Bildnis der Elspeth Tucher

Durer painted this in 1499, and up in the corner he wrote the sitter into the picture: Elspeth, wife of Niklas Tucher, aged 26. She belonged to one of the ruling merchant families of Nuremberg, Durer's own city. Notice that she looks off to one side rather than at us. That is because this was only half of a folding double portrait. Her husband occupied the other wing, turned toward her, and the two panels once closed like a book. His half is now lost, so she gazes across an empty hinge at a man who is no longer there. Behind her a curtain of pomegranate-patterned brocade opens onto a thin strip of landscape, a Northern habit of the time. The whole thing is barely larger than a postcard.