Selbstbildnis mit Distel

Dürer painted himself here in 1493, at 22, while working as a journeyman far from home in the Rhineland. It is the earliest of his painted self-portraits and one of the first any Northern artist had made of himself as the sole subject. He holds a small spiky plant, a sea holly the Germans linked to a husband's faithfulness, which is the clue that this was almost certainly a betrothal picture. Back in Nuremberg his family had arranged a marriage, and the next year he did marry Agnes Frey. Beside the date he wrote a line in the old spelling: my affairs go as it is written above. He painted it not on a wood panel but on parchment, later glued to canvas, which is part of why so fragile a thing from a 22-year-old has survived at all.