The Essential Dürer

11. Albrecht Dürer between Agnes Frey and Willibald Pirckheimer

11 Albrecht Dürer between Agnes Frey and Willibald Pirckheimer Corine Schleif Sources of Tension Two sources leave telling traces of tensions in Albrecht Dürer’s closest personal relationships. One, a letter that Dürer wrote to Willibald Pirckheimer , preserves for us a shocking and intimate exchange between the two men. Dürer sent the missive from Venice in 1506 and dated it ‘‘about fourteen days after St. Michael’s Day,’’ which places it in the middle of October. It subsequently remained lost and forgotten for centuries together with other letters and papers behind a secret panel in a Nuremberg house (Figure 11.1).1 The subject of the discussion was the artist’s wife, Agnes: ‘‘And as for what you wrote—that I should come back soon or you would clyster my wife—I will not allow it because you would braut her to death’’ (Vnd als jr schreibt, jch soll pald kumen oder jr wolt mirs weib kristiren, jst ewch vnerlawbt, jr prawt sy den zw thott).2 To understand the passage, explanations of the verbs used to connote and denote sexual intercourse are necessary. First of all, the verb klistieren, derived from a Greek word meaning ‘‘to clean’’ and related to the English noun clyster, was generally used to refer to the administration of either an enema or vaginal douche. As Laurinda Dixon has shown, the clyster was a prevalent medical remedy that was prescribed from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century for women without husbands or in the absence of their husbands, as an 186 corine schleif 11.1. Georg Christoph Wilder, The House of Hans VI Imhoff and Felicitas Pirckheimer on St. Egidien Place in Nuremberg, 1816. Engraving in Erinnerungs-Blätter an Nürnberg und dessen Umgegend aus alter und neuer Zeit: Aus dem Nachlasse der Brüder Georg und Christoph Wilder, nebst Beiträgen von mehreren anderen Nürnberger Kupferstechern (Nuremberg, 1860). Photo: Volker Schier. antidote for unfulfilled desire.3 The other word, brauten, a transitive verb used in early modern times as a euphemism for male-initiated coitus, is direct but less rude in tone.4 There is no English equivalent. Although Dürer otherwise appears to have self-consciously anticipated that his art and writings would be of interest to posterity, he would certainly have been discomforted to learn that these ribald jibes, so teasingly exchanged , would one day be the subject of scholarly analysis. From the voyeuristic standpoint of the modern scholar, one is likewise embarrassed by what one is allowed to read, especially because, by contrast, the woman Agnes Frey Dürer, who was made an object by the brash bantering, undoubtedly remained unaware that she was the butt of these crude jokes. What does the dialogue in the letter reveal about relationships between Albrecht Dürer, Agnes Frey Dürer, and Willibald Pirckheimer? First of all, Pirckheimer, whose proposition certainly bore no serious intentions, has appropriated Agnes Dürer, almost as if she were a piece of (neglected) property, in order to convince Albrecht Dürer to return to Nuremberg. He does not write simply—come back because I want you back in Nuremberg—although this appears to be the unspoken agenda. Rather, the two men appear to bond Frey and Pirckheimer 187 over the hypothetical and symbolic exchange of a woman’s body. The dialogue may remind some modern readers of notions about bride exchange put forth in the middle of the twentieth century by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in his Elementary Structures of Kinship. Here it is not kinship with another family, clan, or village that is sought or secured, but friendship that transcends or even repudiates class differences. Second, the letter may indicate that Agnes Dürer had expressed to Pirckheimer her longing for her husband, who at the time had been away in Italy for over a year, while she was in Germany managing the family business.5 The topic of the couple’s unwelcome separation had been broached in a different manner in a letter Dürer wrote to Pirckheimer several months before . At this time it was Dürer who expressed concern when he wrote on February 28, 1506, complaining that he had not heard from his wife for so long that he feared he had ‘‘lost her’’ (ich mein ich habs verloren).6 It appears too that she was away from Nuremberg for a...