tour 3 of 28
Dürer and his legacy
Dürer as a child Hans Hoffmann (about 1545/50-1591/2)
This is a remarkably close copy of
Dürer's Self-portrait at the age of
thirteen, the earliest drawing by the artist
to have survived (now in the Albertina, Vienna). Dürer's
drawing is also one of the most astonishing documents known in the
history of art as a record of the work of an emerging genius. Dürer
subsequently recognized its importance, adding an inscription to
the sheet towards the end of his
life.
Around 90 years after
the original, the artist Hans Hoffmann (about 1545/50-1591/2) made
this copy and inscribed on a a separate sheet attached below:
'On 4 February 1576 I made this portrait from the image
drawn by the widely famed Albrecht Dürer inscribed in his own hand
thus [in imitation of Dürer's handwriting]: I drew this
myself from a mirror in the year 1484, when I was still a
child.'
The
inscription's reverential tone emphasizes Dürer's
high status among artists of the late sixteenth century, at which
time his work was particularly admired. Hoffmann was the most
important artist of the 'Dürer renaissance'. He was
recorded as a citizen of Nuremberg in 1576, at which time the
original drawing was in the collection of Willibald Imhoff
(1519-80), a grandson of Dürer's friend Willibald
Pirckheimer. Imhoff acquired a large number of Dürer's
drawings after the artist's immediate family died out in
1560.