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Self-Portrait at Twenty-Six
Albrecht Dürer · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
- Date
- 1498
- Dimensions
- 52 x 41 cm
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Location
- Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
In this self-portrait the twenty-six-year-old Albrecht Dürer presents himself as an elegant gentleman, in a striped black-and-white tunic, a tasselled cap and fine kid gloves, beside a window opening onto a mountain landscape.
A closer look
At the time, painters in Germany were considered craftsmen, but Dürer, recently returned from Italy where artists were honoured as intellectuals, wanted to claim a higher status. Everything in the picture proclaims self-confidence: the fashionable clothes, the long, carefully curled hair, the proud, steady gaze. The Alpine landscape through the window recalls his journey across the mountains to Venice. Under the window he wrote: 'I painted this from my own appearance; I was twenty-six years old. Albrecht Dürer'.
More by Albrecht Dürer
In this gallery
Famous works elsewhere
- Melencolia I 1514
- The Four Apostles 1526
- Adoration of the Magi 1504
- Feast of the Rosary 1506
- Praying Hands 1500