Burkard von Speyer

Durer painted this in Venice in the autumn of 1506, near the end of a long second stay in Italy where he had gone partly to prove to sceptical Venetians that a German could paint as well as any of them. The sitter, Burkard von Speyer, was a chaplain to the German community in the city, and he turns up again among the crowd in the large altarpiece Durer made that year for the German merchants' church, the Feast of the Rose Garlands. Set against plain black, in the Italian manner, the young man looks out steadily, richly dressed, sharply lit. Almost nothing else is known about him beyond his name and his town on the Rhine. A century later the picture entered the collection of Charles I of England, where the British royal family keeps it still.