Editing Albrecht Dürer (section)

===''Wanderjahre'' and marriage (1490–1494)===
[[File:Albrecht-self.jpg|thumb|left|The earliest painted ''[[Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle (Albrecht Dürer)|Self-Portrait]]'' (1493) by Albrecht Dürer, oil, originally on [[vellum]] ([[Louvre]], [[Paris]])]]

After completing his apprenticeship, Dürer followed the common German custom of taking ''[[Journeyman years|Wanderjahre]]''—in effect [[gap year]]s—in which the apprentice learned skills from other masters, their local tradition and individual styles; Dürer was to spend about four years away. He left in 1490, possibly to work under [[Martin Schongauer]], the leading engraver of Northern Europe, but who died shortly before Dürer's arrival at [[Colmar]] in 1492. It is unclear where Dürer travelled in the intervening period, though it is likely that he went to [[Frankfurt]] and the [[Netherlands]]. In Colmar, Dürer was welcomed by Schongauer's brothers, the goldsmiths Caspar and Paul and the painter Ludwig. Later that year, Dürer travelled to [[Basel]] to stay with another brother of Martin Schongauer, the goldsmith Georg.{{refn|Here he produced a woodcut of [[St Jerome]] as a frontispiece for Nicholaus Kessler's ''Epistolare beati Hieronymi''. [[Erwin Panofsky]] argues that this print combined the "[[Ulm]]ian style" of Koberger's ''Lives of the Saints'' (1488) and that of Wolgemut's workshop. Panofsky (1945), 21|group=n}} In 1493 Dürer went to [[Strasbourg]], where he would have experienced the sculpture of [[Nikolaus Gerhaert]]. Dürer's first painted self-portrait (now in the [[Louvre]]) was painted at this time, probably to be sent back to his fiancée in Nuremberg.<ref name="Bartrum"/>

[[File:Dürer - Agnes Dürer (Mein Agnes), Albertina 3063.jpg|thumb|right|Dürer's sketch of his wife Agnes Frey (1494)]]

Very soon after his return to Nuremberg, on 7 July 1494, at the age of 23, Dürer was married to [[Agnes Frey]] following an arrangement made during his absence. Agnes was the daughter of a prominent brass worker (and amateur harpist) in the city. However, no children resulted from the marriage, and with Albrecht the Dürer name died out. The marriage between Agnes and Albrecht was believed not to be a generally happy one, as indicated by a letter of Dürer in which he quipped to [[Willibald Pirckheimer]] in a rough tone about his wife, calling 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 helped cause Dürer's death at a young age.<ref name="Wilmot-BuxtonPoynter1881">{{cite book|author1=Harry John Wilmot-Buxton|author2=Edward John Poynter|title=German, Flemish and Dutch Painting|url=https://archive.org/details/germanflemishan00bargoog|year=1881|publisher=Scribner and Welford|page=[https://archive.org/details/germanflemishan00bargoog/page/n40 24]}}</ref> It has been hypothesized by many scholars that Albrecht was bisexual or homosexual, due to the recurrence of allegedly homoerotic themes in some of his works (e.g. ''The Men's Bath''), and the nature of his correspondence with close friends.<ref name="Haggerty2013">{{cite book|author=George Haggerty|title=Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Pez9AQAAQBAJ|date=2013|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-1-135-58513-6|page=262}}</ref><ref>Brisman, Shira, ''Albrecht Dürer and the Epistolary Mode of Address'', University of Chicago Press, 2017, p. 179.</ref><ref>Mills, Robert, ''Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages'', University of Chicago Press, 2015, p. 332, n. 93.</ref><!--One might consider the Women's Bath as an immidiate counter argument, with a man as a voyeur. The joke with the water cock is childish, not especially homoerotic. And: what other works?-->