Bildnis des Vaters des Künstlers

This is the earliest painting we have from Durer's hand, made in 1490 when he was 18 or 19. He had just finished his apprenticeship with the Nuremberg painter Michael Wolgemut and was about to set off on the years of travel a young craftsman was expected to make. Before leaving, he painted his father. Albrecht the elder was a goldsmith, then in his early 60s, and his son shows him plainly, holding a small object between careful fingers, the face lined and serious, no grandeur added. It is a close, honest look at an ageing working man by a son who clearly knew him well. He would paint his father again a few years later and, near her death, draw his ageing mother in charcoal in a portrait far better known today than this one.