Albrecht Dürer spent about 15 months in Venice, from the autumn of 1505 to the early spring of 1507. It was likely his second time in the city, but everything was different. Eleven years before, he had been an earnest student of the arts during his Wanderjahre, trying to learn as much as possible so that he would be a better master on returning to Nuremberg. By 1505, on the other hand, he was hailed in Germany as their greatest painter, but in Italy just as the ablest of engravers.

Italy was a very important market for his prints, which paid for his family’s bread and butter, and he probably travelled to Venice to consolidate his grip on this market. But once there he also wished to show off his skills as a painter, and accomplished some works that even Giovanni Bellini, the reigning monarch of the art world, is said to have appreciated.

It was an exciting adventure for Dürer, and we know much about it from the ten surviving letters he sent to his friend Willibald Pirckheimer back home. Through them, David Landau follows his weeks in the Serenissima like a fly on the wall, and gives insights into the experience of a foreign and ambitious artist living in a cosmopolitan and at times cut -throat city.