m Venice were almost
wholly given to painting, and his productions give evidence of the
fact that he had dismissed from his employment the retinue of
assistants and apprentices, whom he had employed in his earlier years.
From this period date most of his great masterpieces, which are still
preserved, among them the "Adam and Eve," in the Pitti Palace; the
"Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia," in the Imperial Gallery, at
Vienna; the "Adoration of the Trinity," at the Belvedere, in Vienna;
and "The Assumption of the Virgin," the original of which was
destroyed by fire more than three hundred years ago, but of which a
good copy is preserved at Frankfort. To this period belong the
portraits of Charlemagne and of the Emperor Sigismund, which are
preserved in the National German Museum at Nuremberg.

[Illustration: Albert Duerer Visits Hans Sachs.]

But while prosecuting the work of the painter, he did not neglect the
art of the engraver, and in 1511, brought out in complete form his
great book of woodcuts in folio, and began to develop that marvellous
art of etching which is indissolubly connected with his name. Among
the products of the etcher's needle which attest his activity in this
direction are those masterpieces which have for centuries been at once
the delight and the puzzle of artistic minds: the "Melancholia," "The
Knight and the Devil," and "St. Jerome in his Cell." The most
reasonable explanation of these weird fancies is that they were
intended to represent in allegorical style the three temperaments--the
melancholic, the sanguine, and the phlegmatic. The Diet of Augsburg,
which was convened in 1518, gave Duerer a passing opportunity to depict
the lineaments of the Emperor Maximilian, who gave him several
sittings, and who manifested great interest in the painter. The death
of the emperor in the following year, the outbreak of an epidemic in
Nuremberg, together with the coronation of Charles V. at
Aix-la-Chapelle, led Duerer to undertake a journey to the Low
Countries, in which he was accompanied by his faithful wife. He was
present at the coronation and was one of the distinguished civilians
whose appearance added dignity to the occasion. His diary, in which he
recounts his experiences upon this journey, and which is accompanied
by a multitude of wayside sketches, is still preserved, and contains,
besides the dry entries of his current expenditures, most entertaining
allusions to the distinguished people whom