Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol

On 6 January 1506, Albrecht Dürer wrote from Venice to his friend Willibald Pirckheimer, who was at home in Nuremberg. The artist had already been in the city for a little while, and like many people who visit Venice he had spent a good deal of time shopping. Pirckheimer had asked him to buy some jewellery for him, ‘a few pearls and precious stones’, and the artist had been looking out for something suitable.

There were, however, difficulties. For one thing, he says: ‘I can find nothing good enough or worth the money; everything is snapped up by the Germans.’ For another, Dürer complained, there were a lot of swindlers around. These ‘always expect four times the value for anything, for they are the falsest knaves’. His Venetian friends had warned him against these traders, telling him that they ‘cheat man and beast, and that you could buy better things for less money at Frankfurt’.

Plus ça change, you might say. More than 500 years later, many visitors to Venice still spend a lot of their time in shops and grumble about the prices. In that, and in much else, Dürer sounds like one of us.

The most extraordinary aspect of his travels — the subject of a forthcoming exhibition at the National Gallery — is that so much information about what he saw, thought and felt has survived. During the 15th and 16th centuries many people roved around, great artists included. Unfortunately, however, we generally know little or nothing about what they saw and did.

In Dürer’s case, it is different. There is a stack of letters from his stay in Venice and also a journal he kept during an extended journey to the Low Countries in 1520–21 (surviving in two copies). As a result, we can not only read about his experiences but also hear his voice — gossipy, amusing, self-confident, a little vain.