Portrait of a Young Fürleger with Loose Hair

Durer painted this in 1497, in his mid-twenties, not long after his first journey over the Alps to Venice. It is one of a pair. The same young woman appears in a companion picture with her hair pinned up, while here it falls loose over her shoulders, the way an unmarried girl of Nuremberg would wear it. She is identified as a member of the Furleger family by a coat of arms in the background, but that heraldry was added later, so who she really was is not certain. The two portraits stayed together until 1830, when they were sold off separately to different collectors. Durer sets her against a plain dark ground, hands folded, so that the light falls almost entirely on that spill of reddish hair.