The Genius of Albrecht Dürer Revealed in Four Self-Portraits

Age 13:

The Ger­man artist Albrecht Dür­er (1471–1528) was one of the great­est fig­ures of the North­ern Renais­sance. As a draughts­man and painter, he rivaled his elder con­tem­po­rary Leonar­do Da Vin­ci, and his mas­ter­ful wood­cuts and engrav­ings of myth­i­cal and alle­gor­i­cal scenes made him famous across Europe.

In the first half of his life, Dür­er made a series of exquis­ite self-por­traits. The ear­li­est (above) was made in 1484, when the artist was a pre­co­cious boy of 13. It was drawn in sil­ver­point. Some­time lat­er, he wrote in the upper right-hand cor­ner: “This I have drawn from myself from the look­ing-glass, in the year 1484, when I was still a child — Albrecht Dür­er.” The draw­ing, now in the col­lec­tion of the Alberti­na muse­um in Vien­na, was made at about the time Dür­er became an appren­tice gold­smith in his father’s jew­el­ry shop in Nurem­berg. Much to his father’s dis­ap­point­ment, he would leave the gold­smith shop about a year lat­er to become an appren­tice to the promi­nent Nurem­berg artist and print­mak­er Michael Wol­ge­mut. But the ear­ly expe­ri­ence of work­ing with the tools in the gold­smith shop would prove invalu­able to Dür­er’s lat­er work as an engraver.

Age 22:

After Dür­er fin­ished his appren­tice­ship with Woleg­mut at the age of 19, he fol­lowed the tra­di­tion of young artists and embarked on a guild tour of south­ern Ger­many to study the work of var­i­ous artists and print­mak­ers. He was prob­a­bly in Stras­bourg when he paint­ed his “Por­trait of the Artist hold­ing a This­tle” (above) in 1493. He was 22 years old. The por­trait was paint­ed in oil on vel­lum, and was past­ed on can­vas sev­er­al cen­turies lat­er. Johann Wof­gang von Goethe saw the paint­ing in 1805 at a muse­um in Leipzig and was deeply impressed. In 1922 it was pur­chased by the Lou­vre.

“The face still has some of the child­ish fea­tures seen in his ear­ly draw­ing of a Self-Por­trait,” says the Lou­vre Web site, “but the man­ly neck, the strong nose, and the vig­or­ous hands are already those of an adult. Dür­er, who was also an excel­lent engraver, com­posed his works in a very graph­ic fash­ion. The almost metal­lic fine­ness of detail, seen in the prick­les of the this­tle, also recalls his ear­ly train­ing as a gold­smith.”

There are two com­pet­ing the­o­ries about the mean­ing of the paint­ing. Some schol­ars believe it was an engage­ment present for Agnes Frey, whom Dür­er would mar­ry the fol­low­ing year. “In fact,” says the Lou­vre, “the this­tle held by the artist is called ‘Mannstreu’ in Ger­man, which also means ‘hus­band’s fideli­ty.’ This pledge of love would also explain the ele­gance of the cos­tume. The main loop­hole in this hypoth­e­sis is that Dür­er may still have been unaware of the mar­riage, which had been arranged by his father.” A rival the­o­ry is that the this­tle rep­re­sents the crown of thorns from Christ’s Pas­sion. In any case, the artist’s inscrip­tion reads, “Things hap­pen to me as it is writ­ten on high.”

Age 26:

The sec­ond of Dür­er’s three paint­ed self-por­traits was made in 1498, when he was 26 years old and enter­ing his mature peri­od as a mas­ter artist. Dür­er had made his first of two vis­its to north­ern Italy a few years ear­li­er to study Ital­ian art and math­e­mat­ics. While there, he was impressed and grat­i­fied by the ele­vat­ed social sta­tus grant­ed to great artists. In Ger­many he had been looked down upon as a low­ly crafts­man. “How I shall freeze after this sun!” Dür­er wrote home to his friend Willibald Pir­ck­heimer from Italy. “Here I am a gen­tle­man, at home only a par­a­site.” Upon his return to Nurem­berg, Dür­er assert­ed his new sense of social posi­tion. In the por­trait above he depicts him­self as some­thing of a dandy, with flam­boy­ant dress and a haughty bear­ing. The paint­ing was made in oil on a wood pan­el, and now resides in the Museo del Pra­do in Madrid.

Age 28:

The Christ-like self-por­trait above was paint­ed in 1500, short­ly before Dür­er’s 29th birth­day. The paint­ing was made in oil on a wood­en pan­el, and is now in the col­lec­tion of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Unlike his ear­li­er self-por­traits, which were com­posed in the cus­tom­ary three-quar­ters view, Dür­er’s self-por­trait of 1500 depicts the artist faced square­ly toward the view­er — a pose usu­al­ly reserved at that time for images of Christ. His hand, touch­ing the fur col­lar of his coat, brings to mind the ges­tures of bless­ing in reli­gious icons. The high­ly sym­met­ric com­po­si­tion draws atten­tion to the eyes, which gaze direct­ly at the view­er. The artist’s mono­gram, “AD,” and the Latin inscrip­tion — “I, Albrecht Dür­er of Nurem­berg, por­trayed myself in ever­last­ing col­ors aged twen­ty-eight years” — are placed at eye-lev­el to strength­en the effect. The year “1500” is writ­ten direct­ly above the mono­gram, giv­ing the “AD” a sec­ond mean­ing as Anno Domi­ni, which fur­ther rein­forces the con­nec­tion between Dür­er and Christ. The art his­to­ri­an Joseph Koern­er has sug­gest­ed that the entire com­po­si­tion, from the tri­an­gu­lar out­line of the frontal like­ness to the curve of Dür­er’s fin­gers, echoes the over­ar­ch­ing “A” and nes­tled “D” of the artist’s mono­gram. “Noth­ing we see in a Dür­er is not Dür­er’s,” writes Koern­er, “mono­gram or not.”