Description
In this painting, the twenty-eight-year old artist created probably the most unusual portrait in art history. The full frontal view and the high degree of idealisation reminds of depictions of Christ, while neither feature can be separated from Dürer’s studies of human proportions that started around this time. The focused gaze and the creative hand as the tools of the artist allow the painting to be interpreted as an image of artistic programme in connection with the hardly translatable Latin inscription that emphasises the painter’s material: “Thus I, Albrecht Dürer from Nuremberg, created myself with characteristic colours at the age of 28 years”.