Portrait of Bernhart von Reesen

In the winter of 1520 Dürer left Nuremberg and spent more than a year travelling through the Low Countries, keeping a diary the whole way — what he spent, who he met, what he was paid for his work. On the 16th of March 1521, in Antwerp, he wrote that he had portrayed one Bernhart von Reesen, a merchant from Gdańsk living in the city, and that the man paid him eight florins along with a few small gifts for his wife and maid. Von Reesen was 30 when he sat. He holds a folded paper and turns his gaze to the side, set against a plain red ground that pushes the face toward you. It is a Netherlandish sitter seen by a German who had just been studying the Venetians, and you can feel both traditions meeting in that calm, weighed-up look.