Self-Portrait Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)

Description of Albrecht Dürer’s Self-Portrait in the Image of Christ

"Self-Portrait" (another title for the painting "Self-Portrait in Fur Clothing") is one of the artist’s famous paintings, long kept in his family and not intended for the general public.

In the self-portrait we see a fairly young man with a handsome face (the artist was not even 30 years old at the time of writing). His intelligent and slightly tired eyes look intently at the viewer, full lips, framed by a small beard and mustache, testify to the sensuality and thirst for love. Curled hair in neat curls descends below the shoulders on fur-trimmed expensive clothes, his right hand raised to his chest.

Dürer’s innovation was his portrait of himself in full-face on a secular portrait (at that time (1500) figures on secular portraits were depicted in profile or semi-profile, and only religious images could be rendered in full-face).

Such an image directly overlaps with the iconic depiction of Jesus Christ, especially since we can see the similarity between the artist’s face and the face of the Savior (the same long wavy hair, small beard and mustache, thin face with classic features, etc., the inscription on the retort as on the icon in the right and left part of the painting). Such artistic paintings were characteristic of Renaissance artists who proclaimed the ideal of man, comparing him with an earthly god.

In this way, the artist elevates himself as a representative of this new age, which places man-creator on a pedestal (it is not for nothing that he so carefully paints his right hand, which created this image). He himself, according to the recollections of his contemporaries, admitted that he wanted to immortalize his name and young face by painting it with "eternal colors" that death is unable to erase.