Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents
Encyclopedia
Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents (or Dürer's Parents with Rosaries) is the collective name for two small late 15th-century oil-on-oak panels, separated since at least 1588, which probably formed halves of a diptych
Diptych
A diptych di "two" + ptychē "fold") is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. Devices of this form were quite popular in the ancient world, wax tablets being coated with wax on inner faces, for recording notes and for measuring time and direction.In Late Antiquity, ivory diptychs with...

 by the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

. Each shows one of the artist's parents, Albrecht Dürer the elder (1427–1502) and Barbara Holper (c. 1451–1514). His father was 62 or 63 when his panel was painted early in 1490. A the time the artist would have been 19, just after he completed his apprenticeship with Michael Wolgemut
Michael Wolgemut
Michael Wolgemut was a German painter and printmaker, born in Nuremberg.-Biography:Little is known of Wolgemut's private life...

 and before he left Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...

 to travel as a journeyman
Journeyman
A journeyman is someone who completed an apprenticeship and was fully educated in a trade or craft, but not yet a master. To become a master, a journeyman had to submit a master work piece to a guild for evaluation and be admitted to the guild as a master....

 painter. His mother's portrait was probably painted soon after, when she would have been around 39; it is possible that Dürer waited a year or two until she looked older or painted her as older than she then was. Both panels are renowned for their unflinching depiction of the effects of ageing on human physiognomy
Physiognomy
Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...

.

The painting of his father is considered the superior work. The two panels are among a number of portraits Dürer made of his parents, which closely detail the effects of time on their appearance. Dürer's writings contain eulogies for both parents, from them it is evident that he was affectionate and close to them, and aware of the hardship both had faced in their lives.

Today Dürer the elder's portrait is held in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

. Barbara's has been in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum
Germanisches Nationalmuseum
The Germanisches Nationalmuseum is a museum in Nuremberg, Germany. Founded in 1852, houses a large collection of items relating to German culture and art extending from prehistoric times through to the present day...

, Nuremberg, since 1925. The connection between the two works was not made until 1977, and was based on their size, similar colouring and composition, the fact that compositionally the figures in each form an almost perfect echo of each other, and that both are marked with the inventory number 19. However, it is possible that the Nuremberg work is an early copy of a lost original.

Description

The portrait of Albrecht the elder is the superior of the two panels, and has been described as "evidence of an astonishing depth of psychological insight" for an 18-year-old artist. In its simple design and elaborate fine detail it shares many of the characteristics of, and is a key precursor to Dürer's mature work. The father's panel is believed to have been the first of the pair to be painted and, if so, it is the earliest exant example of his son's paintings. In contrast to Albrecht's panel, his mother's portrait contains bland passages (especially around the eyes), has been cut down, and may be an early copy of a lost original. The works were created either to display his skill as an artist to his parents, or as keepsakes as he left home that year to learn his craft as a painter.

Albrecht Dürer the Elder with a Rosary is signed and dated on both sides, and here Dürer's signature monogram
Monogram
A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series of uncombined initials is properly referred to as a...

 with its large open A and small d makes its earliest appearance. However, these inscriptions were probably added later and possibly not by Dürer himself. The Florence canvas is in relatively poor condition, retouching has largely removed Dürer's distinctive brushwork and left the paint hard and dry in tone. The back of Albrecht's panel has rendition of the allied Dürer and Holper family's coats of arms, which are shown beneath a winged Moor
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...

 wearing a red dress. The Dürer family are represented by a crest showing an open door, a pun on the word Dürer (Thürer meaning 'doormaker'). Albrecht the elder was born in Hungarian village of Ajtó; 'ajtos' is the Hungarian for 'door'. When they moved to Germany their name translated to 'Tür' or 'Düre'. The Holper's crest features a stag, but its meaning and significance is lost.

Barbara Holper

Barbara Holper was the daughter of Hieronymus Holper, under whom Dürer's Hungarian father
Portrait of Dürer's Father at 70
Portrait of Dürer's Father at 70 is a 1497 oil on lime painting attributed to the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer, now in the National Gallery, London. Along with the 1490 Albrecht Dürer the Elder with a Rosary, it is the second of two portraits of the artist's Hungarian father...

 served his apprenticeship as a goldsmith. The two men remained friends and Hieronymus Holper gave
Arranged marriage
An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...

 his daughter into marriage when Dürer's father was 40 and she was 15. The couple appear to have been compatible and well-matched, however the writings of their son testify that they shared difficult lives, and suffered many set-backs. They had 18 children together, only two of whom survived into adulthood. After Barbara's death in 1514, Dürer wrote "This my pious Mother bore and brought up eighteen children; she often had the plague and many other severe and strange illnesses, and she suffered great poverty, scorn, contempt, mocking words, terrors, and great adversities. Yet she bore no malice. She feared Death much, but she said that to come before God she feared not. Also she died hard, and I marked that she saw something dreadful, for she asked for the holy-water, although, for a long time, she had not spoken. Immediately afterwards her eyes closed over. I saw also how Death smote her two great strokes to the heart, and how she closed mouth and eyes and departed with pain. I repeated to her the prayers. I felt so grieved for her that I cannot express it. God be merciful to her."

