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German woman, wife of Albrecht Dürer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Agnes Dürer née Frey (1475–1539) was the wife of the German artist Albrecht Dürer. During their marriage, which was childless, she was portrayed several times by Dürer.
Agnes Dürer | |
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Born | 1475 |
Died | 1539 (aged 63–64) Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire |
Nationality | German |
Known for | being wife and model for Albrecht Dürer |
Spouse |
Agnes Dürer was the daughter of the coppersmith and lute maker Hans Frey and his wife Anna, a member of the patrician family Rummel.
On 7 July 1494 Agnes married Albrecht Dürer, who was forced to stop his grand tour of Europe by his parents in order to marry her. According to the family chronicle, she had a dowry of 200 guilders.
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 are 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.[1] 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.[2]
After the death of her husband (she was the sole 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.
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