Self-Portrait
Albrecht Dürer (1471 to 1528) · 1498
A young man of twenty six in an elegant black and white doublet, a striped cap and a grey cloak thrown over one shoulder looks out from beside a window with an almost insolent confidence. His long hair falls in careful ringlets, his beard is trimmed, his gloved hands rest on a ledge. Through the window is a mountain landscape, the Alps he had crossed on his way to Venice. An inscription beneath the window in German says: I painted this after my own likeness; I was twenty six years old, Albrecht Dürer. Above it is the famous monogram, a large A sheltering a small D.
What is striking is the pose. Artists in Germany were craftsmen, members of guilds, and here one presents himself as a gentleman, dressed in the fashion of Italy and looking us in the eye. Look at how the light from the window models the face and picks out every hair of the beard and every strand of the ringlets, painted with the finest of brushes, and at the sober colour scheme of black, white, grey and brown that sets off the pink of the face. The landscape through the window is a small painting in itself, and the gloves, which were a sign of rank, are painted with the same care as the skin.
Dürer made this portrait in Nuremberg two years after his first journey to Italy, when he had absorbed the idea that a painter could be an intellectual. It stayed in the city until 1636, when the town council presented it to the Earl of Arundel, the English collector, from whom it passed to Charles the First. After the king's execution his collection was sold, and the Spanish ambassador bought this picture for Philip the Fourth. It has been in Madrid ever since, one of only three painted self-portraits by Dürer to survive.
Did You Know? The painting was sold from Charles the First's collection after his execution in 1649 and bought for the Spanish king, who kept it in the Alcázar in Madrid.
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