Portrait of Hans Tucher

Dürer painted this portrait in 1499, not long after returning to Nuremberg from his first journey over the Alps to Italy. The man is Hans Tucher, a member of one of the city's leading merchant families, shown against a plain green ground in a fur-trimmed coat and dark cap. What Dürer brought back from Italy shows in the handling, the confident three-quarter turn, the solid modelling of the face, the sitter meeting your eye as an individual rather than a type. It was made as one of a pair, hung beside a matching portrait of Tucher's wife, Felicitas. The Tuchers were among the patrons who kept the young Dürer in commissions as he built his reputation at home.