She is also shown in three-quarters view against a monochrome green background. Her form echoes and in many ways counterbalances that of her husband. She wears a red dress, and the matt white bonnet
Bonnet (headgear)
Bonnets are a variety of headgear for both sexes, which have in common only the absence of a brim. Bonnet derives from the same word in French, where it originally indicated a type of material...

 which fully covers he hair, indicating that she is a married woman. He headdress is draped with a long scarf, or train
Train (clothing)
A train in clothing is the long back portion of a skirt or dress that writes a trail on the ground behind the wearer in ruler , or a separate trailing overskirt. It is a common part of a court dress or a wedding dress....

, which stretches down her long neck and across her left shoulder and contrasts in shape and colour against the black head-wear of her husband. Barbara was attractive in her youth; her son described her as having been "comely and of erect bearing" – but the effects of time and losing so many children is evident on her face. The panel has been cut down at the left side, shifting the composition out of balance and removing a portion of the headdress.

The panel was not identified as a portrait of Barbara until 1977, when Dürer scholar Fedja Anzelewsky
Fedja Anzelewsky
Fedja Erik Allan Anzelewski was a German art historian, best known for his internationally recognised monographs on Albrecht Dürer.-Works:...

 noticed that it bore striking resemblance to the 1514 drawing Portrait of the artist's mother at the age of 63
Portrait of the artist's mother at the age of 63
Portrait of the artist's mother at the age of 63 is a charcoal drawing from March 1514 by the German printmaker and painter Albrecht Dürer, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. It is a tender but unflinching study of his mother, Barbara Holfer , finished two months before she died...

, a sensitive and unflinching portrait of an emaciated woman finished two months before she died. David Price writes of the drawing's "rough depiction of her flesh emaciated by old age", and the "existential piety in the cast of Barbara Dürer's right eye, which, almost unnaturally, directs her vision heavenward." Although she is some 24 odd years older in the drawing, the facial resemblance is unmistakable, as is the pose given by her son in both works.

Albrecht the Elder

Dürer's father is shown in three-quarters view against a flat lacquer
Lacquer
In a general sense, lacquer is a somewhat imprecise term for a clear or coloured varnish that dries by solvent evaporation and often a curing process as well that produces a hard, durable finish, in any sheen level from ultra matte to high gloss and that can be further polished as required...

-like green background which although lush, has been thinly layered. He wears a dark shirt, russet coat and a black hat lined with fur; the drabness of his clothes is intended to convey a reserved, ascetic
Asceticism
Asceticism describes a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals...

 piousness. His skin is slack at the mouth and chin, while his eyes, small but intelligent, are lined with crow's feet and are heavily lidded and shadowed with brown hatched
Hatching
Hatching is an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing closely spaced parallel lines...

 brush strokes. He is rendered with brush strokes more typical of drawing than painting – at this early age Dürer was far more skilled as a draughtsman.
Albrecht the elder's lips are thin and tightly pursed, his broad mouth is down-turned, yet his features give the impression of a handsome man. Art Critic Marcel Brion
Marcel Brion
Marcel Brion was a French essayist, literary critic, novelist, and historian. -Biography:The son of a lawyer, Brion was classmates in Thiers with Marcel Pagnol and Albert Cohen. After completing his secondary education in Champittet, Switzerland, he studied law at the University of Aix-en-Provence...

 described the portrait as of a man with a "mild and thoughtful cast", which is in keeping with the simple and uncomplicated design of the painting. Dürer the elder is presented as more like an ecclesiastic than a tradesman; a calm and serious man dressed in his best clothes. His eyebrows are dark and serious, while their curves echo those of the heavy lids beneath his eyes.

The artist portrayed his father again in 1497. In the later work the sitter, who was to die in 1502, has aged noticeably in just seven years. His eyes have lost their "distant, mystic" appearance to become "impatient, overwrought, almost haggard".

After his father's death in 1502, Dürer wrote that Albrecht the elder "passed his life in great toil and stern hard labour, having nothing for his support save what with his hand for himself, his wife and his children, so that he had little enough. He underwent manifold afflictions, trials and adversities. But he won just praise from all who knew him for he lived an honourable Christian life, was a man patient spirit, mild and peaceable to all and very thankful to God. For himself he had little need of company and worldly pleasures; he was also of few words, and was a God-fearing man."

Lost diptych

The connection between the two works was not made until art historian Fedja Anzelewsky
Fedja Anzelewsky
Fedja Erik Allan Anzelewski was a German art historian, best known for his internationally recognised monographs on Albrecht Dürer.-Works:...

 proposed in 1977 that the sitter in the Nuremberg panel is Barbara Holper and that her panel formed the missing half of a lost diptych. Anzelewsky observed that both works bore the number 19 on the reverse, the catalogue number the diptych was recorded under in the 1573/74 Imhoff inventory. He also noticed they share dimensions, and that the reverse of both works are "covered by precisely the same design of masses of dark clouds". He also noted that Dürer's 1514 charcoal drawing Portrait of the artist's mother at the age of 63, the single portrait of Dürer's mother, which is inscribed with an identifying title and can so be identified as of her with certainty, is compositionally a near inverse of the Nuremberg panel.
The canvas
Canvas
Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...

 of both is mounted onto a pine panel, and both have a white ground and a light red imprimatur
Imprimatur
An imprimatur is, in the proper sense, a declaration authorizing publication of a book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement.-Catholic Church:...

 with a lead content.

