Portrait of Oswolt Krel: "Sylvan Men" with Heraldic Shields of Agathe von Esendorf

This narrow board of limewood is the right-hand wing of a portrait triptych Albrecht Dürer painted in 1499 for Oswolt Krel, a merchant from a Lindau family on Lake Constance. The shield on it belongs to his wife, Agathe von Essendorf zum Horn. They had married in 1484 and had 11 children, and she outlived him by about eight years. No likeness of her was painted. Her arms are her whole presence in the triptych, carried by a hairy wild man, while the wing on the other side holds Krel's own arms the same way. In southern German coats of arms a wild man was a common supporter, the figure that holds the shield upright, and an old tradition counted these creatures among the descendants of Cain, living outside Christian settlement. The panel is about 50 centimetres tall and 16 wide, and it entered the Bavarian royal collection in 1828 with the Oettingen-Wallerstein pictures.