Der Apostel Simon

1507–1528 · Wirkungsort

Nuremberg

1520–1521

An illness caught in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands Dürer caught an unknown illness, possibly malaria, whose attacks plagued him for the rest of his life. He drew himself pointing to his spleen, with the note: “Where the yellow spot is, and where I point with my finger, that is where it hurts.”

1520–1521

Meets Patinir, van Orley and Provoost

In the Netherlands Dürer met Bernard van Orley, Jan Provoost, Gerard Horenbout, Jean Mone, Joachim Patinir and Tommaso Vincidor, though apparently not Quentin Matsys.

1520–1521

Margaret of Austria rejects her father's portrait

Dürer offered his last portrait of Maximilian to the emperor's daughter, Margaret of Austria; she disliked it and refused it, and he ended up trading it for some white cloth. His diary shows that the journey brought him no profit.

1525

Publishes the Four Books on Measurement

His Four Books on Measurement (Instructions for Measuring with Compass and Ruler) appeared in Nuremberg, the first book for adults on mathematics in German, later cited by Galileo and Kepler. Dürer wrote in the craftsmen's vernacular rather than in Latin.

early 1525

The trial of the “three godless painters”

Three of Dürer's pupils — the brothers Hans Sebald and Barthel Beham and Georg Pencz — were charged with godlessness and banished from Nuremberg, and one of his best block-cutters, Hieronymus Andreae, was jailed for links with the rebel peasants. How Dürer himself took it is unknown.