tour 2 of 28
Dürer and his legacy
Dürer and his Image
Dürer produced at least twelve drawn and
painted images of himself and in doing so introduced a new subject
to art, the self-portrait. His deep interest in portraiture and the
manipulation of his own image are very modern aspects of
Dürer's art and personality, in striking contrast to the
medieval artisan world in which the young Dürer was
trained.
Given that Dürer
is best known as a printmaker, it is extraordinary that he made no
self-portrait in this medium. He did, however, occasionally
incorporate his own image in the guise of Christ, which can be seen
in his engraving of the Sudarium of St
Veronica (shown
here).
Dürer's
self-portraits were commemorated by contemporary and later artists,
such as Hans Hoffman, who copied Dürer's earliest surviving
self-portrait around ninety years after it was executed. It is
interesting to note that later in his life, with his eye to
posterity, Dürer inscribed this drawing with an explanation of how
he had produced it, an inscription which Hoffman faithfully
reproduced.
Medals also
payed an important role in the cultivation of Dürer's
image. For example, the commemorative image of Dürer in Erhard
Schön's woodcut was derived from a medal by Mathes Gebel
(about 1500-74), Nuremberg's most prolific medallist of
this period.