Anzelewsky proposed that they were probably separated sometime between 1588 and 1628, possibly in order to sell Albrecht's portrait to Rudolph II of Austria
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor
Rudolf II was Holy Roman Emperor , King of Hungary and Croatia , King of Bohemia and Archduke of Austria...

.

Sources

The three-quarters view was commonly used in southern portraiture of the time, as were rosary beads, particularly in Swabia
Swabia
Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.-Geography:Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined...

n art, to indicate the piousness and modesty of the sitters, although these styles were falling out of fashion. It is in the tight and detailed focus on his parents' faces that Dürer distinguishes himself from his contemporaries and draws comparison to the work of the Early Netherlandish
Early Netherlandish painting
Early Netherlandish painting refers to the work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th- and early 16th-century Northern renaissance, especially in the flourishing Burgundian cities of Bruges and Ghent...

 artists. Albrecht the elder had traveled to Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

, and from working with Netherlandish artists had acquired a strong appreciation for the work of both Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....

 and Rogier van der Weyden. That he passed on this regard to his son is evident from Dürer's early use of silver point, a medium which requires "an exceptional degree of confidence, accuracy and sensitive feeling for its sucessful handling".

Art historian Julian von Fircks notes that Dürer would have been aware of Hans Pleydenwurff
Hans Pleydenwurff
Hans Pleydenwurff was a German painter.His father was probably Kunz Pleydenwurff, a well-respected painter and part-time mayor in Bamberg. Since 1457, Hans lived in Nuremberg where he established a new style of realism, influenced by Northern Renaissance painters...

's portrait of the ageing Count Georg von Lowenstein through his teacher Michael Wolgemut
Michael Wolgemut
Michael Wolgemut was a German painter and printmaker, born in Nuremberg.-Biography:Little is known of Wolgemut's private life...

, a work that was in turn likely to have been influenced by a van Eyck's 1438 (probable) Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati
Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati
The Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati is a painting by early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dating to around 1431 and currently housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Austria.-Description:...

.

Von Fircks believes that the portrait of Dürer's father took its starting point from Pleydenwurff's portrait, which he describes as a "highly detailed representation of [a] white haired old man, who defies the pains of growing old with an alert mind and an inner animation that finds expression his luminous countenance". Von Fricks further notes that Dürer's 1484 self-portrait was created with the use of a mirror, while his most iconic work is probably his 1550 Munich Self-Portrait. From these he concludes that the "accurate observation and documentary recording" of both his own and parents' appearances over time was not just a compulsion, but that "the changes wrought by time upon their faces – as upon his own – were both an object of study and at the same time a vehicle of introspective reflection".

Sources

  • Allen, Jessie. Albrecht Dürer. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-7661-9475-2
  • Anzelewsky, Fedja
    Fedja Anzelewsky
    Fedja Erik Allan Anzelewski was a German art historian, best known for his internationally recognised monographs on Albrecht Dürer.-Works:...

    . Albrecht Dürer, das malerische Werk. Berlin, 1971.
  • Brand Philip, Lotte; Anzelewsky, Fedja. "The portrait diptych of Dürer’s parents". In Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Volume 10, No. 1, 1978–79. 5–18
  • Bailey, Martin. Dürer. London: Phidon Press, 1995. ISBN 0-7148-3334-7
  • Conway, Martin. "Dürer Portraits, Notes". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Volume 33, No. 187, October 1918. 142–143
  • Brion, Marcel
    Marcel Brion
    Marcel Brion was a French essayist, literary critic, novelist, and historian. -Biography:The son of a lawyer, Brion was classmates in Thiers with Marcel Pagnol and Albert Cohen. After completing his secondary education in Champittet, Switzerland, he studied law at the University of Aix-en-Provence...

    . Dürer. London: Thames and Hudson, 1960.
  • Campbell Hutchison, Jane. Albrecht Dürer: A Guide to Research. New York: Garland, 2000. ISBN 0-8153-2114-7
  • Price, David. Albrecht Dürer's Renaissance: Humanism, Reformation and the Art of Faith. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. ISBN 0-4721-1343-7
  • Sturge Moore, Thomas. Albert Dürer. Kessinger Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1-4191-0533-7
  • Tatlock, Lynne. "Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany". Brill Academic Publishers, 2010. 116. ISBN 9-0041-8454-6
  • Thausing, Moriz. Albert Durer: His Life and Work, Part 1. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-7661-5416-5
  • Von Fircks, Julian. "Albrecht Dürer the Elder with a Rosary". In: Van Eych to Durer. Borchert, Till-Holger (ed). London: Thames & Hudson, 2011. ISBN 978-0-500-23883-7


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK