Essential Dürer, ed. Larry Silver and Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Philadelphia 2010, 85–205

References

External links

• Literature by and about Agnes Dürer in the German National Library catalogueGerman National Library