ed to sketch every one about him, yet no portrait of his wife
is certainly known to exist, though several of his sketches are so
called, without any foundation or proof. What adds to the strangeness
of this omission is the fact that all accounts represent Agnes Duerer
as a very handsome woman.

Probably the newly married couple dwelt at the house of the elder
Duerer during the first years of their union. In 1494 Albert was
admitted to the guild of painters, submitting a pen-drawing of
Orpheus and the Bacchantes as his test of ability; and at about the
same time he drew the "Bacchanal" and "The Battle of the Tritons,"
which are now at Vienna. Herein he showed the contemporary classical
tendency of art, which he so soon outgrew. About this same time he
designed a frontispiece for the Latin poem which Dr. Ulsen had written
about the pestilence which was devastating Nuremberg, showing a
ghastly and repulsive man covered with plague-boils. The portrait of
Duerer's father, in oil-colors, which is now at Frankfort, was also
executed during this year.

Duerer's first copper-plate engraving dates from 1497, and represents
four naked women, under a globe bearing the initials of "_O Gott
Hilf_," or "O God, help," while human bones strew the floor, and a
flaming devil appears in the background. During the next three years
the master made twenty copper-plate engravings. The composition of
"St. Jerome's Penance" shows the noble old ascetic kneeling alone in
a rocky wilderness, beating his naked breast with a stone, and gazing
at a crucifix, while the symbolical lion lies beside him. "The Penance
of St. John Chrysostom" depicts the long-bearded saint expiating
his guilt in seducing and slaying the princess by crawling about
on all-fours like a beast. She is seen at the mouth of a rocky
cave, nursing her child. "The Prodigal Son" is another tender and
exquisitely finished copper-plate engraving, in which the yearning and
prayerful Prodigal, bearing the face of Duerer, is kneeling on bare
knees by the trough at which a drove of swine are feeding. In the
background is a group of substantial German farm-buildings, with
unconcerned domestic animals and fowls. "The Rape of Amymone" shows a
gloomy Triton carrying off a very ugly woman from the midst of her
bathing Danaide sisters. "The Dream" portrays an obese German soundly
sleeping by a great stove, with a foolish-faced naked Venus and a
winged Cupid standing by his side, and a little de